this is
your open field
this is
where you lie on your back
on a fluffy, plaid duvet
eating strawberries
forgetting the sound of honking cars
and car alarms
this is your studio
replace the clay with bars of soap
paintbrushes with shampoo bottles
write your thoughts on fogged glass
lists of run-on sentences, scribbled
without inhibition
this is where the water runs off
your shoulders
this is where you reflect
it is not poetic
it is quiet, it is ordinary
knots of hair from gushing wind
smoothed over with aloe conditioner
everything is spinning, but here it slows
this is where you pause
this is where you breathe
this is where you begin again

Hey, Hey, NRA
Who're you going
To **** today?

A little girl at school
Or a little boy at play
Maybe a *******
From India by mistake

Home defense
Is a good excuse
But it's more likely
to be home abuse

Suicides are up
And accidents too
But they're guaranteed
By Amendment Two

We all need protection
From all the terrorists
Because they can buy guns
Even if they're on our lists

And don't forget the Government
We'll need our peashooter Glocks
Against their heavy armament

Hey, Hey, NRA
Who're you going
To **** today?

Lovely thoughts are shackles.
They invoke what even the microscope
omits from the commentary
Well-prepared cups of tea on Sunday afternoons
The dragging of fountain pens retracing ornate loops.

Each a relief from the threat of whatever crisis interred
by the quiet of a room
The practical, the indulgent, without progression.

The contemporary pastoral
is to be found
Amongst old boxes
of  boy's adventure paperbacks
and girl's glitterworn and broken hairbrushes
Shooting the mind off to tragedies
whirring still away at even further distances.

Memories, like sentiments
when copacetic
Provoking always the invasive link
the dependent, the pathetic.

A picture of a doomed ship in storm
Hung on the red carpeted wall of a restaurant

A jar of olives
left untouched
for decorative purposes
in the old grain store
which now serves unfiltered coffee
and plays loud but pleasing music
'til 6 p.m.

What I have spoken of are McGuffins.
The mind distracts.
Yes, the mind encounters,
we discover, we make lists.
But if you can remember
minutiae, try then to remember
History is the repetition of revelations.
The reel does not cut off.

In short,
don't congratulate
Yourself about life
until you've at least seen the nursing home.

to my tattered brothers and sisters I sing this little tune for you:

Pick up a bottle
Throw away your lives
Pitch a tent under an overpass in San Francisco.
Collect tin cans that never rust
and pick for food in garbage cans.
Talk too loud cause your used to to hum and the buzz of the engines that never quite seem to turn off.
Your white noise, your little humming butterfly.

I see hipster talking cool cat bearing fake glass wearing tight jean preaching ***** walking down old man made a big buck avenue.
Maybe I'm just jealous that my ***** die from boxer briefs n levi skinny fits with out benjamin striding along my side.

Old punk rockers tye dye bandanna wearing sweet talking hard headed mother ******* that never quite seem to die.
Keep getting laid off and job offers but no parachute, no just in cases only no replies. Name your dog's royalty, let them splash through mud, don't you care if your old woman can't dare to see the beauty in your queen's ***** getting all wet from playing with new friends. "Keep living while your young"

The smarts can't hold a job with business's that no one really cares. You live your suburban dream with Rudolf leading santa's slay with light's too bright for all your neighbors to stare. Email lists, outlook express, phones phones phones out for a contact you may never see again. Where'd the comradmanship go when working wasn't work it was fun as well.

To young ones rolling half empty water bottles down stairs, covering curious eyes with baseball caps, sneaking candy cookies cause you don't care about sugar high's or blood. Listen to your music "its good for the soul" but don't wear nice yuppie clothes to impress upon those older queers. Ice cream scoops to big to bear, make no sense to those that hear baffled cries of young mans rise, don't be afraid to be afraid. Young ***** hurt, I know.

City streets, and landfill pies, composting spoons made of tater starch, eating new foods crying old cries. Food too cold, too hot, too dry. Empanada's good, pork liver bad. These kids is cool, making something of themselves, talk to no one, no need just feel the vibe.

White walls dappled with texture, more appeasing for the eyes. A house with too many switches yet no lights, not enough lamps for more shadows and less tries. Floors don't need no wood laid out, concrete works, it's cheaper too. The house stays warm when your burning money for fire rather than cheap rides.

This is what they saw, just a new age, a new time. This is what I see, and why I sing, and why I tell you all of a decade which may never sleep enough to watch the old sun fall. Those dreams may be too real after all.

