(A castaway on Linen Island)

I have concerns
I may be quad-polar,
at least that’s what
it feels like yesterday
while I was thinking
about tomorrow
which turned out
to be today.

I'm just trying to
keep it all together
out here, lost at sea,
a castaway
on Linen Island.

Its strange here with
my head above the clouds.

Piles of books
floating all around me,
stacks upon stacks
as far as the eye can see,
I see a sea of books
that hold a billion
trillion words,
none of which
quench my thirst,
its the irony of the sea,
to be surrounded by
that which cannot
sustain.

I’ve been cast off the grid
in uncharted waters,
lost in Book Sea,
I rest my head on
the clouds in confusion.

This quadrant
is kicking my ***
and all I want to do
is sleep but its difficult
to sleep when there's a
thirst that needs
quenching.

I wonder if reverse osmosis
is something I can create
with the power of my mind
to make this sea less lethal?

Or maybe a little bump
into quadrant 3 or 4
but who am I kidding,
a little bump
is never a little bump,
and the next quadrant
is most likely
unexplored universe
where if I scream
it wont be heard.

I'd settle for
a little sleep right now,
with hopes of gaining
strength to fight
the wars I wanted back.

Bump me just enough
to visit Dreamland,
but not enough
to go to Hell,
let me rest my head upon
these puffy white clouds,
and sleep.

maybe sleep will fix it all

maybe sleep will not

I’m stuck on Linen Island

a castaway off the grid

somewhere in the Book Sea

Mother tried to be a decent mother
in the weeks ahead of Christmas.
she’d fill the month with Advent calendars,
finger countdowns and splotchy
un-successful attempts to create a
joyful face with lipstick.

In hindsight maybe the weight
of her guilt was especially heavy during
the one month of the year that God
could not be ignored.

Its different now.
God is no longer privy to X-mas,
and guilt is not an appropriate emotion
to be taught to children.  

I was more afraid
of mother during Christmas
than at any other time of the year,
all that fake smiling and brittle kindness,
her strings could snap at any moment,
and you knew they would
you just didn’t know when,
or how, or on who.

“It always snows at Christmas!”
mother said as she reached
out my bedroom window to
gather a handful of fresh powder.
She’d bring it in to show me
and I’d wince and cringe because
her movements were  erratic
and unpredictable
like a puppet on strings, her
arms swinging wildly
from side to side,
knees jerking up and down
across the floor
she’d always end up
spilling snow on my bed.

I think the snow helped numb
what it was that she hid,
helped her hide behind
that painted wooden smile,
if only for a little while.

My memories of snow
are quite vivid.
  
I’d shovel snow into
tall piles, taller than I stood
then build tunnels
to the other side.
I jumped off of rooftops
into huge snowdrifts
and come up with
sleeves full of snow.
My friends and I would
latch onto bumpers of
slow moving cars
and “skeech” through
the neighborhood,
or careen down toboggan
runs on our feet,
face planting
at the bottom where
the ice gave way
to fresh snow.

When I turned 16
we’d hide Old Style Beer
in snow drifts,
build ice forts in the forest
and spin donuts in
St. Mary’s parking lot with
open beers in our laps
and never get caught.

As I see it now
all of these things
helped ease the
burden of confusion
with my mother’s
dis- interested
wooden puppet
smiling,

but her guilt ridden
attempts at
Christmas niceties
were never going
to be enough
to keep me from
becoming
dysfunctional.

You see its all about the snow.  
A life embraced by snow.

snow cut into lines,
Encapsulated snow,
spoon melted snow,

any kind of snow
to numb the extremities
and freeze the nerve endings,

a temporary escape from
the Christmas gift
of mother’s guilt.

Like a toothache its always there
that little bit of doubt that ***** with me.
I forget about it once in a while
on busy days, on days I spend fixing things
but on other days I can hardly breathe,
the weight of my existence oppressive,
the fear that letting go might overwhelm me
or you --or us --or create an awkward angle,
a weapon to wield in future wars.

