Tom Atkins

Tom Atkins Dec 2019

There are flowers on the window sill.
Wildflowers in a blue vase.
A small oasis
in a life that is anything but.

You release a sigh,
and with it, tension.
You focus, completely on the still life

and feel your own heart still,
your breath slow.
You fall into yourself,

You sip your coffee,
your morning slowed to the point
you control it. Not the other way around.

There is a small smile on your face.
Today will be a day of victories.
You know it, not even knowing the battles that await you.

Still. Slow. Aware,
you are invincible.

How we start our day can color the entire day. The days I manage to keep to my routine of prayer, meditation, and writing, I can handle anything.

I have a lot of little places of peace around my house. Still life vignettes. They do my soul good. Not quite temples, but soul stilling none the less.

Today is a good day.

From those things, this poem.

Tom

#routine #depression #joy #small #victories

Tom Atkins Dec 2019

One Mess at a Time

Yours is the art of the broken.
Always patching. Always aware
that nothing and no one is perfect,
least of all you, that all things
are in a state of constant repair
and readjustment, never quite
and likely to never be quite, and so
you paint, you write, you stumble
in public, one of the broken masses
only louder than most,
less willing to hide the cracks,
or perhaps only, less able.

You have no plan.
An age of plans have blown up in your face
time and time again, mocking
your presumption, finally able
to simply be, simply do,
less a creature of inspiration
than a plugger, stuck with
your inability to surrender,
a construction worker building happiness
one mess at a time.

I have been in my art studio for just at a year now. The picture shows what I started with. It’s actually my favorite picture of the studio, mess and all, complete with the presumption, in the form of the sign on the table, that it would become more.

Now it is a working place, with tables and easels and a whole slew of half-finished work and paintings on the wall, always in a state of flux as my thoughts and work changes and grows, as I get things right and get things wrong.

It’s not a perfect studio. Not particularly photogenic. You’ll probably never see it in an issue of better homes and studios. But it’s mine. It’s me. Gloriously, loudly, imperfect.

This morning, I read an article about how the search for perfection kills the good. I’ve lived that one. Never again. Now, it’s just about progress. Growth. One step at a time. One day at a time. How did I grow today? What did I try? What did I risk? What can I learn from it all?

It’s a different life. At times harder and at times easier. But I am so much happier with it. At 64, I cannot recall being this close to happiness. And for a depressed guy, that’s a big statement.

A lot of that has to do with the woman I love. She is so honest, so real, so loving. Able to let me struggle and she shares her own, leaving me with no doubt, none at all, of the depth of her love.

And if we are mostly adult children (And I believe we are), that kind of total love is life-saving. Stumbling is never fatal. Grace lives.

Be well. Travel wisely,

Tom

#poetry #art #perfectionist

Tom Atkins Dec 2019

Return

The studio has been closed for nearly two months.
It is cold there, and the paints are stiff and thick.
You turn on the heater, but it will take time
before your breath ceases to create clouds with each breath.

There are two half-finished paintings, so old
you have lost the inspiration that started them.
They look flat and lifeless and you cannot choose
between finishing, or whitewashing to start again.

There is a large frame on the floor awaiting new canvas.
but you are feeling small, diminished, not ready for boldness,
growing back into yourself one step at a time.
Forward. Back. Forward again.

You are uncertain. Your feelings have been overwhelmed
by your brush with death and you cannot even name the demons, if demons they are, that haunt you.
They are like ghosts, disappearing each time you draw near.

There is a chair in the middle of the floor. A garish thing,
full of bright magic. Half-finished, the color fighting
the original dark stain, the carvings crying for color.
A color you cannot feel.

But feelings are fleeting. As desirable as they are,
you learned long ago you can function without them,
and that it is the work that brings them back,
that allows you to overcome the things that overcome you.

And so you pick up a brush. With effort, you squeeze
the first bright color onto the palette. Red.
The color of passion reclaimed. The color of blood.
The color you lack.

And you paint.

I have been out of my studio for about six or seven weeks, unable to stand long enough to do any good work. With luck, I go back for a few hours tomorrow.

Recovery is more than physical. There’s a mental/emotional/spiritual element as well, and often that takes longer than mere ****** healing. But there is rehab for that too. I’ve lived in a place of numbness since that first announcement of cancer a few months ago. And even now, after all the tests and surgery and more tests, after beating it back to zero, that invisible part is just now starting to heal.

It’s all work. It’s all worth it.

And tomorrow? I’ll probably start with the chair.