I often wonder if our voices are actually heard.
If people read our every word!
Or is it like life where you skim through it to get to the end
Never realizing that you might lose a friend.
We don’t stop to see and admire the picture as a whole
And “ that beauty” will never unfold.
You know ! I also wonder !
That GOD could have made this world, humanity
And the entire universe in a split second, yet he chose
To do it in six days
To enjoy all the beauties that he created.
Then why do we rush in our lives?
When he has given us time to enjoy his creations
Without all the devastations.
If we work eight hours, sleep eight hours
Then the other eight hours are for us to set our goals
And pursue our dreams and take care of our to do lists
And to smell the flowers – ‘HE has given us enough hours!”
         “THAT BEING SAID” let’s move ahead!
The words you put down in black and white
Are your joys and your struggles in this life?
It is a path to your heart and soul, and a story that must be told.
Your hidden thoughts and dreams can now be seen
Your wants, your needs, your hopes, your dreams, your desires
All of this created that burning fire.
If every living creature can communicate with each other

Then why can’t we?  My sisters and brothers!

(C) L .RAMS

I need to save you from writer's block
before you're outlined with chalk
so I outline a prompt
to lift you off
but I don't know what to suggest
your next project a must
my advice you trust
I hand you dust
which isn't much to work with
won't make any short lists
after your ignored fists
abort this
failed attempt to help with ideation
your writing equals my elation
so talk about migration
or my nation
just don't let that shining sun set
I'm sure you'll become unvexed
once you're creating subtext
after finding a subject.

substance theory tells us that
while examining the soul of a hat
its atoms flung on quantum breezes
can show up in any form it **** pleases
only for convenience’s sake
does it acquiesce to reveal a stake
toward universal conformity
adding comfort [and headgear] to reality
how this theory applies to God
will tax our mind and lead to odd
musings, statements, lists confusing,
philosophies that find them losing
great arguments, by the wisdom controlled
from any mere child who’s eight years old  




September 2010

I quite like the virginity of a fresh notebook
the way my wrists and palms drag across its leaves
breathing life between lines in pink magic marker or the severity of red ballpoint
I like the prickly practical meticulousness of a shopping list:
a dozen eggs
one pineapple
one bag of fresh spinach
one bag of English muffins
one bottle of dish soap
I like the tender impressions of curlie cues and firty cursive
communicating endearments placed on counters such as:
TAKE OUT THE RECYCLING YOU LAZY OAF ******* <3 XOXOXO <3
I enjoy the audacity of a wandering doodle
meandering
cartwheeling
hopskotching
between
and under and over
indices

and spaces
between shopping lists and death threats
i enjoy the lingering ghost of prose shaped caverns
carved onto seemingly empty sheets that carry on for pages
until they fade like whispers into an evanescence
I crave the obnoxiousness absurdity of a to do list
daring me to take a day off from procrastination
until tomorrow
call Gramma
rent due on the first of the muuuuuuuunth
take the GRE
update resume
be awesome. like a boss.
most of all
I love the pain and joy of a poem
the way it slowly leaks from heart to mind to hand to paper
staining
spaces
urgently
faster than muses whispers
barely escaping onto lines
prolific terrific poetry
sporadic spacious atrocious poetry
I croon over the denial of the last page of a beat up notebook
the way the paper hangs onto spirals haggard
littered with stringy remnants of lists and reminders and death threats and poems and goodbyes

The evergreen edges of the newly cut
box hedge border look greener now
with its cleaner lines and stronger bark-spines;
the train's in an hour so pack up and go,
leave Christmas where it is,
leave Christmas at home.

Un-sent Christmas lists sit in the flue still,
they never got delivered and never got through,
houses stand with their lights on up the hill,
they blink and sparkle and blaze and gaze at the night
with competition, cheap goodwill.

Listed bookmarks of old, and baited non-benifit of the doubters.

A kind rewinded word of advice heard, pattern of choices and actions made a bested resounding thunderous sound,
near then , how come the doubters tested and warned to the trap not come, where graced benefit of the doubt be a stated consideration on that very **** day?

To the impact indicators blinking a sudden turn of the coat or is it the tail wagged the dog in the fog of a psychological electronic war that must be raging in the minds of the internet cheerful happy people as not it has in the walk and mind of mine, for i laid bare so as to share the scare i knew to find , and thus almost lost it all , wit correction, but you cast a guilt-ed hazy trash to one more that willing to best you and test you for the proven faith and trust he already gave, oh wait, or was that simply entertainment for the view of you ?  so, um, sit down, you could have listened to me and gave benefit of the doubt, or did you forget what all this is truly all about? saving those whom have and  are being manipulated into utter turmoil and death by these blood sport  games in these windows... remember there "friend"?  or is it ol craig and his lists are totally as bad off as little ol me, for shurly you see, that even she is free to some degree and will as i have walked all through , forgiven, yet my dear friend, do you think such grace for me? considering,most forget why the hell we have been doing all this and i walked you all through such ******* things... oh, sorry, i am sure you were getting around to that human trafficking thing, right? well, at least there are good people doing that as we speak, and for them we are grateful, are you?
Oh and no i am not mad nor upset, just disappointed, i always tell you what is coming and to choose. and still i harm you not even if it harm me.

