I’m curious tonight.
Don’t isolate yourself, they say.
Don’t Isolate yourself.
How do I not feel isolated
When I can’t type up into a google bar
Please google, show me some abuse poems
Please, google, Show me somebody like me
I wanna know who else has ever looked in the mirror
Scared
Scared of what I’m gonna see
Scared I’m gonna wake up and look and see the bruises on my collarbone
And the bruises on my arms and legs and confidence and hope
Google, I wanna see my future. Can you show me that?
I wanna see the 35 year old woman or man who lived through that ****
I wanna see the 35 year old woman or man who can put their arm on my shoulder
Lean his or her head on mine and say
“don’t you worry, honey, we’ll make it through alright.”
We’ll make it through alright.

But Google I can’t find them.
I’m scared they don’t exist
I’m scared I’m never gonna be the 35 year old woman who lived through that ****
I’m scared I’m never gonna be 35.

Tonight I’m curious.
Where are the poems about blood?
Where are the poems about abuse, google?
I can’t find them.
I don’t want to be the first one.
I don’t want to be the first search result.
I wanna know that I’m not isolated
Because I can’t isolate myself because they say
Don’t isolate yourself.

Don’t Isolate yourself, they say
Mommy how do I not feel Isolated
When I look in your face and swallow every single thing
I ever wanted to say to you because I realize
I don’t want to say a **** thing.
Daddy how do I not feel isolated
When I can’t look at you and really LOOK at you
Because I’m so scared you’re gonna look at me.

Don’t Isolate yourself, they say.
Hell, I’ve been isolated for so long
How do I not feel isolated?
When it’s all I’ve ever known?

Don’t ISOLATE yourself, they say.
How do I not feel isolated
While I can’t put the words to the feelings.
I can’t put the words to the pain
Because it wasn’t just pain.
It wasn’t just fear.
It wasn’t just love.

My brother.
How do I not feel isolated
When I can’t look at you and see a brother
When everybody thinks I’m an only child
Because I can’t put words to you.
Because you’re not just my brother.
It wasn’t just anger.
It wasn’t just fear.

Don’t isolate yourself, they say.
How can I not ISOLATE myself
When nobody can get close.
I can’t put words to it
Because its not just isolation.

She is suffering.
Her energy is draining.
Day by day, little by little
Her thoughts are going deeper
Deeper and deeper as the oceans.
She is fighting within herself
But sadness always dominate.
Starting to isolate herself
Never going out with friends
Always have her own reasons not to
This and that, No because
Really isolating herself
Face always at the web
Posting and liking things
Things she wish to be glued
Glued to her mind and soul
But all she wants is someone
Someone to push her to encourage her
But no one sees it, no one feels it.
All of her thoughts
She is always fighting it
She knows she could make it
She knows she could change
But at this moment
She needs time, longer time
She wants to be alone
She wants to escape
She wants to sleep for a long time
She wants to cry
But time wouldn't allow her to
All she could do is to isolate herself
Isolate to protect herself
Isolate for her to be strong
Isolate for her to realize
Realize that to isolate herself is not the answer.
Never the answer.

A Poem for Three Voices

Setting:  A Maternity Ward and round about

FIRST VOICE:
I am slow as the world.  I am very patient,
Turning through my time, the suns and stars
Regarding me with attention.
The moon's concern is more personal:
She passes and repasses, luminous as a nurse.
Is she sorry for what will happen?  I do not think so.
She is simply astonished at fertility.

When I walk out, I am a great event.
I do not have to think, or even rehearse.
What happens in me will happen without attention.
The pheasant stands on the hill;
He is arranging his brown feathers.
I cannot help smiling at what it is I know.
Leaves and petals attend me.  I am ready.

SECOND VOICE:
When I first saw it, the small red seep, I did not believe it.
I watched the men walk about me in the office.  They were so flat!
There was something about them like cardboard, and now I had caught it,
That flat, flat, flatness from which ideas, destructions,
Bulldozers, guillotines, white chambers of shrieks proceed,
Endlessly proceed--and the cold angels, the abstractions.
I sat at my desk in my stockings, my high heels,

And the man I work for laughed:  'Have you seen something awful?
You are so white, suddenly.'  And I said nothing.
I saw death in the bare trees, a deprivation.
I could not believe it.  Is it so difficult
For the spirit to conceive a face, a mouth?
The letters proceed from these black keys, and these black keys proceed
From my alphabetical fingers, ordering parts,

Parts, bits, cogs, the shining multiples.
I am dying as I sit.  I lose a dimension.
Trains roar in my ears, departures, departures!
The silver track of time empties into the distance,
The white sky empties of its promise, like a cup.
These are my feet, these mechanical echoes.
Tap, tap, tap, steel pegs.  I am found wanting.

This is a disease I carry home, this is a death.
Again, this is a death.  Is it the air,
The particles of destruction I **** up?  Am I a pulse
That wanes and wanes, facing the cold angel?
Is this my lover then?  This death, this death?
As a child I loved a lichen-bitten name.
Is this the one sin then, this old dead love of death?

THIRD VOICE:
I remember the minute when I knew for sure.
The willows were chilling,
The face in the pool was beautiful, but not mine--
It had a consequential look, like everything else,
And all I could see was dangers:  doves and words,
Stars and showers of gold--conceptions, conceptions!
I remember a white, cold wing

And the great swan, with its terrible look,
Coming at me, like a castle, from the top of the river.
There is a snake in swans.
He glided by; his eye had a black meaning.
I saw the world in it--small, mean and black,
Every little word hooked to every little word, and act to act.
A hot blue day had budded into something.

