Tom Atkins

Tom Atkins Apr 2020

At some point, you realize
it is more than wanton destruction
or the need for an outlet.

There is art in it, purpose,
and messages as bold and secret
as those of the grandmasters

and you stop shaking your head
and you stop in the open-air museum
and try to understand

what lied beneath the visual rant,
People passing wonder at you standing there,
head cocked in thought,

“Silly man!”, they whisper between themselves,
“May as well understand God as this drivel.”
But they would be wrong.

God is easy. He leaves his messages in the open,
allowing us to complicated them
with prejudice and a need to control.

Art though, is hard. We lack the code
that lives inside the head of the artist
with the spray paint,

but the prejudices are just as strong.
Still, you try and in the trying,
the loud graffiti on the wall becomes yours,

at least a little bit.
And you become just a little more human
in the effort to understand.

Inspired by a wall of graffiti in Asbury Park, NJ. In my old age, I have become a fan of the stuff.

#graffiti #art #seeing

Tom Atkins Apr 2020

You Should Write About The Fear

“You should write about the fear,” she said.
“It’s six months out, and perhaps less raw.
People are fearful now, and it might help.”

My hand drifts absently down to my belly
and the collection of six scars.
I barely remember the fear of the time.
Shock is like that.
It was one day at a time, at times
just one hour at a time
for months before, and even here, now
months after.

Not so much the fear of dying.
I have danced close to that drear druid
before. He is no stranger to me
and I lost my fear of him when I was but eighteen.

It is the manner. The pain, the possibility
of months and years of being so unable,
of the loss I might leave behind, those ripples
of how much less I might become, and have,

and never knowing that in that less,
there might be more, something different emerges.
It was only being able to feel the moment
and the moment being this terrible thing
that could **** me in little descendant notes,

the possibility that I would be robbed of the joy
in a woman newly discovered, children newly launched,
in a lack of possibility stolen by mere survival.

That was the fear. And part of it still lurks.
The recovery so strong, so good, and yet still,
so incomplete and you wonder, despite the progress,
despite the rehab,
despite the still day to day work of it all,
how much of you will return
and how much will not,
and more importantly,
what you will replace the missing parts with,
how you can calm the ripples of loss
and replace them with something more,
waves of power and joy.

This morning early, as we were cuddled up in bed, the cats just beginning to get restless, the woman I love suggested I write of the fear I felt during my battle with cancer this year.

It is a hard thing for me to write about because I have not still processed it. It was not a crippling thing, this fear. Not at all. I got through it all with better than average spirits, and mostly on a positive note. I was fortunate, as cancer goes.

But there was fear, and all these months later, it is due some thought and reflection. It’s no good in stuffing emotion too long. It has a tendency to fester. So here is a start.

#fear #cancer #survivor

Tom Atkins Apr 2020

Love in the Time of Quarantine

There is perhaps,
a little guilt,
that in the midst of the plague year,
my heart still beats fastest
when you are near.

True story.

#love #quarantine #poem

Tom Atkins Mar 2020

False Spring

Early March in Vermont, and for a week now
the snow has slowly melted into the landscape.
The sap runs from the maples to the sugar houses.

It is easy to believe winter is done,
releasing its grip, softening the earth
with its promise of greening.

But I lived long enough to know winter
does not surrender so easily. It will come again
and hold the season hostage with ice and new snow.

And we will complain. We will whine.
Somehow forgetting this happens each year
and that spring comes in fits and starts

and false springs may bring more grey weather
and white, icy landscapes, but they too will pass,
for each false spring is a harbinger of the inevitable.

False Spring actually is an accepted season here in Vermont. A teaser. Sometimes, our progress in life is the same way, healing done in fits and starts. The poem is about both.

Tom Atkins Mar 2020

Four Strings

He sits on the small stage,
Long hair and mustaches,
costumed and dressed in his Renaissance finery.

Three women sit off to one side.
Madrigal singers, waiting
for his perfect rhythm, his perfect low notes
to begin.

Four strings.
Nothing more.
Four strings
and infinite possibilities.

I am sitting at a McDonalds in Rutland, Vermont. Down the street a block my old Isuzu Trooper is getting new tires while I sip bad coffee and eat my breakfast and write.

I have been reviewing my poems and reviewing my journal entries for the last decade and a half, trying to get a realistic sense of my journey during this time. How did I completely change my whole life around in that time? Why? What parts were ****** on me and what parts did I choose? Which of those choices were good ones and which were, shall we say, less than optimal?

It’s been a fascinating read. Fascinating to be reminded of how simple I actually am and how simple my needs are. How so many of my best changes resulted from being true to that simplicity and how those less than great ones were generally caused by drift.

When I began therapy way back when, one of the things that struck me is how, despite the complicated emotional mess I was in, nothing was really new. I was not nearly as unique as I thought I was. People had been going through the same things, in variations, forever.

And so too, the answers were simple. I was the one making it complicated. by not understanding that I and my situations and emotions were not nearly as unique as I believed. Once I grasped that concept, I could trust the therapist to guide me along proven paths. No need to reinvent anything special for me. The paths were already there. That concept has largely guided me ever since. In life, love, family, work, and faith.

Yes, we are complex, but not in the way we think. There are a few things we all need and want. Care for those things and there are infinite possibilities of what we can make of ourselves. Don’t care for those things and there are infinite ways we can muck our lives up.

But always, there are those basics. A feeling of safety and security. (Physical and emotional) Acceptance. Being nourished. Purpose.

Just like the young man playing the bass in the picture I used to illustrate the poem on my blog. Four strings. Infinite possibilities.

A long explanation for a simple poem.

Tom Atkins Feb 2020

Lenten Colors

You have used the same palette for years,
mixing watercolors until they are indistinguishable,
one from the other, then washing it clean to begin again,

The plastic washes white each time, perfect and new,
bright and ready to start again, a new mix
of colors and texture, so easy

to save yourself
from yourself.

I have Lent on the mind this week.

I am also an artist and I really have been using the same plastic palette for watercolors for years. Six of them, I think.

I believe in the power of forgiveness and grace to make us new. I have been blessed to experience them both.

From all that, today’s poem.

#lent #grace #forgiveness

Tom Atkins Feb 2020

Dancing at Lent

Ash Wednesday, and then it is Lent,
a season of sacrifice,
a reminder of Christ's own sacrifice 40 days hence.

The ashes have been wiped away
and the season begun,
barely noticed by some, for others,
it is at the heart of faith itself.

Your forehead is fresh and clean,
and your decisions made.
It is time to release the darkness,
to dance in the night,

and let your demons dance with you
before tossing them to the sky like dark balloons
for someone else to discover
after they are deflated.

Howl with the coyotes. Sing with the just arrived robins.
Wallow in the almost warm sun with the cats.
They know. Lent, for all its dour reputation,
is the almost spring, and worth celebrating.

I've always seen Lent differently. And since Lent is a church-made thing, not a biblical thing, I feel comfortable with my choice.

#lent