The Unforgiven I,II and III - Metallica - (LYRICS)
h ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-HiAEXQP38

Motörhead - Ace of Spades (slow Acoustic version)
h ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc-PVTj9UCk

AC DC - Who Made Who lyrics
h ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuFq3ynnBo8

AC DC Ride On
h ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugwlIQ8K4Vs

dabnagit  Travel back to before the nation began
and see Crispus Attucks killed — the
first American to die for American freedom, a freedom denied to his African and Native American forebears. Take a knee to honor his sacrifice and the other four dead.

Take a knee in grief that he who would become president minimized these first martyrs as "a motley rabble of saucy boys, negros and molattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish Jack Tarrs.”

Stand at Morris Island, South Carolina, where American soldiers fought to keep a young nation whole, a field of blue with 35 stars, not 22. Take a knee for the 54th Massachusetts Voluntary Infantry and its score killed at Fort Wagner, a hundred more presumed dead.

Take a knee in grief that the U.S. Army rescinded its promise of equality and paid the 54th little more than half a white soldier's monthly pay. Take a knee in awe at those who refused any pay that was less, yet died with "Massachusetts and Seven Dollars a Month!" on their lips, defending their white comrsdes' retreat.

Take a knee for Sgt. Medgar Evers, who defeated fascists at Normandy only to be killed by them once he was back home.

Take a knee from the suckerpunch by a U.S. senator from Mississippi in 1917, who said the return of black veterans would “inevitably lead to disaster.” Once you “impress the ***** with the fact that he is defending the flag” and “inflate his untutored soul with military airs,” it would be easy for him to conclude “his political rights must be respected.” Take a knee to honor those who died defending freedom. Take a knee to weep for the sharp rise in lynchings after both world wars — following the return of those impressed, untutored ***** souls inflated with military airs for having served.

Look at the lists, look at the videos, look at the witness testimony, look at the double standard: Amadou Diallo. Manuel Loggins Jr. Ronald Madison. Kendra James. Sean Bell. Eric Garner. Michael Brown. Alton Sterling. Philando Castile. (Take a knee; this could take awhile.) Akiel Denkins. Gregory Gunn. Samuel DuBose. Brendon Glenn. Freddie Gray. Natasha McKenna. Walter Scott. Christian Taylor. Ezell Ford. Akai Gurley. Laquan McDonald. (Take a breath.) Tamir Rice. Yvette Smith. Jamar Clark. Rekia Boyd. Shereese Francis. Ramarley Graham. LaTanya Haggerty. Margaret LaVerne Mitchell. And on and on. And on.

Take a knee for the unarmed, or subdued, or even fleeing men and women killed by officers pledged to protect and serve. Take a knee too for the officers killed by gun-toting gangsters…or by homeowners fearing a home invasion. While you're at it, take a knee for the more than 50 people killed every year by toddlers exercising their Second Amendment rights.

And take a knee for the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who died so that a football player can take a knee as long as some people are shot by police in the back, or even when down, or even after they're on their knees…while others for some reason are far less likely to be shot in the same circumstances. Take a knee, Rodin-like, and ponder why.

Take a knee and join those who are taking a knee out of respect not only for the flag, but for the republic for which it stands, one nation…

(Striving to be a more perfect union)

…under God…

(Who "created all men equal"; "male and female he created them.")

…indivisible…

("Build that wall!" "Lock her up!" "Fire the sons of ******* if they won't stand for this flag but run them over if they protest a rebel flag!")

…with liberty and justice for all lives can't matter unless black lives matter.

So for these all, and many more, take a knee. Take your time, but take some heart. Then lift each other up and lock your arms. Play ball.

She'll tell you what it feels like,
As words drip out of her mouth.
And the tears drain from her eyes,
Like her insides are trying to come out.
And she'll beg you to listen,
but she'll never know why.
And she'll force her way in,
Like a torn in your side.

She'll want what she's missing,
Her pieces of life.
But she'll trim off the fat,
Like the blade of a knife.

She'll tell you she's happy.
And lie threw her teeth.
But a wave of pressure,
Will crush her beneath.

