Nostalgia April 2015

Greek for “the pain from an old wound”


~~~


time changes words,
the origin-rawest meaning,
oft too harsh and
thus re-sweetened,
moderated for modern
sensitized sensibilities,
no offending anybody anytime

par example,

awesome

was
fearful, terrifying,
alas, now plaster recast,
merely a
junk food word,
a billions times hamburger oversold,
poor little word,
misunderstood,
abused,
clearly, nowadays not
awestruck
by its awesome
past historical
usage

nostalgia

is not a photograph-word
for framing,
in old fashioned sepia colored hazes,
look-backs with
no risks in attendance.
a minor case of
a wistful heart
edged perhaps burnt,
but imagery intact,
always
somewhat sweet,
somewhat sad,
perhaps at worst,
bittersweet

Crap

let me roar now
my anger,
let me vent
mea veritas primogenius

the awesomeness
of the hurts
borne from
ancient lives that I escaped
but yet empowered
to let

nostalgia

make the hate,

the pain from old wounds
refreshed, re-reddened,
living, extant,
wounds forty years young

from places
where a woman hurt me,
hurt me willfully
thus permanent provisioned,
nostalgia is
a daily pill
of accumulated memories
of misuse,
she,
evil calculating so...

take that AM pill
for
maximum hurt,
can only be swallowed dry

weak,
like a Greek
God,
who were
more human than humans,
tag me enraged,
un-gauged,
no
measure of measure
for me,
bitter herbs,
a morning's mourning
potent sweet potion

~~~

in this place,
poem
prior confessed lovingly
an amiable self-pleasuring
an artifice,
enjoyed,
deconstructing words
for hidden meanings^

this a pean pain penned,
truly
an old fashioned bittersweet
sepia colored, burnt caramel colored
rage

this is not
your mother's
the-modern-nostalgic

recalled with
mixture of the painful pleasure
of
no forgiving the sins of
omission of a father,
who could not love openly,
or
the sins of sons,
in turn equally
guilty
of an
insufficiently telling his
pop,
I love you plain
vanilla simple,
regret for love not well
spent}

but this is not the truth of
nostalgia,
just plain regret
of acts of love
not demonstrated
~~~~
this poem,
this day,,
this pain enraged,
old wounds enflamed,
how I gave up to misery
the better part of a life

This is Nostalgia
in its ancient usage
and God help me,
should I ever see her,
I will school her
in the sourced origins of words

Greek algos, pain

and tell her
she sourced me
hell well,
four decades
make me unashamed
to say on this planet,
there are those
even good ole
Natty
will never
forget/forgive
only recall with the
summation of
nostalgic pain,
wounds still
draining

~~

Prologue & Epilogue: How the Poem "The Truth Burden" Came to Be
2016
~~

a twisty, morning borning mystery provocation,
what means
this phraseology, this message,
somewhat comprehensible, mostly not,
tween two poets,
that early-hours-eyes
thirstly imbibe,
these sort of appealingly muddled,
frying words,
so surgically contradictory,
that stab me front and centers?

The Message:
"Poetry is a self-policing agency, enforcing nothing"

~~~
Prologue & Epilogue
~~~

his thinking part
(that part of him, the conscious confused, aching, making,
disaster initialed, abbreviatedly, summarily known as as
M.E.
reads this mystery message,
whereupon  his whole collective,
is instantly over-boarded into
a-sinking-ship-to-shore shape,
that is currently listing,
at
a wrong angle,
a head-in-hands sunk funk

his thinking part,
forced to issue from within his
snowed-in-mind,
a series of serious, ominous
low growls

it's 6:15am on a
snow trampling
Naturday Saturday,
when the Temptress No. 7,
the seventh of the
do-not-do-these-deadly sins,
all part of the  
Ten Commandments of Poetry

#7 - do not write poetry during blizzards

forces me to unsweetenly succumb,
so a fool snowplows on,
incarnating his poetic, natural conflicting notions,
modifying mere growls of
Scarlett's la-de-da pawed phases into
vocal screaming and the labored breathing,
of poetic childbirth

having roused a grumpled, rumpled,
no longer, a winterized saved-from-being-an
emotional-hibernating bear,
having called out the poet out
into the ruckus blizzard
named so eloquently
by the weather bureau as:

"The White Write-Down Blizzard"

each differentiated flake wets my tongue asking only,
create me, explicate me,
hell, just explain me,
this provoking phrase,
giving me the wordy flesh
to flesh out its meaning,
from the successful reckoning of
a pulpy heart failing,
what mean this insane theology?

"Poetry is a self-policing agency, enforcing nothing"

all to to better understand
this no man's land,
this valley of bones,
where my soul has so long resided,
this notion,
amidst the drifts
of cross currents of inbounding
snow flakes crafted,
and crafty revelation,
with unforced, unbelabored, critical
honesty

the why of this rough, hardened cogitation,
has only one answer

"because,"

i.e. to be caused,
without rhyme or reason to
rhyme and reason
a cussed must,
write!

for now residing in
the visionary Venn diagram
where words
(circle A),
and life's fibrous, porous, event driven
breathing content
(circle B),
intersect,
the land where the heated blood circulating,
pin ****** all skin,
A ∩ B
is

this wild land where there is
no rule of law,
except one,
the essence of the sanctity of
the human
poem

strangely, I think that this
ought be, must be, responsibly,
be the best poem I’ve ever writ,
(though unlikely, as the best will always be the next)
that mine own eyes commissioned,
better be,
just got to be,
this holy-moly notion jeepers weepers,
conceptual rocks me deepest,
an awesome responsibility
to find away of saying
that this beyond conceptual,
coring, especially special sample

If there was to be a but one,
a singularity, a distinguishing feature
of what the human definition
innate contains,
how choice that we animals,
elevate ourselves to being human beings,
the only ones capable of wonderfully weeping

the implications are an astounding!

what a glorious burden,
what a wonderful decision,
the designer slipped in this microscopic checkmark,
somewhere in our cellular DNA perma-dynasty,
runs a common thread, these saltwater fears,
a residual global amniotic fluid hint,
from where we humans out-of-crawled

that empathy,
the signal of an elongated journey of eons,
the marker that says
show the caring,
a trait-ed statement,
us, unique

so often do I weep,
sometimes visible - in my poems listed, oft indicated -
so you could know its sharing was an absolution
that I granted myself,
that that particular  poem was a costly one,

womb bloomed, tongue taken, eye written

sometimes invisible  - even more, do they,
(nobody knows, nobody sees)
just well up, eye cornered kept, secreted,
only skin-staining the underneath-my-eyes
one more shade darker,
a reminder to all, to mirrored me,
that to forgive myself doesn’t
forgive forgetting

is this then my best?

sufficient to breech your
reserves of pseudo-cool,
that correct boundary pretense that keeps us as
mismatched separates?

you be the judge, you be the jury,
you be the prosecutor and the defender,
for it is all of us
standing in the dock,
on trial,

for in our lifetime
guilty of the inhuman crime,
of not crying enough