I know you wonder where I go
and if I knew
I would have already shown you
instead I frown
to hide the fact that I am happy.

You are everything I’ve always wanted,
your vulnerability sincere
of course you know I’d never hurt you
but how can you tell
through the fog of my hiding?
You say you know me like no other,
you see behind my eyes,
you see my inner workings,
you hold my heart in your hands
and still I pretend to be in control,
invincible, invulnerable.
 
l rely on music too much to touch my soul
And I sense you sometimes wish you were
the music so you could touch my soul
but you already are and you already do.

I’d give you my soul but honestly
I’d rather you take it by force,
tie me down and **** me, but time
the great teacher tells you that
in that watershed moment
an awful lot could go wrong.
I want to promise you it would be fine
but I can’t. I want to give in and
let you overtake me passionately,
overrun me sexually, I can feel
the blood flow, I imagine your soft lips,
your eagerness, don’t ever let me
discourage that part of you.

But isn't it selfish that I would ask you to carry on at
the peak of the universe with one foot in heaven
and one foot in hell with no guarantees either way?

Like a spark to dynamite my fuse when lit might run
or walk, take its time, fizzle out, rush to finish
no one knows, least of all me.

You only want what is yours by right

I want you to want it as well

I don’t intend to die
before my time
but often
feel the sting
of dead intentions

There once was a man whose last name was the name of an animal
and the animal was a symbol of everything the man believed in
and it just so happened that the animal was also a symbol of
many a man's beliefs

and so it was that the man worked very hard
and became very wealthy so that in his great success
he wanted everyone to know his name
and see it on display

so he commissioned a statue by the finest sculptor in the world
to create a huge sculpture of a particular animal
that had the same name as his last name
a sculpture of crystal with many facets
for which he paid dearly

and when he put it on display in the foyer of his beautiful mansion
where everyone could see it
they loved it
and in so loving the sculpture they were loving the man
and all those that saw the sculpture were bent to covet the sculpture
and wished to be successful like the man who had commissioned it
so they came in droves to see it
and left with fantasies of their own
about creating art resembling their names
but mostly their names were too normal
like Smith or Jones or Sarsaparilla
(and although Sarsaparilla isn't normal
it hardly deserves a sculpture)

then one day an unspeakable horror
put an end to the covetous visitors  
you see it was on that day everything changed
when his children were playing in the foyer
running and laughing like children do
they were happy children
happy because they had it all
and never wanted for anything

when one boy pushed the other and
the sculpture came crashing down upon the smallest boy
sitting on his trike
and crushed the boy to death

and the great man with the name of the important animal
wept        
and cursed the day
that he had wished for more
and had so foolishly believed that more was the answer
because now if he could
he would give it all back

if only he could hold the boy one more time
his tiny son crushed by the commissioned crystal sculpture of the animal
resembling his name that was accidentally knocked over by those who
had everything and wanted for nothing because their father had worked
so hard in order for them to have it all

but worse than all of that
and worse than anything else

was that his great name once a symbol of freedom and strength
would forevermore be a symbol of pain and sorrow

and there's nothing worse than having everything you believe in
thrown upside down in the form of ultimate mockery

the realization that the pain will never go away

or be forgotten

a pain that is forever

a nail driven through his heart every  time  he  signs  his  name


                             ­                                         Signed _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
                                                                ­                                   John R. Eagle

Her heart was beating mightily
he told her that he loved her
he loved her more than all the rest
she loved him just as deeply
she told him now her dreams had come  
he said he understood her
he felt the same, the years he threw    
away were now behind him
they walked along the rain wet street    
he held her hand so sweetly
they didn’t rush, they felt complete      
their love was all that mattered
he said the world could not destroy      
his love for her, his angel
then rain came down like corduroy    
in a straight and soft arrangement

Chronic disinterest
Native contempt
Velvet endeavors
Tempting regret
Instant retelling
Elephant’s hide
Plagiarized doctrine
Burning inside
Mystified longing
Questions abound
Domicile ******
Running aground
Substance ingestion
Alternate mind
Daily addiction
Hade’s defined

A shadow on the upper right lobe,
its probably nothing*

Its close to Christmas,
I think about our first
and how purple it was,
sunflower medallions
and George Winston.
I grew my hair long
and wore camouflage.

