#badblood
The peace of the night
Goes without fuzz
Fought with a repellent
Mosquitoes can no longer buzz
Aug 13, 2020
Aug 13, 2020 at 5:39 PM UTC
I sat by his bedside the day my father died.
The cancer that had riddled his body and soul now had complete control.
He fought kicking and screaming
the night the men in white came to take him on his final journey
like a great wildebeest struggling to get up on its front legs after being taken down by young lions. The way so many had said he
probably would since he fought his way tooth & nail throughout his life from the very beginning.
That night I sat on a chair at the foot of his bed staring out the huge ceiling to floor window of the medical centre at the many worlds hidden beneath thousands of rows of stationary lights and fluid winding rows of transient lights in-between and thought how the light of this window is just one of many thousands.
At that moment it seemed more like just one tiny speck in the vast star fields worlds above this city of light.
My father had spent most of his life just a short six-mile drive from here under the scattered lights of his hometown.
He turned to me and asked,
“That’s a big city. Where are we?"
Dementia had claimed his mind ten or more years earlier. It
slowly wound its way around his brain like a cocky snake
handler being choked by a boa constrictor unawares.
It seemed like it all caught up to his body. But it was good to see much of the bitterness and bad blood between us dissipated over the past decade.
On that night compassion ruled the day.
I could not say it then but it has been many years, where it seems compassion has forged with objectivity.
In a lucid moment he looked around the hospital room
bewildered as if he were a little boy who just woke up from a bad dream and asked,
“How did this ever happen?"
If only I could have told him.
Sometimes the truth cannot be spoken or heard. All I could do then was sit by his bed and lean in close to his ear and sing softly his favourite hymns.
By morning his lifeless
dilapidated body laid in the fetal position. His once ravenous mouth now forever frozen looked like a knothole in a twisted cedar tree.
All I can do now is hang my head and think of how weak and frail we humans truly are.
Like compassion forged with objectivity, weakness and frailty forges with fleeting moments of strength. We forge heroes out of these moments to tower above
the pedestals the former is made of to somehow minimize the pain of this often denied truth.
Feb 16, 2017
Feb 16, 2017 at 11:40 AM UTC
I thought I was gone. Thought you took my heart with.
Turns out you weren't even the one who had it. He did. My best friend. The one I'd go to about you. The one that threatened you and never left my side.
I love him. Not you. Never did truly love you as I thought.
I thought i lot of things that turned out to be false but I am sure about him. He is caring, loving, sweet, truthful. All thing you'll never be.
I would say I am over you but honestly one good look of you know and I realized there was nothing TO get over. haha. Now bye. Friends right ******
Nov 7, 2016
Nov 7, 2016 at 9:59 PM UTC
Words, thoughts, like chords;
Sewn, printed, onto paper.
Works, strewn, unwanted;
Taken to ground like ashes.
Owners forgotten, children;
Stained, broken, like old dolls.
Worn, exhausted, crippled;
All to become their elders.
Jan 25, 2015
Jan 25, 2015 at 3:56 AM UTC