And she's clawing her way up,
from her problems within.
And she'll buy all her prays,
With the lists of her sins.

She living a life,
Possessed by a lie.
And tomorrow she'll smile,
but inside she'll cry.

And her demons will wake her,
At first mornings light.
But the soul inside her,
Won't give up the fight.

being the only one left on the planet that is neither a **** or a politician, both of which are only good for ******* people
2. waking up naked in the middle of the street
3. both of those happening at once
4. not finishing lists
5. jumping off my roof, breaking every single bone in my body and ultimately crushing my stupid brain because i thought i could swing like spider-man and being bit by any type of spider is not exactly how its works i guess
6. you thinking i no longer have super powers ...
7. going to the theatre to see the sequel or sequel sequel or sequel sequel sequel or whatever it's at now of spider-man and you leaving because you loved the original
8. me being the sequel
9. singing john lennon's "imagine" in the car but you taking the line "imagine all the people" way too seriously
10. buying a photo album and only having pictures of when we picked out the perfect pumpkin at halloween and you called me your pumpkin
11. going to my favourite cafe and seeing you and your new pumpkin... spice latte
12. being eaten alive by jealousy
13. my neighbours dog was named jealousy
14. choking
15. by being force fed the fact you can see someone else and i can't do it
16. having to do cpr on myself even though you're trained
6. you thinking i no longer have super powers
17. dying without my sidekick
6. you thinking i no longer have super powers
18. i kind of feel that way too
6. you thinking i no longer have super powers
19. death by torture
20. by my very own needles, that pinned that places we wanted to go on the map, piercing the the spaces in between my ribs causing
21. my heart to deflate even though i thought it was protected by this boney jail sell
22. what's a superhero without a heart?
23. a villian
24. you still seem like you fight for the good side but dip your toes in
25. the dark side
26. the villains always lose especially when it comes to
27. love life, has any one of them had
28. a wife, if so its never been
29. showing itself
30. minutes of my favourite tv show is all i get but
31. you don't air anymore
32. saying  "i wish you were' but
33. not the pink floyd song
34. im a different kind of writer
35. and in this story the villain would become good
36. he also would get the girl
37. the girl
38. not the city and colour song either
39. would be the final scene where i'm wrapping ropes around my ankles and dangling myself from the roof top
40. is an exception... because I'm not afraid to have all i'm worth fall from my pockets and have you kiss me like Lois Lane

my name is lillith and I just want a cup of coffee and a ripe avocado and for people to answer their cell phones when you call and movies not to lose their imagination halfway through and purses to be big enough to fit a book inside and for people to stop singing songs from Frozen and I want to wake up when the sun is shining and go to bed when the moon is out and to write in a notebook that reminds me of myself and to drive fast on a straight road by a glittering ocean and every day I want to work up a sweat and an appetite and an eagerness to dream and really I don't think I'm asking for too much in fact I think we should all ask for a little bit more especially from ourselves and definitely for others and I could go on but what's the point in making lists if you never cross an item off

I begged for hope
I pleaded for mercy
But you said some things are better
When they find how to fall apart
I contemplated you and listed you off
But you said lists are better off unfinished
I begged for love
I pleaded for change
There’s more than I bargained for
You’ve turned out to have a broken bone
It took a place where your heart should be
I wanted love, change, mercy, and hope
But you spewed a ****** mess
You gave me hate, routine, ******, and sadness
For that I never saw your full potential
You shine bright with dull nostalgia
But you stabbed the ones you loved
You shine so bright
But your evil covers it up
You had shone so bright
But you all knew for the best

On some nights
all things feel like
they have been
done before.

Tonight, if you listen closely
you can hear the night sky
breaking apart
as all young and beautiful
things do.

The apples
on the tree
taste sweeter
this year.
I know you have waited patiently
but that does not speed
my coming. I hear in my head
on the nights that I am quiet.
I cannot keep on like this.

The world is upside down.

I think he’s building a sandcastle
He says to me slyly
of our cat jumping
maniacally at the wall.

I smile, but do not feel it
too quick to anger,
out of control
and ever changing.

I comfort myself with minutia,
lists and a false sense of control.

You can curse
the weather man
but you cannot
change his
predicting.

Home is clean sheets on Tuesdays.
Piles of poetry defy gravity, over-sized
soft  t-shirts in the closet and always
enough Diet Coke in the fridge.

Home is the cat muttering about nothing.
Lists for Doctors, for Target, for God.
Popcorn for dinner, music instead of  news.
Windows open in January for different air.