We ought to run a few more tests

My guilt was more than
I could carry back then,
gallons in half gallon buckets,
blood splashing onto
white carpet.

We'll get a little more blood on
Tuesday

The waiting game was nearly terminal,
the kids and I exchanged gifts in the Sears
parking lot. When I got home you held me.

We need to talk in my office for a minute

I cried about the choices they made.
You were never unkind. The rosaries I
made were hung on our bedposts,
they hang there still.

The shadow on your lung is a tumor

Its been five years.  They're adults now
and old enough to hear about death.

I'll schedule a biopsy for after Christmas

I don't think I'll tell them.
I don't think I'll tell you either..

maybe just once we'll have a peaceful holiday.

I wish I was addicted to
alcohol but I'm not, I'm an
otherholic with too many
“others” to count.

My old man had a shot
and a beer at the counter,
then ordered a six-pack
to take back home.

I do the same sometimes
with tacos.

'All swim' whistle,
water sent splashing,
the chaotic entrance of youth.

Adults scramble in the melee
while a man I do not know
bumps into me,
his hand down my shorts.
Confusion.

I ride home in shame.
Silent. Burning. Shame.

I am only 10
and tend to wince
at loud voices,
and right and wrong
depend upon the
time of day and
how many beers
my father drinks.

Country roads whip by,
sweet corn in the wind,
I watch the sun set
over the hill.

Once it's gone I know.

There will be no redemption,
 no reclaiming of innocence.

That shame feels like swallowing hot coals is all too familiar.

Mother says, “You don't look sick to me",

it's her answer for everything.

(the reconvening of my mind)

It's always the extremes
that bring me back to center,
but it's the trips I take on purpose
that remind me its time to go home.

Today it was the thought of blood.
I cannot stand the sight of it,
and neither would I brave a plunge
in icy depths this time of year.
I’d rather gather sunlight
and convince myself there are
no ghost revivals,
only blood reprisals from
daddy's DNA.

I tell myself
I need to get away
to where I can pray
again, to quit giving in,
to stay and fight wars,
the black, the white,

the gray fluttering darkness that
comes out of nowhere swooping
past my ear, scaring the **** out of me
as if it never happened before
but it has, its just been a while.

So I call for a council of angels,
then prepare for the riptide
of demons that join the fun when
my cranial convention convenes.

The left against the right,
The east against the west,
The pros against the cons,
all the ups and downs,

I don’t give a **** what it is
just give me back my wars.
Give me back my reasons to live.

Give me Nietzsche
Give me Brennan Manning
Give me Sam Harris
Give me Frederick Buechner
Give me Bertrand Russell
Give me Henri Nouwen
Give me Daniel Dennett
Give me Gerald May
Give me M Scott Peck
Give me Pia Mellody
Give me Dante
Give me Jane Kenyon
Give me the Marquis de Sade
Give me Dostoyevsky
and that should just about do it.

Within these names exist
enough controversy,
enough conflicting views
on life, on love, on God,
enough heresy,
enough truth,
enough lies,
enough knowledge,
enough beauty
to keep me waging wars
inside my head until the day I die.

Give me back my wars.

He enters the wood
without wanting,
taken from slumber
and pushed from behind
into darkness.

Up ahead he sees light,
he wants to believe
he always sees light,

but lately its not there
and he cannot see,
and they’re not at home.

He’s becoming afraid
to close his eyes,
no telling where he’ll end up,
skirting the edges of
the unknown.

He wonders what’s beyond,
a cliff, a hole, a vacuum,
insanity hovering over the
sprawling darkness of Hell.