Tom

#recovery #cancer #restoration #art

Tom Atkins Jun 2019

Transparent and Dark

Transparent and Dark

The old venue reaches across the boardwalk,
its magic long evaporated,
a victim of neglect and storms in equal measure.

There are windows. high and void of glass,
the sashes lacking paint.
Rot is plentiful.

There are windows, high and dark,
perfectly clear, with nothing to see
save the perpetual night inside.

You stand below, knowing this is what others see
when they look at you,
transparent and dark,

overwhelmed by neglect and storms,
strangely unwilling
to succumb.

For the last decade, I have posted poems on my blog along with photographs I have taken. This one, for instance, has a photograph of an abandoned hall in Asbury Park, NJ. Posting poems here has made me look at the verse harder to make sure it can be "seen" without the photographs.

#transparent #dark #seeing #shame #life

Tom Atkins Jun 2019

Waiting for a Train

As a boy, you waited by the tracks,
often for hours in a hot summer’s day.
Sweat bees hovered around you,
their tiny stings keeping you awake as you waited.

Hours sometimes. Half a day.
You waited, never knowing the schedule, but sure
the train would come, eventually.

You heard it before you saw it.
A low rumbling in the ground beneath you,
until finally, it came,
the blunt engines, dark and menacing
and then the long chain of cars.

Coal cars, each one piled high with black stone,
shining in the sun, fresh hewn from the West Virginia mines.
Here and there, a few chunks fall,
enough to build a fire in the night.

But not now. For now, you sit,
the earth rumbling beneath you,
the steady click-clack of the wheels,
watching the occasional spark of steel against steel,
waiting, waiting for that last car,

the caboose, red with its windows dark.
No evidence of life, but you knew; you always knew
someone was there,
someone, not you, not yet, but someone,
was traveling around the bend,
far from your little boy’s world,
and part of you traveled with him,

A yearning that has never left you.
Wanderlust, that bit of a boy that still lives
in this gray-haired shell, waiting at the crossing
as the train passes by,
more than patient,
you smile, remembering not who you were,
but who you are.

Tom Atkins May 2019

Living in the Half Light

Another cup of coffee.
Please.
I need to wake up.
The night’s dreaming has left me
disjointed.

surprised

to be alive.

It’s not the first time.
Not at all.
I’ve lived in the nightmarish dark
far too long,
far too often.
I am experienced in blindness,
swinging my sword at ghosts,
shieldless save for God.
Each day new wounds bleed.
Each day new wounds heal.

And so here I am.
A decade and more later,
a collector of scars,
a strange sort of warrior,
living in the half light.

I am in a good place in my life. That amazes me more than you can know.

Tom

#joy #surprise #depression

Tom Atkins May 2019

Life In the Grotto

Dark, dank, it holds history.
It has risen, fallen, fallen into disrepair.
Stones have been carted off to build their frankenhouses.
Bandits have hovered in the night
waiting to separate their Victorian adventurers from their purses.
The homeless have huddled here,
tiny fires smudging the walls in the Roman night.
Today tourists come
to gape at the circus home of the famous and fallen.

You come too
and the grotto feels all too familiar.
The dampness seeps into your bones.
The broken statue feels eerily familiar,
eerily like yourself, not quite whole.

You wait for the demons.
They live here. They always have,
even the great Augustus had them,
creatures of the night, gentle and brutal,
capable of murdering marble,
the leavers of wounds.

There is an altar in the grotto.
You are tempted to pray,
to sprinkle the holy water that seeps down the wall
into the air like some pagan baptism.

But you do not.
This is what you have learned.
The demons live within
and that is where the battle is fought,
with or without tourists,
so you can see this grotto for what it is,
a thing of history,
incapable of holding you.

About this poem

On my blog, the poem is posted with a photo (mine) of the Emperor Augustus’ home in Rome on Palatine Hill overlooking the forum. Augustus was the first emperor of Rome.

I began writing the blog eleven or twelve years ago as therapy, literally. My therapist wanted me to begin writing again, believing righty that I needed to write to find my way through my darkest times. She also, again rightly, understood that I would probably not do it if I had to do it for myself. But if I put it “out there”, I would feel responsible to continue, even if I only had a couple of regular readers. In the beginning, that’s all I had.

Those of you who have read me for a while have been my tourists, sharing my staggering journey with me. Thank you for not being scared away. The demons are a smaller lot, knowing you are looking.

I believe that.

Tom

#poetry #depression #survival #gratitude

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