PASSION PLAY

Ayad Gharbawi




Location: Desert Shore, Bitterly Cold Night, next to strong waves from the ocean.
Characters: Man ((M) and his Lover, a Woman (W).

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W: “Search as I forever do, in manifold ways unknown, I seek but to love thee, and the meagre goodness from Life, with steely ardour - my armour faithful.”
M: “Alone I may be, and still, yes I love thee; these days heavy are and beset I am by burdensome trivialities, but I remain trusting, though my corner so narrow remain.”
W: “My Love! Your speech I hear aloud and thine lips I live within and yet, my Love, all Solitude I am. Man! I am unaided! In this journey of sinful thorns, my love, in this unforgiving journey, this blurred odyssey, I stand alone”.
M: “This trial you speak of, but I do know of it well; so, listen then: within the strength of trusted togetherness we can plough on, though everlasting harm shall do its spiteful tricks, warm to our united truth shall we remain.”
W: (Surprised) “O! My love! This thought I cannot hear! My life, my destiny, is but mine. And all have their own solitary roads of jagged rocks to embrace, like it we or not. We heartbreaking earthly sad beasts, either fiercely clutch at integrity, or we do let it go to perish away.”
M: (Confused) “My Love! I do hear, I do hear. But when Times decide on burdening us, what then can we achieve? To face Reality within the frail arms of solitude is to ignore, to refuse the severe threats of repulsive grins.”
(Silence)
M: (Passionately) “O! My sweet! Only in us, can we envelope, through joined, clasped warmth can we be as one united! The screams that so truly are meant to slice us off, only we, our Unity, can destroy. For mine eyes can only find sleep in your ears, and it is so - for otherwise nothing and no one can be.”
W: (Angry) “My Passion too is bubbling for thine bewildered ears. Am I not your soul? Do we not suffer as one? Do we not reflect as one? Am I not your lover true? Is not our warmth not weighty to our fickle bones?”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) “But, Lover, this much ought I to formally declare unto thee: For our eyes, and all eyes, envision unequally at one another. Till eternity, in its casual, indifferent flicker, snatches at us all wretched mortals, the gazes from lords to paupers remain veritably mismatched. O my passion! My woeful heart! These words I thunder forth defines love unfeigned, and what mine eyes do pour out unto thine ears is authenticity true.
(Silence)
W: (Passionately) “What joined mem’ries you choose to caress may possess thee, but your exactness for what love is to you, doth not dwell in mine mind. What tears, what weepings you do, fall stormily upon thine own soul’s wildernesses. You choose to be chained by changing visions and indefinite sentiments of light weight – though so poignant at the moment they veritably are?”
M: (Inquiring) “My love! I cherish thee; where hast thou been in thine mind, for now ye talk of that truth you relate to in your heart. Your pronouncements, what depths I do feel! Can it perchance be that my passion has strayed our winds far from me?”
W: “No, my love! Why is anger, I feel, lush on thine tongue?”
M: (Surprised and Frightened) “Anger! I am too distant from that affliction! But yes, I feel my words make only for unstable murmurs in my breath.”
W: (Quietly) “Then, do tell me, lover, who do your murmurs betray - myself or yourself then?”
M: (Quietly) “Perhaps so, perhaps so. But my anxiety wilfully demands of me to eradicate your vision.”
W: (Firmly) “You answer naught from my undemanding question. Or, are mine meanings too violent for you? What aches thee?”
M: (Passionately) “My sweet! In so many moments, I created mysterious planets for thee! Bizarre worlds of contrasts and opposites and musical words of antiquity and sensual ravines. My love! I, my soul, my life, my inner deepest breath, tempted as I am by Fates’ inscrutable cruelties to ashamedly yield, I have yet always expressed to mine eyes’ heart, though they be in bleak darkness, to faithfully fight without pause all shades of vice and still yet - with loving integrity; I have stood with arms of righteousness and love for thee up and never down! Yes, sincere good and venal ill remain joined in life for all to feel, but you knew it was not for me to disentangle them. And so, I pronounce unto thee, still, and yet ever and ever more, my love for thee, though still beholding a thousand mountains before me, I remain sturdy for thee; I remain undisturbed by burly laws, and by exotic dictums, I stand fierce and unhurt, save in your absence.”
