~WARNING~
VERY ADULT CONTENT
(please consider before reading)
_
our house was a one-floor white clapboard two-family
it was originally our town’s first school
rose miller was on our party line
sometimes I would listen
and rose would scold
and I would laugh
I loved to laugh
our white-washed picket fence
had a swinging gate
I would swing and swing
and laugh
it was my favorite thing
also the elms and oaks of Perry Street
where we lived
rolling in the gold, orange and red
of their piled autumn leaves
losing my Hop-a-long Cassidy hat
I would laugh until I’d cry
until I’d fly
laughing sent my heart in flight
but the tears were not all tears of joy
the nights of the rains frightened me
I did not laugh
a monster under my bed
does not scare me
because it is not there
it is in my bed
the rain brings it
from the room just down the hall
so I hide inside my fantasies
where it can’t find me
I do not like the rain and wind
or the footsteps
those long-night storms
blew my youth away
for forty years
I searched to find it
I looked for it
in the laughter of my schoolmates
as I acted the fool
disrupting the class
angering my teachers
I looked for it in my teachers’ smile
I was a very bright child
so I found hope and validation
in their recognition and praise
which I so desperately needed
craved
I fought to try to find it
black and blue
and bloody battles
I liked the pain
felt I deserved it
I searched in the sweaty back seats
of flesh-stenched cars
rolling in blue-suede passion
with smooth-ass’d
soft-tit’d
teenaged girls
I searched the ivy’d climbs of academia
looking in the pretty panties
of the trust-fund debs
that roamed those halls
I called out to it
in amplified voice
from strobe-lit stages
strutting and screaming
over the roar of stacked marshalls
and the tie-dyed din
of Aquarius’s chosen children
I probed for it
down the throats
of clutching groupies
gluttonously gaping to gratify
engaged in their own desperate quest
I looked for it in bottles
in the smoke clouds of hash pipes
through the rolled bills
in the pure white snow
of Peruvian flake
I tore life apart
trying to find it
bad marriage by bad marriage
children who too often missed daddy
soured friendship by soured friendship
failed career by failed career
still I rocked
and screamed harder
strutted stronger
and pranced bolder
chasing a higher high
perhaps to spot my lost youth
from such a lofty vantage
when finally I fell
it was a long way down
brutally I careened and crashed
through the barbs of my cruel words
damaging lies
through the carnage
of those who loved
and trusted me
through the charred year’s
of burned bridges
through the shards
of my fractured self respect
to the bitter bottom
the ruin that was me
as I wallowed in my self-pity
my anger
and lost hope
you were there
newly on your path of life
you had reached out to me
in your bright un-jaded eyes
I finally saw a different possibility
I found love and reconciliation
I learned how to forgive
most especially – myself
I found humility
I found honesty
I found a friend
all monsters long subdued
I’ve found my way back
and a reason to come back
back to the sunny side
of the Perry Street of my youth
and swingin'
on that white-washed picket gate
_
rob kistner © 2009
Recommended for ADULT READERS ONLY!
This is a true and unfortunate story of physical abuse being visited upon a child by the live-in, mentally disturbed elder matriach of the family. This was the darker side of 1950's American suburbia, the "don't talk about it" era, when the mental problems of a surviving grandpa or grandma were too embarrassing to acknowledge openly and dealt with effectively. Instead, the troubled elder was frequently shuttered away in an upstairs room or down the hall, and essentially ignored - while their eccentric, often disruptive behavior, was stoically tolerated.
It offers a view of the struggles that a victimized child endured to ultimately get to a balanced, meaningful adult life. This story thankfully ends upbeat.