I wasn't ready.  The white clouds rearing
Aside were dragging me in four directions.
I wasn't ready.
I had no reverence.
I thought I could deny the consequence--
But it was too late for that.  It was too late, and the face
Went on shaping itself with love, as if I was ready.

SECOND VOICE:
It is a world of snow now.  I am not at home.
How white these sheets are.  The faces have no features.
They are bald and impossible, like the faces of my children,
Those little sick ones that elude my arms.
Other children do not touch me:  they are terrible.
They have too many colors, too much life.  They are not quiet,
Quiet, like the little emptinesses I carry.

I have had my chances.  I have tried and tried.
I have stitched life into me like a rare *****,
And walked carefully, precariously, like something rare.
I have tried not to think too hard.  I have tried to be natural.
I have tried to be blind in love, like other women,
Blind in my bed, with my dear blind sweet one,
Not looking, through the thick dark, for the face of another.

I did not look.  But still the face was there,
The face of the unborn one that loved its perfections,
The face of the dead one that could only be perfect
In its easy peace, could only keep holy so.
And then there were other faces.  The faces of nations,
Governments, parliaments, societies,
The faceless faces of important men.

It is these men I mind:
They are so jealous of anything that is not flat!  They are jealous gods
That would have the whole world flat because they are.
I see the Father conversing with the Son.
Such flatness cannot but be holy.
'Let us make a heaven,' they say.
'Let us flatten and launder the grossness from these souls.'

FIRST VOICE:
I am calm.  I am calm.  It is the calm before something awful:
The yellow minute before the wind walks, when the leaves
Turn up their hands, their pallors.  It is so quiet here.
The sheets, the faces, are white and stopped, like clocks.
Voices stand back and flatten.  Their visible hieroglyphs
Flatten to parchment screens to keep the wind off.
They paint such secrets in Arabic, Chinese!

I am dumb and brown.  I am a seed about to break.
The brownness is my dead self, and it is sullen:
It does not wish to be more, or different.
Dusk hoods me in blue now, like a Mary.
O color of distance and forgetfulness!--
When will it be, the second when Time breaks
And eternity engulfs it, and I drown utterly?

I talk to myself, myself only, set apart--
Swabbed and lurid with disinfectants, sacrificial.
Waiting lies heavy on my lids.  It lies like sleep,
Like a big sea.  Far off, far off, I feel the first wave tug
Its cargo of agony toward me, inescapable, tidal.
And I, a shell, echoing on this white beach
Face the voices that overwhelm, the terrible element.

THIRD VOICE:
I am a mountain now, among mountainy women.
The doctors move among us as if our bigness
Frightened the mind.  They smile like fools.
They are to blame for what I am, and they know it.
They hug their flatness like a kind of health.
And what if they found themselves surprised, as I did?
They would go mad with it.

And what if two lives leaked between my thighs?
I have seen the white clean chamber with its instruments.
It is a place of shrieks.  It is not happy.
'This is where you will come when you are ready.'
The night lights are flat red moons.  They are dull with blood.
I am not ready for anything to happen.
I should have murdered this, that murders me.

FIRST VOICE:
There is no miracle more cruel than this.
I am dragged by the horses, the iron hooves.
I last.  I last it out.  I accomplish a work.
Dark tunnel, through which hurtle the visitations,
The visitations, the manifestations, the startled faces.
I am the center of an atrocity.
What pains, what sorrows must I be mothering?

Can such innocence **** and ****?  It milks my life.
The trees wither in the street.  The rain is corrosive.
I taste it on my tongue, and the workable horrors,
The horrors that stand and idle, the slighted godmothers
With their hearts that tick and tick, with their satchels of instruments.
I shall be a wall and a roof, protecting.
I shall be a sky and a hill of good:  O let me be!

A power is growing on me, an old tenacity.
I am breaking apart like the world.  There is this blackness,
This ram of blackness.  I fold my hands on a mountain.
The air is thick.  It is thick with this working.
I am used.  I am drummed into use.
My eyes are squeezed by this blackness.
I see nothing.

SECOND VOICE:
I am accused.  I dream of massacres.
I am a garden of black and red agonies.  I drink them,
Hating myself, hating and fearing.  And now the world conceives
Its end and runs toward it, arms held out in love.
It is a love of death that sickens everything.
A dead sun stains the newsprint.  It is red.
I lose life after life.  The dark earth drinks them.

She is the vampire of us all.  So she supports us,
Fattens us, is kind.  Her mouth is red.
I know her.  I know her intimately--
Old winter-face, old barren one, old time bomb.
Men have used her meanly.  She will eat them.
Eat them, eat them, eat them in the end.
The sun is down.  I die.  I make a death.

FIRST VOICE:
Who is he, this blue, furious boy,
Shiny and strange, as if he had hurtled from a star?
He is looking so angrily!
He flew into the room, a shriek at his heel.
The blue color pales.  He is human after all.
A red lotus opens in its bowl of blood;
They are stitching me up with silk, as if I were a material.