He’s never been
though he thinks he can taste it,
it tastes of fear,
dark and gritty like burnt toast.

His only hope in
the little white diamonds.

When he swallows,
their edges work to scrape
the darkest burn away.

You and I are not dead yet,
I think I know it,
I know you do.
I see you in the minutiae
of the stars.

its all the same
from way down here,
a grand perception, a vision
of you at sunset flickering
without your flame.

Your call to arms is
a boy cries wolf.
I mold you into art
from nuts and bolts.

In conflict
you catch my eye
and then you’re gone.
Your coming is inconsistent,
different colors, different shades,
you're more than one.

I cannot ascertain the
direction from which they come,
left or right, above, below, I don't know
I only know when they come
when all of them come

all of you

you are more than one when all of you come

all of you

tachyphylaxis - tach·y·phy·lax·is (tāk'ə-fĭ-lāk'sĭs)  n.
1.    A rapidly decreasing response to pleasure following initial administration.

I didn’t know this
demon had a name.
Ugly as it is it fits,
a random mish-mash
of unpleasant sounds
and equal unpleasantness
felt.

I’ve known the *******
forever, manifest in vitamin cures
and psychological processes,
SSRI’s and stabilizers.

He attends to the end of
affectionate loving and all
the designer vacations
you've ever taken.

He is the golden handcuffs of
square foot home ownership
and his business cards are
set in silver.

To put it bluntly
his continuous presence
is intent on destruction
of any contentment.

He is all things along the way
that appear so promising at first
but never last.

Synonymous with tolerance,
antonymous with precedence,


the antagonistic leaven of all living.

Imagine this:

We are in a car that is
plummeting over a cliff
after spinning through a guardrail
off an icy mountain road, and we know
that our time is hopeless
and about to end so
I stare at you intently while
the rocks below
come racing toward us.

Can you see the look on my face?

This is how I look at you
every morning
between 6:15 and 6:25,

10 minutes
of loving the gift of you
with my eyes,

as if I’m
about to lose you
and I need to sear your image
in my mind
so it will always be with me,

even in death.

I  think  he  likes  to sit out back
                             where he once sat
with all his yard in view
  his chair is gone but he is there
                                    he sits in mine
                                   I saw him once
                      while pacing through
the house at 3 am
                       I stopped and stared
                       and rapped the glass
to see if he’d respond
                                                  instead­              
he looked away..
                
      he must have heard novenas
for the dead..
      
                         I saw his tired stare
                                        the thin hair
                         on his balding head
wispy with static electricity
  the liver spots across his brow
                       a prominent display
of reckless living                    
                                 his body lay flat
against the chair
               like a life-sized playing card
                         with hands and feet
from Alice in Wonderland

                                             I wonder
does he miss the rabbits?

                  I looked for him again
                                             last night
                            at quarter after 2
           I wanted to tell him its ok
   to use my chair to reminisce..
  
               nostalgia tends to look
                                             like love
to those who are without..

                 perhaps another night
                            I’ll see him there
                              within my chair
and maybe we can talk
I’d do my best to comfort him
             and put his mind at ease
                             about the things
he’s now without
        like this old house he built
                                        I’d tell him
I will be there soon
                                    soon enough
from his perspective
                                            by grace
50 years from mine                
                we’ll sit and talk about
                  the days we lived and
loved here..

                              *I am not naïve
                    I know he is a ghost
but I am not afraid

She found me where I wouldn’t go,
hands cupped around her fragile spark,
back turned to the wind,
making my way down the path of her choosing.

I went to that well again and again
And never refused what my lips desired,
But after a while I knew deep within
The cost would be steep for what I acquired.
I turned a deaf ear and then a blind eye,
The well was defiled and yet I still drew
And drank my bitter fill of every lie,
Until I was nauseous with what I knew.
Then daybreak’s dawning and with it came grace.
My soul was washed in an epiphanous rain
That fell on me like a lover’s embrace
To grant me ablution erasing the stain
That clouded my eyes and hindered my heart
-I’ll never again feel life’s torn apart.