Home is breakfast, then leaving for meetings
or other hard things, then I come back, back, back.
No matter what the day brings, this is how
I get to next Tuesday again, again, again.

I will tell you a story, Most Reverend One
how 300 fairies transported me
to the Mountains of Peach Lands
and how I denied them each my heart -
but ha, ha - I can see, you laugh;
you do not believe me...

but I have more reasonable stories -
for example
of how the Earth was created;
it’s true, O Most Reverend One
there’s such a Being up there
eating chicken dumplings
and poking His nose
in trivial and very grave human affairs...
O he, he, he...you see my tales are but fancy
and do not believe such a Creature can exist...

but am I done, most Reverend One?
Is my list of tales and myth and stories
so limited? - No, I have a list of stories
as long as the tail of the Divine Monkey
that first whipped all stars into position
and with its Monkey hands squeezed each planet into solid mass
O there you are, you laugh and make me happy
you encourage me, O Most Reverend One

I will study your mood
and I can tell you a tale
of how your ancestors
shaped this land
and how they brought that chair you sit on
from the Diamond Palaces of faraway India -
oh, **, **, ** - you didn’t know that?
and generations of your clan have sat there on that chair
and so do  you - and you never knew its story...
I have long lists of stories and tales
all true and collected from lands far and wide -
ah you laugh, Most Reverend One -
and you encourage me...


My story itself will interest you
for I was born of noble family with great wealth
and pomp and estate and attendants
but when my mum died,
she said to me:
Go you forth
and collect the world’s stories
and so I gave away all my possessions
and I travelled all abroad
and have come to my current itinerant state...
See, my life itself is a story -
worthy of our operas and and street theaters
with much comedy and adventures...
ha, ha, ha - O **, **, **
you laugh and you are pleased
which pleases me...

Call then your clan together, O Most Reverend One;
set up a platform
and I will shine like a sun on this platform
and I will tell these tales
in the gentle light of the moon and torches
and I shall spin tales of the moment
for each man and woman
and each child of your most revered clan, O Most Reverend One...
you laugh, and you nod
you are pleased - oh, oh, ha....ha...ha...
that’s good Most Reverend One...

But now, Most Reverend One,
I never start without terms...
*shall we first talk about my accommodation, food, facilities
and payment?

I am very good at deciphering certain things about me
In fact
Most all my poems somehow turn out to be lists of what I am not and why you shouldn't date me
I am just now finding out that it's not the best way to seem inviting
Or welcoming
I have been wondering what would happen
If I were to pour myself out
Empty every last part of me
And then swallow the remnants
What would happen
If I were to leave myself an open door
A no questions asked scenario
Just accept things as they are
I am used to picking apart my insecurities
Used to throwing them at any pair of feet that walk towards me
But humans are not brooms
Are not there to sweep up my petals of doubt
To clean up the mess I've made so many times before
It gets old after a while
And nobody wants to date the girl
Who ***** her ghosts every night
Who still sleeps with depression on the side
I have purposefully highlighted every demon of mine
Made a point to wear them vacantly on my smile
My weakness is often mistaken for confidence
So I embrace it
Thinking maybe if I come right out and say it
The sharp reality won't cut my lip on the exit
My mouth is nothing but an abundance of canker sores
Formed from every time I've had to bite my tongue
To keep my words from falling out
My intention
Was to write something
That is not just another eulogy
For my inability to be vulnerable
But like most everything that leaves my hands
It is unpredictable
And not expecting return.

The children adore it
and wait all year
for the cold winter comfort
and the saturating cheer

They fidget and pace
all through December
making lists of the gifts
That they did not remember.

They climb upon Santa
eyes shining brightly
fingers clutching their lists
ever so tightly.

They stutter and stammer
forget what to say
resigned to waiting
for that magical day.

Xmas eve evening
so full of excitement
they dream of the morning
wondrous delightment.

The parents abhor it
and wait with dread
the upcoming gathering
the breaking of bread.

The family you avoid
the rest of the year
the drinking, the gossip
the pains in your rear.

The endless instruction
batteries galore
the wrapping and hiding
the locked closet door.

The last minute shopping
Black Friday stampede
to grant their wishes
to satiate their need.

Its finally over
the end is nigh
the morning of Christmas
the end of the lie.

The atheist ignores it
as best he can
it is pretty invasive
and he is only a man.

A fat man, a baby
flying moose in the skies
horrible, endless music
but at least there are pies.

It begins in October
the feast for the dead
the next day there's Jesus
in his tiny, wooden bed

A story of divinity
passed through the ages
bastardized and broken
parchment thin pages

Roman gift giving
European "Christmas" trees
A Greek gift giving saint
Shepherds on their knees

Supernova signals
Norseman's Mistletoe
A donkey, a sleigh
Coca Cola's ** ** **!