What did my fingers do before they held him?
What did my heart do, with its love?
I have never seen a thing so clear.
His lids are like the lilac-flower
And soft as a moth, his breath.
I shall not let go.
There is no guile or warp in him.  May he keep so.

SECOND VOICE:
There is the moon in the high window.  It is over.
How winter fills my soul!  And that chalk light
Laying its scales on the windows, the windows of empty offices,
Empty schoolrooms, empty churches.  O so much emptiness!
There is this cessation.  This terrible cessation of everything.
These bodies mounded around me now, these polar sleepers--
What blue, moony ray ices their dreams?

I feel it enter me, cold, alien, like an instrument.
And that mad, hard face at the end of it, that O-mouth
Open in its gape of perpetual grieving.
It is she that drags the blood-black sea around
Month after month, with its voices of failure.
I am helpless as the sea at the end of her string.
I am restless.  Restless and useless.  I, too, create corpses.

I shall move north.  I shall move into a long blackness.
I see myself as a shadow, neither man nor woman,
Neither a woman, happy to be like a man, nor a man
Blunt and flat enough to feel no lack.  I feel a lack.
I hold my fingers up, ten white pickets.
See, the darkness is leaking from the cracks.
I cannot contain it.  I cannot contain my life.

I shall be a heroine of the peripheral.
I shall not be accused by isolate buttons,
Holes in the heels of socks, the white mute faces
Of unanswered letters, coffined in a letter case.
I shall not be accused, I shall not be accused.
The clock shall not find me wanting, nor these stars
That rivet in place abyss after abyss.

THIRD VOICE:
I see her in my sleep, my red, terrible girl.
She is crying through the glass that separates us.
She is crying, and she is furious.
Her cries are hooks that catch and grate like cats.
It is by these hooks she climbs to my notice.
She is crying at the dark, or at the stars
That at such a distance from us shine and whirl.

I think her little head is carved in wood,
A red, hard wood, eyes shut and mouth wide open.
And from the open mouth issue sharp cries
Scratching at my sleep like arrows,
Scratching at my sleep, and entering my side.
My daughter has no teeth.  Her mouth is wide.
It utters such dark sounds it cannot be good.

FIRST VOICE:
What is it that flings these innocent souls at us?
Look, they are so exhausted, they are all flat out
In their canvas-sided cots, names tied to their wrists,
The little silver trophies they've come so far for.
There are some with thick black hair, there are some bald.
Their skin tints are pink or sallow, brown or red;
They are beginning to remember their differences.

I think they are made of water; they have no expression.
Their features are sleeping, like light on quiet water.
They are the real monks and nuns in their identical garments.
I see them showering like stars on to the world--
On India, Africa, America, these miraculous ones,
These pure, small images.  They smell of milk.
Their footsoles are untouched.  They are walkers of air.

Can nothingness be so prodigal?
Here is my son.
His wide eye is that general, flat blue.
He is turning to me like a little, blind, bright plant.
One cry.  It is the hook I hang on.
And I am a river of milk.
I am a warm hill.

SECOND VOICE:
I am not ugly.  I am even beautiful.
The mirror gives back a woman without deformity.
The nurses give back my clothes, and an identity.
It is usual, they say, for such a thing to happen.
It is usual in my life, and the lives of others.
I am one in five, something like that.  I am not hopeless.
I am beautiful as a statistic.  Here is my lipstick.

I draw on the old mouth.
The red mouth I put by with my identity
A day ago, two days, three days ago.  It was a Friday.
I do not even need a holiday; I can go to work today.
I can love my husband, who will understand.
Who will love me through the blur of my deformity
As if I had lost an eye, a leg, a tongue.

And so I stand, a little sightless.  So I walk
Away on wheels, instead of legs, they serve as well.
And learn to speak with fingers, not a tongue.
The body is resourceful.
The body of a starfish can grow back its arms
And newts are prodigal in legs.  And may I be
As prodigal in what lacks me.

THIRD VOICE:
She is a small island, asleep and peaceful,
And I am a white ship hooting:  Goodbye, goodbye.
The day is blazing.  It is very mournful.
The flowers in this room are red and tropical.
They have lived behind glass all their lives, they have been cared for
        tenderly.
Now they face a winter of white sheets, white faces.
There is very little to go into my suitcase.

There are the clothes of a fat woman I do not know.
There is my comb and brush.  There is an emptiness.
I am so vulnerable suddenly.
I am a wound walking out of hospital.
I am a wound that they are letting go.
I leave my health behind.  I leave someone
Who would adhere to me:  I undo her fingers like bandages:  I go.

SECOND VOICE:
I am myself again.  There are no loose ends.
I am bled white as wax, I have no attachments.
I am flat and virginal, which means nothing has happened,
Nothing that cannot be erased, ripped up and scrapped, begun again.
There little black twigs do not think to bud,
Nor do these dry, dry gutters dream of rain.
This woman who meets me in windows--she is neat.

So neat she is transparent, like a spirit.
how shyly she superimposes her neat self
On the inferno of African oranges, the heel-hung pigs.
She is deferring to reality.
It is I.  It is I--
Tasting the bitterness between my teeth.
The incalculable malice of the everyday.

FIRST VOICE:
How long can I be a wall, keeping the wind off?
How long can I be
Gentling the sun with the shade of my hand,
Intercepting the blue bolts of a cold moon?
The voices of loneliness, the voices of sorrow
Lap at my back ineluctably.
How shall it soften them, this little lullaby?