I envy your simple life,
excitement at the prospect of rain and unexpected mail
or the extra hour of sleep you take on Saturdays,
but these small pleasures elude me, instead my mind is tangled in thought
like 7 connected strands of 12 foot Christmas lights packed in a shoebox
while I try to find the faulty bulb that keeps the bunch from lighting.

Its been a long time since
I had anything important to say.
Still don’t.
The focus that writing requires
is distant,
fog-like and out of reach.
I feel it misty on my skin sometimes.
I turn my hand around and its spirit
touches me softly, tenderly.
I feel it held up in silence.  
It is brief and then its gone,
or I go, or both,
and then the sun burns bright
and the clock runs fast
forward through the day
like an hourglass where
the ringing in my ears
is the roaring of the sand
through the gap,
and though it is contained,
it brings down with it everything
my mind cannot hold onto….
  
There is no focus.
Mainly guilt,
but I catch a glimpse  
once in a while in the mist,

and when the mist is on my skin
there is no roaring through the gap

rather drifting, slow,
methodical as intended…..

Just not very often

The wind is rejection.
I live on a hill.
The night is cold lonely.
A bittersweet chill.
I wander the hillside.
I plan my demise.
Then light through the clouds
brings relief to my eyes.
The moon is a magnet.
I can feel her sharp pull.
My blood tastes like metal
whenever she’s full.
I stand still in wonder.
I look in her eyes.
My worries are scattered.
The wind slowly dies.

It's never quite right,
the way I feel upon waking.

It's never quite right,
at night when its time to sleep.

It’s a vicious cycle of dependence on
whatever the moment requires.

10 mg of this, 20 mg of that , 
  
my see-saw bloodstream
keeps me constantly in need
of something.

     It's like having Phantom Limb Syndrome,
      except you can't figure out
      which limb is missing.

          It's like driving a car on ice,
           constantly slipping and
           over correcting.

               It's like having PTSD,
                only the triggering incident
                hasn’t happened yet.

                    It's like mixing
                     red and blue paint,
                     in the end its always purple.


What’s left is a life of constant searching and
the frustrating inability to drive between the lines.

A life filled with debilitating fear and
an ever present sense of impending doom.

A lifetime sentence

in a land of purple fog nothingness.

You spew words without thought,
I swallow pellets of denial
choking down so many I no longer
see the white elephant stomp
around the room,
only the ever present doom
and endless bouts of nausea.

I ***** entitlement on the undeserving
they accept it without consideration.

like a drug mule who swallows a thousand pellets
before eventually succumbing to one,
I return again and again and again
to a dream that will not satisfy.

this insane **** would make a martyr proud.

Like a young schoolgirl she flirts with the orderlies,
skid resistant yellow stockings swinging beneath
her wheelchair. Yellow defines the wackiest of the bunch.

She scooches across the room,
strapped in like a child in a car seat,
her socks providing excellent traction
on the shiny grey linoleum.

To see her this way is a bit shocking,
she speaks in a child’s voice,
like a little girl at play,

its such a strange sensation,
it reminds me of the time in the seventh grade
when Mr. Coster told us about the ghosts
in Sunnybrook’s basement,
I find myself questioning reality,
looking for ways not to believe.

At first she wants to pray,
and while our heads are bowed
she talks directly to Jesus, “there you are!”
she says, “and what a pretty blue sash you have on!”,
I steal a peak at the door
to see if Christ is there.

Next she wants to sing, and away she goes
while the girls join in….

The doctors say she’ll never again be who she was,
the mini strokes have done away with her.
I quietly concur and tell myself its not so bad
to see her this happy.

But within a week they move her to long term care
and all hell breaks loose.