Saturnarian or Pagan
Christian or Jew
Happy Holidays to everyone
From: Atheist, To: You

The secret of love,
Of remaining together...
Is not what everyone supposes.
It is not always the bringing of gifts,
The candlelight dinners
Or bouquets of roses.
After the bloom is off
these loving flowers,
Irritations and troubles arise.
There are clashes
Over little things.
And lovers forget
The vows they made so easily,
Violating them with anger.
Old resentments from the past
Rise up to poison with enmity,
The nearness that will not last.
Those with wisdom shun these fights,
The sad agony of lonely nights,
Lying awake and wondering
If love still exists, or if one matters,
To the other, if one cares at all.
Over time, self-protection grows,
And the lover builds a rancorous wall
Where weeds choke sunlight from the rose
And the other cannot hurt you.
But the play still goes on,
Like a song that still repeats,
Over and over unnoticed.
And a pantomime of caring
Begins to form, with hollow smiles
And half-hearted promises.
The Rose now lists against the wall,
Pale and tamed, like a common plant,
A vegetable in a kitchen garden.
And lovers expect passion
From a dreary fruit like this?
But once in a thousand times,
Deep roots that began long ago,
Giving rise to the first flower of love,
Last beyond boredom, thirst and drought.
Thorns pierce their hearts through the wall,
Bringing tears of surprise and recall.
The lovers find after the rain:
They have what they have sought.
And that which they sought is all.

Summer 2018

They don't tell you about the truly tragic parts of these disorders.
About how I haven't showered for 4 days because my life has lost its meaning.
Or how I have been wearing this shirt for 2 weeks now
because I see no point in changing.
They tell you about pretty symmetrical cuts and tears that flow like rain,
But not about the rock you get in your throat because you can no longer cry,
or how your arms are so burnt and cut up that you can no longer sleep because the pain is so excruciating.
They tell you about how near and beautiful recovery is,
but there is no recovery. There is only here and now. And here and now hurts.
They don't tell you about the amount of men you have *** with just to replace the love you've lost,
yet you end up emptier.
They tell you about poetic sadness, but not about the numbness. Where sadness has festered for so long, it has moulded and lost its taste.
They don't tell you about the 2 year waiting lists just to be rejected,
or about the 3am visits to A+E, because life has gotten so painful that you feel like your chest will explode.
They don't tell you about the physical strains of these illnesses; the jitters in your legs, the shortness of breath, the constant nausea...
They don't tell you about the disappointment your family feels.
They don't tell you how weak you feel, because you can't get out of bed for the 7th day running, and the fainting because you haven't drank for 4 days because keeping yourself alive is more effort than its worth.
They will never tell you about the intrusive thoughts, about ******, ****, babies (I just want them to stop)
They don't tell you about the racist, sexist, critical man that lives in your head.
Or about how when your psychiatrist asks you ''how do you feel?'' You can't answer,
Because you do not feel.
And have not felt for 2 and a half years now.
They don't tell you how difficult it is to find help in a society where self harm is artistic and psychosis is tragically beautiful, and we are all expected to be our own hero.
To ''Save yourself''.
I need help because living like this is not beautiful, it is deblilating and sad. I need help because I am ill, and I can not be my own hero.

In between   (a poem)
.
my mind struggles against its own illusion
nightmare tumbles out into still morning
light is heavy,
a fog of echoes...
and I am caught
.
day dreams the sunlight
dreams light the day
and I am caught in between
mourning echoes...
like a stillborn ghost
who can't take a breath in the present

….
  
I live on a tropical island and just want to go surfing with my husband, but the nausea in the early morning as I try to eat  breakfast and drive with him to the beach is so uncomfortable.  Day after day it makes even surfing a chore, and I consider not going anymore.  Background anxiety and unreasonable irritation interferes with our marriage, frustrates him enough to want me out.  

For me, a trip to the grocery store or meeting a group of people awakens the same dreadful fear as rockclimbing a cliff. Perspective has been lost in the extremes.  I try to gain some control over this hindering nuisance, seeking situations that bring the same surges of adrenaline so I can learn to master it.  If I can just push past the avoidance that would keep me inside doing nothing, if I can just ignore the feeling I want to throw up, if I can just get out there, I am rewarded with life’s potential beauty eventually.  Many days I do enjoy the thrill of mountain biking or connection with nature when surfing, but there are too many days of internal struggle that reduce what should be enjoyable to a relentless chore of wrestling inner demons.