How long can I be a wall around my green property?
How long can my hands
Be a bandage to his hurt, and my words
Bright birds in the sky, consoling, consoling?
It is a terrible thing
To be so open:  it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.

THIRD VOICE:
Today the colleges are drunk with spring.
My black gown is a little funeral:
It shows I am serious.
The books I carry wedge into my side.
I had an old wound once, but it is healing.
I had a dream of an island, red with cries.
It was a dream, and did not mean a thing.

FIRST VOICE:
Dawn flowers in the great elm outside the house.
The swifts are back.  They are shrieking like paper rockets.
I hear the sound of the hours
Widen and die in the hedgerows.  I hear the moo of cows.
The colors replenish themselves, and the wet
Thatch smokes in the sun.
The narcissi open white faces in the orchard.

I am reassured.  I am reassured.
These are the clear bright colors of the nursery,
The talking ducks, the happy lambs.
I am simple again.  I believe in miracles.
I do not believe in those terrible children
Who injure my sleep with their white eyes, their fingerless hands.
They are not mine.  They do not belong to me.

I shall meditate upon normality.
I shall meditate upon my little son.
He does not walk. &n

I love the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens,
Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens,
In numerous leafage bosomed close;
Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer,
Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere
On cloudy archipelagos.

Oh, gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds in motion,
Up-piled in the immense sublime beneath the winds' commotion,
Their unimagined shapes accord:
Under their waves at intervals flame a pale levin through,
As if some giant of the air amid the vapors drew
A sudden elemental sword.

The sun at bay with splendid thrusts still keeps the sullen fold;
And momently at distance sets, as a cupola of gold,
The thatched roof of a cot a-glance;
Or on the blurred horizon joins his battle with the haze;
Or pools the blooming fields about with inter-isolate blaze,
Great moveless meres of radiance.

Then mark you how there hangs athwart the firmament's swept track,
Yonder a mighty crocodile with vast irradiant back,
A triple row of pointed teeth?
Under its burnished belly slips a ray of eventide,
The flickerings of a hundred glowing clouds in tenebrous side
With scales of golden mail ensheathe.

Then mounts a palace, then the air vibrates--the vision flees.
Confounded to its base, the fearful cloudy edifice
Ruins immense in mounded wrack;
Afar the fragments strew the sky, and each envermeiled cone
Hangeth, peak downward, overhead, like mountains overthrown
When the earthquake heaves its hugy back.

These vapors, with their leaden, golden, iron, bronzèd glows,
Where the hurricane, the waterspout, thunder, and hell repose,
Muttering hoarse dreams of destined harms,--
'Tis God who hangs their multitude amid the skiey deep,
As a warrior that suspendeth from the roof-tree of his keep
His dreadful and resounding arms!

All vanishes! The Sun, from topmost heaven precipitated,
Like a globe of iron which is tossed back fiery red
Into the furnace stirred to fume,
Shocking the cloudy surges, plashed from its impetuous ire,
Even to the zenith spattereth in a flecking scud of fire
The vaporous and inflamèd spaume.

O contemplate the heavens! Whenas the vein-drawn day dies pale,
In every season, every place, gaze through their every veil?
With love that has not speech for need!
Beneath their solemn beauty is a mystery infinite:
If winter hue them like a pall, or if the summer night
Fantasy them starre brede.

Too long this rot has run its course, too much the damage done
When men deflect acknowledged glance, they know that wrong has won.
Across this land and far afield the wrongness seeps within
And pride becomes a memory through distant halls of spin.
How can we bow to tyranny, how can we shy away
From that which causes  eyes to slide.... and coaxes will to sway?
To tolerate the bombast, the bullying, the lies
Succumbing to a hopelessness, which, both we despise.
Division in the nation, uproar in between
A man and wife’s contention-ness beyond what should be seen
Brothers loathing brothers, silence in the room
Where a word  uttered wrongly can erupt to screaming soon.
Allies left in tatters, trust is cut to shards
Tariffs injudiciously, imposed to **** the cards.
International uproar, industry in strife
Teetering disastrously when NATO flees the knife.

Putin sits and rubs his hands, hilarious the show
Disorder and disharmony to lubricate his glow.
Beijing sits inscrutably, always opportune
Manoeuvring judiciously, in place, to call the tune.

America, the isolate, sails away to sea
Blondini, at the helm, wears smirk indulgently.

M.
The White House
HAMILTON NZ
12th July 2018

Ah, Yorkshire, thou art purer than Coventry;
and thy promises whiter; than my fluid poetry.
Thou art braver, prudent, and all the way more intelligent;
thy lands are mightier; and perhaps in every possible way-more imminent.
Thou art sincere-and so more delicate than wine, and thoughtful;
Thou adored my words, and made everything else healing, and more beautiful.