“I want to divorce your father!”, she snaps,
“I’m tired of his ****”.
But when he comes to visit she purrs like a kitten
about undying love and how she’ll only be happy
when she dies in his arms.

The reality of her dysfunction
has never been more evident.

My whole life is a byproduct of her chaos.

Her eyes begin to take on
the wild look of a crazed dog,
She slips me notes and whispers strange things,
like she’s being watched and needs to be careful
about speaking too loudly,

I desperately try to make sense
of what it is she’s saying
but I’m completely distracted by
the lady across the table
with the television remote control
in her mouth, clamping down firmly
as if it’s a candy bar.

Mother goes on and on about
a job offer she’s received,
an offer to teach a sewing class,
she’ll need some good quality shoes
if she’s to be on her feet all day,
and maybe a few new blouses,
and oh how she’s tired of pajamas.
Next she’s on to requests for crayons
and batteries, a new mattress, more light..

She mumbles now.
Stream of consciousness ****.
She’s crying more as well.
Heaving sobs rack her body
as she bounces up and down,
hands across her face in an
over-dramatic display of despair.

Its my last evening with her.
I’ll be leaving shortly.
She’s not in her chair by the window.
I find her in her room lying in the dark.
I sit on the edge of the bed and touch her forehead.

She opens her eyes but does not see me.
She is still and silent and I notice she is clutching
the blue plastic Jesus I gave her, two inches tall
with arms outstretched and the message “HOPE”
scripted on the base.

I begin to stroke her hair, long, gentle strokes
and she sighs, A long broken sigh like
one might give after a good cry.
I half expect her to put
her thumb in her mouth.

Instead she lies silent holding her Jesus
while I wonder if the blue is the same blue as
the sash of the robe he wore the week before
when she was happy.

It’s a heavy moment for me because I know
that I am giving her what she could never give,
that nurturing touch that says its gonna be ok,
the reassurance that though afraid, you don’t have
to be alone, and the full and complete knowledge
that you are loved.

I wish she would say that she wished
she would have been a better mother,
a loving mother, but she cannot because
she is on a rocket ship to outer space
and I know this,
and its ok.

Though she was incapable of
loving me as a small boy
she became able in later years
to light a spark in me for Jesus.

A spark that would grow into
a burning flame of comfort in troubling times,  
a flame that would do more for me
than any mother's touch,
at least that’s what I’d like to think.

A flame that would ultimately
teach me how to love
in spite of never being loved.

A flame that is empowering me
to stroke her hair and give comfort to
a mother who never loved me
the way I needed to be loved,

the way Jesus loves me,
with his arms wide open and his light blue sash,
standing over the letters H O P E…

I get up to go
and see that she is now sleeping.
I watch Jesus slip from her fingers
and fall to the floor,
watch him bounce a time or two then
disappear beneath the bed,
like when you drop a coin from your dresser,
and it ends up out of reach.

I leave her room wondering
if I’ll ever see her again.

I step out into the night and go home.

I stare at the wall
while you breathe in the dark
and together we wait
for our un-ripened fruit to ripen,

wait for that tiny window
of fruity perfection where
one of us will be compelled
to speak,

      “let's share this peach”
(or possibly a banana)

you see,
I do not worry about
what you are thinking

we are one with our fruit
and with not speaking

there is nothing to say
  -  so it isn't said

No chaos to spoil  
our ripening fruit

Your overabundance of meaningless words
are scattered around me like fluttering bugs,
they're wearing me out with their badgering buzz
and making me sick of forever with you.

Soon it will snow where she is
but here it never snows only sleets,
and ***** little ice pellets
on the streets.

Winter days remind me
how I miss the moon,
how far it is between
autumn and forever,

And how close it is
between you and I,
Proximity-wise,
compared to the unreachable
emotional chasms we create.

Slippery chasms of
sleet and snow…….

                        …..alone..

          and when I finally went home

          she didn't even know
          I was gone,
    
          I slid right past her silent sighs
          as if being loved was
          an inconvenience.