The VA offers a few sessions of marriage counseling, and the doctor begins to explain PTSD.  ***, I’ve learned to cope with an unreliable brain, but now there’s this?  From what I understand (and that’s just me, an amateur philosopher) Sometimes the brain is so traumatized, that the memory is literally sealed off, encapsulated, protecting it from changing.  If later something happens that is similar, the brain triggers avoidance responses as a take-no-chances survival mechanism.  Literally the brain is protecting one’s self from one’s self.  This all-or-nothing strategy works fending off potential dinosaur attacks, but in our complex society, these automatic avoidance behaviors complicate functioning and well being.  Life becomes an attitude of constant reaction instead of motivated intention.

The website for the National center for PTSD says.  “After a trauma or life-threatening event, it is common to have reactions such as upsetting memories of the event, increased jumpiness, or trouble sleeping. If these reactions do not go away or if they get worse, you may have Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.”  

“Common reactions to trauma are:
• Fear or anxiety: In moments of danger, our bodies prepare to fight our enemy, flee the situation, or freeze in the hope that the danger will move past us. But those feelings of alertness may stay even after the danger has passed. You may:feel tense or afraid, be agitated and jumpy, feel on alert.  
• Sadness or depression: Sadness after a trauma may come from a sense of loss---of a loved one, of trust in the world, faith, or a previous way of life. You may:have crying spells, lose interest in things you used to enjoy, want to be alone all the time, feel tired, empty, and numb.  
• Guilt and shame: You may feel guilty that you did not do more to prevent the trauma. You may feel ashamed because during the trauma you acted in ways that you would not otherwise have done. You may:feel responsible for what happened, feel guilty because others were injured or killed and you survived.  
• Anger and irritability: Anger may result from feeling you have been unfairly treated. Anger can make you feel irritated and cause you to be easily set off. You may:lash out at your partner or spouse, have less patience with your children, overreact to small misunderstandings.  
• Behavior changes: You may act in unhealthy ways. You may:drink, use drugs, or smoke too much, drive aggressively, neglect your health, avoid certain people or situations.”   It lists four main symptoms: reliving the event, avoiding situations that remind of the event, feeling numb, and feeling keyed up (also called hyperarousal)”

Four words strung together: Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.  They’ve become a tired cliché, exhausted from the endless threat of random cruelty camouflaged in banality, weary of the weight shouldering back the wall that separates death and gore from the living.  Living was a reflex beyond willpower and devoid of choice. Control was self-deception.  The mind was so preoccupied with A: survival, B: sanity, in that order.  Rest was a cruel illusion.  The tank was drained, no room for emotions ditched.  Empathy took too much effort, fear was greedy.  Hopefully they can be remembered and found on the other side, if there is one.  Sleep deprived cells were left hyper-alert from the imminent, shot up and addicted to adrenaline.  Living was Fate and Chance, and meant leaving that time and place sealed in forgetfulness.  

Now PTSD is a worn out acronym, a cold shadow of what it feels like.  I try to think of something more personal that can describe the way it randomly visits me, now resigned to its familiar unwelcome influence.  It steals through my brain, flying ahead of me with its own agenda of protecting sabotage.  Its like the Guardian Trickster of Native American legend.  Its an archetype but real enough to make mistakes: Chulyen, the black raven.

A decade after the ER, contentment is found in a garden of slow tranquility as a butterfly interrupts a sunbeam.  My heart fills with bittersweet as I’ve finally found something I love and want to keep.  Just then Chulyen’s grasping black claws clamp my heart with painful arrhythmia and it fills to burst, tripping in panic trying to recover its pace.  The sudden pain drops me to my knees, in the dirt between fragrant lavender and cherry tomatoes.  Pain stops breath and time and makes me remember the ER, when my heart rebelled its ordained purpose for a week.  I had tried to throw my bitter life back in God’s face but He didn’t take it.  Now that I have peace and a life that I treasure, He’s taking it now.  The price for my mistake is due.  It was all just borrowed time and I’m still so young, my children just babies.  God with a flick of cruelty reminds me not to put faith in the tangible, especially when its treasured.  The sharp claws finally relent and I can breathe, looking up with a gasp and the Raven takes flight overhead leaving a shadow.  Bright noon warmth, unusually heavy and foreboding, seems to say ‘there will come a time when you will not welcome the sun.’   Doctors run an EKG and diagnose ‘stress’.

The bird perches on my shoulder two more decades later, always seeing death just over there.  So I sit on the porch just a little longer and check my list again, delaying the unavoidable racing heart and rush of tension when I fix the motorcycle helmet strap under my chin.  I know all those stupid drivers have my life in their cell-phone distracted hands and hope my husband knows how much I love him, and my daughters too.  