In my heart but there might have been no Yorkshire at all-
had I attended not one Coventry last fall.
I witnessed not-at t'at time, all t'is rude twilight-and toughness and madness;
and every chapped breath it had in its roughness, and hilarious-though indeed fake, felicity.
No soul has even bits of a heart, here, to forgive others' soreness,
No being wants to share; no human lives in joy, nor simplicity.
No delight indeed; as I stream my way through every roads;
Everyone is either busy with their selfishness or their coats.
No living is cared for; for humans are phantoms at night and on morns;
Vulnerability is mocked, and demised and often slyly torn.
Ah! Coventry is but a sphere of hell!
For even hell is still lighter when has it not hellfire;
As well cities are, when there is no scoundrel nor liar;
But Coventry is not at all tender;
Its wicked gasp is alive, and never to heartily surrender.
It falls for glory; it bows to such fears for pleasure;
And wanes by the light of whose death; the end of whose allure.
But thou art true-thou art as shy as every flash of virtue;
Thou art indeed-everything t'at is solemnly agreeable and brand new.
Ah, and just now-I had dreams of a fine image of thee;
Smiling within thy fullest verdure, bushes, and lavish undergrowth.
And thy summer is but vivid and friendlier;
Healing every sore heart, and turning 'em all, merrier.
Thou adored the nouns and verbs I wrote,
and admired such simple notions I quoted;
Thou shine upon me-asthe light that shall makest me grow
and the promising dim, faraway region, that lets me glow.
O, Yorkshire, this is still but too early in the transparent evening;
But I am deeply endorsed yet, by t'is poetry writing-
And with thy soul that remains but too witty,
Tearing me away, but with loveliness-
from my cautious present engagement,
Thy charms might be just too hard to bear,
for thy tongue is too sweet;
and thy veracity too chaotic, ye' imminent.
In thee shall I find peace-of that I am convinced,
Peace whose soul is calm, neat and on all occasions, careful-
Unlike t'is bustle which is at times perpetual, and sorrowful;
Unlike t'is very city of Coventry,
Which is damp with exultant bareness, and haziness,
In many ways exalted, but indeed too proud;
And its tongue which is blurred with sin and poison-
Its all-too-loud excitement makes everything but faint,
And at times sends my heart to exile, sends my heart to pain,
In every possible way too unlike thee,
With an imagery, and coaxing voices so sweet
Thou shall leave all my poems bright and freshly lit,
Even though I am still here, even though we are still yet-to meet.

Coventry is too proud and vibrant-yes, too vibrant,
Amidst its own foolishness, which sadly made itself formerly too elegant.
Too elegant to me-in various shapes, and keenly cloaked in unseen deceit,
But only by some beings, whom I was to meet, and my breath to greet.
And as I wake up to an early morning hour,
the plain summer strangely makes me thirst for honest water.
And should I love still-one intelligence t'at is so bitterly repugnant?
I shall certainly not; I shall turn to thee, Yorkshire, who is truer ye' far above, tolerant.
Ah, Yorkshire, but honesty is something Coventry promises not;
for its soul has been maliciously beheaded, and twitched,
It has been paled, corrupted, and despaired-
by its own claws, derived from the jaws of those evil souls
Veiled by their even still inhuman, disguises,
And shall still be wicked, otherwise.
In t'is sea of hate, and these waves of despondency,
I shall think of thee with tantalising depth and scrutiny,
Though thou art still imprisoned in my soul,
Thou who hath flattered and accepted me as a whole.
But Coventry is-still, accidental with some of its bindings,
For mortal as thou art, itself, and is unable to escape its fate,
Still I canst think only of the beauty of thy linings,
And upon thy lands shall I venture to fill my plate.
Ah, Yorkshire, remember that virtue is in thy hand,
but neither is vice-thy dormant enemy, is in its therein,
Virtue who is vile to all of t'is world's inconsolable men,
like in Coventry, as deemed it is, unreasonable and ungenerous, within.
Virtue which is tragically abandoned, in its pursuit of honour;
virtue which was rich, but flattened, and dismayed and disfigured
within the course of one unsupervised hour.
Ah, York, Yorkshire, when shall I ever taste the grandeur
And the very superiority of thy dignity?
For in yon picture, thou art still but a comely neighbour,
Which endorses and attests to my mute, yet unaffected-virginity.

Ah, but Coventry shall despise thee, and with its stubbornness
and overwhelming pride, shall jostle and taunt thee;
Shall defect and isolate thee-when I am but by thy side,
But God be with me still, and blind shall not, my virtuous sight.
Detesting and confronting thee for the remainders of years-as 'tis to be,
Which for thee lie ahead; as how hath it deluded me-just now!
I, who, disconcertingly, placed my heart within its sacred vow,
hath been robbed of my satisfactions, and utmost fortune,
All were perused in centuries and gone in one moon.
Ah, Yorkshire, shall I continue my poetry here-but call out endlessly to thee?
And shall I abandon this tiny caprice of mine-which is a fine, tiny desire of glory
And let myself on the loose, and for evermore be in search
of thee, whom I shall've lost-under the very indulgence of their mirth?
O, I think not!
For I shall mount my poetry-and achieve my silent dreams,
I shall take him with me, if allowed am I-to conquer him,
And make him and thee mine, just like I hath made my poetry,
And be thy light; and thy spiritual and endless reciprocal adoration
All day and night, at the end of our quest for destiny
Wherein I shall dwell, and thrive as my intellect be granted-its long-lost coronation.
O, Yorkshire, for within thy hands now I shall lie my faith-
and trudge along thy forking paths, unto the light of my fate.

Ah, Yorkshire, I am infatuated with these paintings-
these very paintings of thy lush green lands,
And of myself wandering and skulking idly about thy moors;
With my best frock, and his fingers, the one I love, entwined in my hand
As lights procured and on our storming out of yonder wooden doors.
I am shining like a bee is-upon the sweet finding of its honey;
but in whose tale 'tis like thee-to sweet and unpardonable to me.
Be with me, Yorkshire, and be with me forever, only,
As I leave behind this faint malice and commence my journey;
I shall be with thee, and my poems shall be free,
And t'is bitterness of winds shall be no more tormenting me,
Furthermore-be them what they desire to be;
But let me write; and play my song as beautifully as yon naive bee.

Ah, Yorkshire, and wait, wait again for me;
But before let me sink again into a deep sleep,
and tease thee again in my dreams;
Read me once more-the very passages of thy indolent poetry,
Take me out of my stiffness; swing me out of abhorrent Coventry.
Coventry shall be envious, and waiting forever for thy demise;
but honesty is honesty-and one that has no lies,
for thy virtue is clear as thy Western gem,
which is to God, shall always be virtue, all the same.

My anxiety is not me.

My anxiety is shaking hands.
My anxiety is imaginative.
My anxiety is sleepless nights.
My anxiety is never satisfied.

My anxiety sits on my shoulder.

My anxiety keeps me from making important phone calls.
My anxiety forces me to want to isolate myself.
My anxiety makes me cry over nothing.
My anxiety makes me cry over everything.
My anxiety tells me a C may as well be an F.
But my anxiety forces me to avoid important tasks I have to deal with. Everything scares me.

What am I so scared of?

My anxiety wakes me up vomiting.
My anxiety forces me to pull away from the people I so badly want to fall into.
My anxiety keeps me from living.

My anxiety makes me at least two to twenty minutes late everywhere because I don’t believe I am ever prepared,
so I have to retrace my every other step,
constantly checking and re checking.
Constantly doubting.

My anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through my mind.
My anxiety is a menace, a monster, a fish with teeth,
black yarn, lawn chairs sinking in the sand.

My anxiety rules me.

It was the summer of 1954. David Ito was from the only Japanese family we had in our town. I was glad he was my best friend. Actually, he was my only friend. His father moved his family to our small town of Prichard, Illinois when David was only eight years old. That was three years ago.

Only two and a half months apart, I was the older one of our daring duo. I even was a couple inches taller than David was, so that settled it. In spite of being an awkward girl, our differences in age and height made me quite superior at times, although David always snickered at that notion. To me, theses differences were huge and monumental, like the distance of the sun from the moon. To David, that was typical girlish nonsense. He thought it was so like a girl, to try to outdo a boy.  And he should have known. He was the only son of five children, and he was the oldest.

At first, David was not interested in being friends with a girl. But I was Josephine Dunn, Josie they called me, and I was not just any girl. Yet, like David, I did not know if I really liked him enough to be his friend. We started off with this one thing in common.

I knew he was smarter than anybody I ever knew, that is except for my father, a self-taught man. The tomboy that I was, I was not so interested in books and maps, and David was almost obsessed with them. Yet, there was a kindred spirit that ignited us to become close, something coming in between two misfits to make a good match. David was obviously so different from the rest. He came from an entirely different culture, looking so out-of-the-ordinary than the typical face of our Anglo-Saxon, Protestant community, and me, never really fitting in with any group of peers in school, I liked him.

David knew he did not fully fit in. I surely did not fit, either. My brother, Carl, made sure very early on in my life that I was to be aware of one thing. And that one thing was that I did not belong in my family, or really anywhere in life. Mostly, this was because I was not of my father’s first family, but I came after my father’s other children and was the baby, the apple of my father’s eye. But that wasn’t the real reason why Carl hated me.

During World War Two, my father enlisted in the army. He already had two small sons and a daughter to look after, and they already had suffered one major blow in their young lives. They had lost their mother to cancer. Louise Dunn was an important figure in their lives. She was well liked in town and very much missed by her family and friends.
  
Why their father wanted to leave his children behind, possibly fatherless, made no sense to other people. But Jim Dunn came from a proud military family and would not listen to anyone telling him not to fight but rather to stay home with his children. His father fought in the First World War, and three of his great grandfathers fought for the Union Army in the Civil War. It was not like my father to back out of a fight, not one with great principles.  My father was no coward.

Not only did my father leave three small children back home, but a new, young wife. Two years before World War Two ended, he made it back home to his lovely, young wife and family. Back in France, my father was wounded in his right leg. The result of the wound caused my father to forever walk with a limp and the assistance of a cane. It was actually a blessing in disguise what would transpire. He could have easily came home in a pine box. He was thankful, though, that he came away with his life. After recovering for a few months in a French hospital, my father was eager to go home to his family. At least he was able to walk, and to walk away alive.

This lovely, young woman who was waiting for him at home was twenty-year-old Flora Laurent, now Flora Dunn, my mother, and she was eleven years younger than my father. All soldiers were certainly eager to get home to their loved ones. My father was one of thousands who was thrilled to be back on American soil, but his thrill was about to dampen. Once my father laid eyes on his wife again, there was no hiding her highly expanding belly and the overall weight gain showed in her lovely, plump face. She had no excuses for her husband, or any made-up stories to tell him, and there really nothing for her to say to explain why she was in this condition. Simply put, she was lonely.