Chulyen wakes me at 3:00 am when autumn’s wind aggravates the trees.  His rustle of black feathers outside unsettles summer’s calm night.  He brings an end-of-the-world portent that hints this peace is just temporary, borrowed.  Tribulation will return.

Ravens are attracted to bright shiny things.  Chulyen steals off with treasures like intention, and contentment.  I don’t realize they are missing until occasionally I find myself truly living in the moment.  I guess that is another reason why I crave adventure, for those instants and epiphanies that snap me out of that long term modis operandi of reacting, instead of being.  The daily list of ‘I must, or I should’ can for a brief while become ‘I want’  and I am free.

My companion the black bird perches relaxed in the desert on the gatepost of a memory.  A bullet-scarred paint-faded sign dangles by one corner from rusty barbed wire:
    No Trespassing    
    That Means You
I have a haunted idea what's behind the fence.  Chulyen implies the memory with a simple mistaken sound:
a Harley in the distance is for a second the agitating echo of a helicopter...
or those were the very same words they said when...
or I hear a few jangling clinks of forks in our warm kitchen...
hinting a cold cafeteria at 5:00 am smelling of fake eggs and industrial maple flavored corn syrup,
and everything else that happened that day...
My cells recollect, brace with the addictive rush of adrenaline.  But the raven denies access to the memory, distracting with discomfort.  I trip and I fall hard into the gritty dirt of irritation at the person who unknowingly reminded me.  Anxiety floods in along with fatigue of the helplessness of it all, back then and still now.  I can't go further.  Chulyen’s tricking deception says Leave This Memory, you never wanted to come back.
But I already knew from just recognizing the bird patiently sitting there a sentinal,
recalling every other time he tricked me with nausea and depression.
I tried to tell myself again that behind that gate,
the past has dried up from neglect.
Disintegrated into dust,
Blown away,
doesn't
exist.
…


After everything else, how to work through this?  The VA gave me a manual, a crudely printed set of worksheets with a government-looking blue cover page:  Cognitive Processing Therapy.
“In normal recovery from PTSD symptioms, intrusion, thoughts, and emotions decrease over time and no longer trigger each other.  However, in those who don’t recover, the vivid images, negative thoughts, and strong emotions lead to escape and avoidance.  Avoidance prevents the processing of the trauma that is needed for recovery and works only temporarily.  The ultimate goal is acceptance.  
There may be “stuck points”, conflicting beliefs or strong negative beliefs that create additional unpleasant emotions and unhealthy behavior.  For example, a prior belief may have been “ I am able to protect myself in dangerous situations.”  But after being harmed during military service, a conflicting belief surfaces, “I was harmed during service, and I am to blame.”  If one is ‘stuck’ here, it may take some time until one is able to get feelings out about the trauma, because one is processing a number of rationales.  “I deserved it because…” , or “I misinterpreted what happened, I acted inappropriately, I must be crazy…”  The goal is to change the prior belief to one that does not hinder acceptance.  For example, “I may not be able to protect myself in all situations.”

(chapter continues with recovery methods)

I am sorry about the letters I wrote you
in red ink, the swells and valleys
of your body that I never
learned to love.
I am sorry for making you a war zone,
for the carnage and the crime,
the cruel topography of the boot prints I
left inside of your skull.

Especially those. You see, I was taught how to
choke the things I love
with fists stained blue and bleeding,
to shake till they are limp as a rag doll
and cry over their prone form,
but never how to touch the planes of your face
without leaving frost on your wings,
ice behind the shutters of your eyes.

I’m sorry for all the time you spent
tending the garden of your sorrow,
I’m sorry that your tears
didn’t help the flowers bloom. I’m sorry that
the bathroom mirror knows you best
wild-eyed at 2 am, asking it ragged and heartsore
who will love me now. who could
love me.

I’m sorry that when I say I’m trying to be better
it sounds like an apology for not being good enough.
I’m sorry that there are days when your poems
read like grocery lists of all the lies
I told you when you cried.  

Forgive me.
I’m sorry we never learned how to
fall into and not through,
sorry the slopes of the letters in the words
we speak aren’t the bridges we mean
them as.

I’m sorry I buried you under the couch
in that therapist’s office. your tears were
saltwater I couldn’t allow myself to drink.
I lived on a desert island
and could not permit myself the
pleasure of a mirage.

I’m sorry that I never believed you could be
someone I could understand.

I’m sorry that you’ve spent so much
time looking for someone to
love you.
I’m sorry it couldn’t be me.