Most men would have left such a situation, would have gone as far away from it as they possibly could have. Being too ashamed and resentful to stay, they would have washed their hands of her in a heartbeat. Having a cheating wife and an unwanted child on their hands to raise would be too much to bear. Any man, in his right mind, would say that was asking for way too much trouble.  Most men would have divorced someone like my mother, kicked her out, and especially they would hate the child she would be soon be giving birth to, but not my father. He always stood against the grain.

Not only did Jim Dunn forgive his young wife, he took me under his wing like I was his very own. Once I knew he was not my true father, I could never fully fathom why he was not ready to pack me off to an orphanage or dump me off somewhere far away. Why he was so forgiving and accepting made him more than a war hero. It made him my hero. That was why I loved him so much, especially because, soon after I was born, my mother was out of our lives. Perhaps, such a young woman should not be raising three step children and a newborn baby.

My father never mentioned any of the details of my conception, but he simply did his best to love me. He was a tall, very slim and a quiet man by nature. With light brown hair, grey eyes, and a kind face, he looked every bit of the hero I saw him as. He was willing to help anyone in a pinch, and most people who knew him respected him. Nobody in town ever talked about this situation to my father. To begin with, my father was not a talker, and he probably thought if he did talk about it, the pain and shame of it would not go away.

One of my brothers, Nathan, and my sister, Ann, seemed to treat me like a regular sister. Yet, Carl, the oldest child, hated me from the start. As a girl who was six years younger, I never understood why. He was the golden boy, with keen blue eyes and golden, wavy hair, as were Nathan and Ann.  I had long, dark brown hair, which I kept in two braids, with plenty of unsightly brown freckles, and very dark, brown eyes.  Compared to my sister, who was five years older, I never felt like I was a great beauty.

I was pretty young when Carl blurted out to me in anger, “Your mother is a *****!”  I cried a bit, wiped away the tears with my small hands and yelled back, “No, she isn’t!” Of course, I was too young to know what that word meant. When my brother followed that statement up with, “and you are a *******”, I ran straight to my father. I was almost seven years old.

My father scolded Carl pretty badly that day. Carl would not speak to me for months, and that was fine with me. That evening my father sat me upon my knee. “Daddy, what is a *****?” I asked him.

My father gently put his fingers up to my lips to shush me up. He then went into his wallet and showed me a weathered black-and-white photo he had of himself with his arms around my mother. It was in that wallet for some time, and he pulled out the wrinkled thing and placed it in front of me.

My father must have handled that picture a thousand times. Even with all the bad quality, with the wrinkles, I could see a lovely, young lady, with light eyes and dark hair, smiling as she was in the arms of her protector. My father looked proud in the photograph.

He said to me, his expression serious, “whatever Carl or anybody says about your mother, she will always be your mother and I love her for that”. I looked earnestly in his somber, grey eyes. “Why did she go away?” I asked him.

My father thought long and hard about how to answer me. He replied, “I don’t know. She was young and had more dreams in her than this town could hold for her”. He smiled awkwardly and added, “But at least she left me the best gift I could have—you.”  

I would never forget the warmth I felt with my father during that conversation. Certainly, I would never forget Carl’s cruel words, or sometimes the odd glances on the faces of townswomen, like they were studying me, comparing me to how I looked next to my father, or their whispers as the whole family would be out in town for an occasion. It did not happen every day, but this would happen whenever and wherever, when a couple of busybodies would pass me and my father walking down Main Street, or when we went into the ice cream parlor, or when I went with my father to the dime store, and it always made me feel very strange and vaguely sad, like I had no real reason to be sad but was anyway.


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That summer of 1954, I was a bit older, maybe a bit wiser than when Carl first insulted my estranged mother. I was eleven years old, and David was my equal, my sidekick. Feeling less like a kid, I tried not to boss him too much, and he tried not to be too smart in front of me. I held my own, though, had my own intelligence, but my smarts were more like street smarts. After all, I had Carl to deal with.

David seemed destined for something better in life. My life seemed like it would always be the same, like my feet were planted in heavy mud. David and I would talk about the places we would loved go to, but David would mark them on a map and track them out like his plans would really come to fruition. I never liked to dream that big. Sure, I would love to go somewhere exciting, somewhere where I’d never have to see Carl again, or some of the kids at school, but I knew why I had a reason to stay. I respected my father. That is why I did not wish to leave. And David respected his father. That is why he knew he had to leave.

David Ito’s father was a tailor. David’s parents came from Japan, and they hoped for a good life in their new country. Little did they know what would be in store for them. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, their lives, with many other Japanese Americans, were soon turned upside down. David was born in an internment camp designed to isolate Japanese people from the nation once Americans declared war on Germany and their allies. David and I were both born in 1943, and since the war ended two years later, David had no memories of the internment camp experience. Even so, David was impacted by it, because the memories haunted his parents.

There was no getting around it. David and I, as different as we were, liked each other. Still, neither he nor I felt any silly kind of puppy love attraction. David had still thought of girls as mushy and silly, and that is why he liked me. I was not mushy or silly, and I could shoot a sling shot better than he did. David loved the sling shot his parents bought him for his last birthday. They allowed him to have it just as long as he never shot it at anyone.

David Ito, being the oldest child in his family, and the only son, allowed him to feel quite special, a very prized boy for just that reason. Mr. Ito worked two jobs to support his family, and Mrs. Ito took in laundry and cooked for the locals who could not cook their own meals. Mrs. Ito was an excellent cook. Whatever they had to give their children, David was first in line to receive it.

The majority of those in my town of Prichard respected Mr. Ito, at least those who did business with him. He was not only able to get good tailoring business in town, but some of the neighboring towns gave him a bit of work, too. When he was not working in the textile factory, Mr. Ito was busy with his measuring tape and sewing machine.  

Even though Mr. Ito gained the respect of the townspeople, he still was not one of us. I am sure he knew it, too. Yet Mr. Ito lived in America most of his life. He was only nine-years-old when his parents came here with their children. Like David, Mr. Ito certainly knew he was Japanese. The mirror told him that every day. But he also knew felt an internal tug-of war that America was his country more than Japan was, even when he was proud of his roots, even though he was once locked up in that camp, and even when some people felt that he did not belong here.

If David was called an unkind name, I felt it insulted, too, for our friendship meant that much to me. How many times I got in trouble for fighting at school! My father would be called into the principal’s office, and I was asked by Mr. Murray to explain why I would act in such an undignified way. “They called David a ***** ***”, I exclaimed. “David is my friend!”

Because David and I were best buddies, we heard lots of jeering remarks. “Josie loves a ***! Josie loves a ***!” some of the children taunted. And Carl, with his meanness, loved to be head of the line to pick on us. He once said to me, “It figures that the only friend you can get is a scrawny ***!”

In spite of my troubles at school, Father greatly admired David and his father, and he thought that David and I were good for each other’s company. Mr. Ito greatly respected my father, in return, not only for his business but because my dad could fix any car with just about any problem. Jim Dunn was not only a brilliant man, in my eyes, but the best mechanic in town. When Mr. Ito needed work done on his car, my father was right there for him. It was an even exchange of paid work and admiration.

Both my father and David’s father felt our relationship was harmless. After all, everyone in David’s family knew and expected that he would marry a nice Japanese girl. There was no question about it. Where he would find one was not too important for a boy of his age. Neither of us experienced puberty yet and, under the watchful eye of my father, we would just be the best of buddies.

David pretended like the remarks said about him never bothered him, but I knew differently. I knew he hated Carl, and we avoided him as much as possible. David was nothing like me in this respect—he was not a fighter. Truly, he did not have a fighting bone in his body, not one that picked up a sword to stab it in the heart of someone else. It was not that David was not brave, for he was, but he knew the ugliness of war without ever even having to go to battle. Nevertheless, he used his intellect to fight off any of the racist remarks made about him or his family. He had to face it—the war had only ended nine years prior and a few of the war veterans in town fought in the Pacific.      

Because of the taunts David had experienced in school, I was not surprised what David’s father had in store for his beloved son.  Mr. Ito could barely afford to send one child to private school, but he was about to send one. David was about to be that child. When David told me that when school resumed he would be going to a boy’s school in Chicago, my heart sank. Why? Why did he have to go? I would never see him again!

“You will see me in the summer”, he reassured me. He looked at me as I tried to appear brave. I sat cross-legged on the grass and stared straight ahead like I never even heard him. I had a lump in my throat the size of a grapefruit, and my lips felt like they were quivering.

We were both using old pop bottles for target practice. They sat in a row on an old tree stump shining in the evening sun. David was shooting at them with his prized slingshot. I had a makeshift one that I created out of a tree branch and a rubber band.

“You won’t even remember me”, I complained.

“I will to”, he insisted. “I remember everything.”

“Oh, sure you will”, I said sarcastically. “You’ll be super duper smart and I will just be a dummy”. In anger, I rose up my slingshot, and I hit all three bottles, one by one, then I threw the slingshot to the ground. David missed all the shots he took earlier.

David threw his slingshot down, too. “For being a girl, you are pretty smart!” he shouted. “You are too smart for your own good! The reason I like you is because you are better than anyone I ever met in my entire life. Well…not better than my parents, but you are the neatest girl I ever knew in my life!”

For a while, we didn’t talk. We just sat there and let the warm, summer breeze do our talking for us. I pulle

isolation
just me in my own world
creating perfectly impossible scenarios
it’s not loneliness
it’s getting lost in my own mind
and getting tangled in the beautiful mess that makes up who i am
my brain transforms into a galaxy of swirling blue and purple with the brightest moments shining like stars
i remove myself from reality and let my spirit drift off into the ideal universe i have created
that wonderful boy stares into my face so intensely i feel like it’s melting
our hands are intertwined
he draws me closer until there is no space between the two of us and we are breathing the same air
our chests rise and fall in unison
it’s as if our bodies are one like a cell and we never want to split
and our love is like the mitochondria because it’s power keeps us living and living on and on and…
isolation
i remove myself from the deepest parts of my mind and become familiar with my normal surroundings
reality doesn’t ****, but this perfect world i have created inside my mind makes me feel free from the polluted minds of people in this society
so i isolate
isolate myself from fake friends who hide behind a mask of smiles and empty conversations and only remove it when my back is turned so they can see where to shove the knife
isolate myself from the boy who i’m madly in love with, but had broken me because “it wasn’t me it was him” and now i’m just another passing face in the hallway
isolate myself from the men who now see me as fresh meat and my personality and interests and who i am are just the appetizer and all they want is to peel off the wrapper and devour the main course just to throw away the leftovers
sometimes i just need to escape
I’m not lonely I’m a dreamer
and to dream you need
isolation