W: (With Sadness) “My beloved, your vivid voice stabs the falsehoods for thee, and I say unto thee, unto thee your excessive and unreasonable chains, and for myself my unreasonable and extreme chains remain.”
M: (Shocked) “But I burden thee with no steely chains, nor verbal fetters! For naught I produce for thee save grace, passion and freedom to love for us both to be in Unity Sacred! Dost thou embrace my visions as ‘shackles’, then ‘tis better we agree to class that which we are as but madness! Hear me, for my tears now must truly change their colours!”
W: (Determined) “Your feverish hands clutch only upon mine erratic wings!”
M: (Anger) “Never! Never! For I clutch only to destroy all malevolence; as for thee, Lady of the purest, untouched, guarded, secluded Ponds, I seek to unshackle for you the scattered, scared shadows that yearn for thine sovereignty. And what is this ‘sovereignty’ but our Sacred Union? What curse deemest you I impose? Do you equal my purest passions with atrocities? Murmur unto mine ears, your clearest love for me.”
W: “Ah! You enquire of me my ‘sincerity’ for thee? What demands!”
(Silence)
M: “I see naught but heaving forests of love betwixt us, and yet, you discover my words being ‘demanding’?”
W: (Drily) “Perchance, your visions are indistinct and ever more blurred, through these years cannot be ignored.”
M: (Begging) “My love! All mine life, though it be lengthy, I fought most venal tyranny, and for this moment, you question my righteousness?”
W: (Indignantly) “I have been plunged into seas hostile and I have plunged in a thousand miles of inert minds troubled beyond conceivable comprehension and I have yet to have my Right for my own greedy, ravenous flesh to be vigorously and forcefully embraced by sensuality and serenity. Yes, I do love thee, and yet in our union, as in all unions, I have been adorned with naught, save snickering, gossiping scenes of festive *****, games, chatter and farewells, themselves festooned within silly and sincerely stupid smiles and frowns, and shallow tears and never ending ludicrous chatter unworthy of monkeys conversing. I have met programmed rows of pats, respect and all other so-called decent intents and gestures, but, where, lover that you are of mine, where does my personal heart, throb and manically vibrate, save in your heavenly imaginations?”
(Silence)
W: (Quietly but Determinedly) “My love! I truly thee love and with passions, I tell you, of proportions of precise exactitudes; in your eyes I have witnessed symphonies of exquisiteness; and, I of thee ask: where dwelleth your own love for myself in thine body?”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) “Do you recognise the changing structures that form this, that I name ‘My Love’? In my solitude eternal, I do evermore and always do pause, and be pensive, and be thinking of questions, such as ‘where’, ‘why’, ‘when’ ‘how’, and ‘which’ should be my path; I am forever and ever more searching, seeking the heavens of every corner, and the irritable tempests, within my changing self as they themselves do try to seek me, and we forever, through inconceivable murkiness, do try to assemble the everlasting entirety of these disorganized puzzles into some measure of comprehensible cohesion that ‘I’ am. That is how the ‘I’ you love is forever changing and thereby formulating itself, and within all these meandering passions, and endless errors, where am I to feel thee? Where? And where do you seek me? In which land? In which forest? You trivialise my beingness as you focus upon my lands as being that which so effortless to find, and yet, you are much too distant from an understanding of my conflicting, emerging civilisations.”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) If the utterance ‘Never’ is pathetic for thee, then allow me to introduce you to my latest heart: for it screams out that single, protracted utterance! Never! My love, these winds of raging wraths, both within and outside by flesh, must and can only be annihilated by mine own sincerities – were I not to play against my own self. My uncontrolled desires and, yes, thirsty manic passions can only be tempered and thoroughly satiated to the utter brim, by mine own loving, sources of pleasure, my own uncontrollable ecstasies. As for the rest of ****** pleasures, my own erroneous words, speeches and utterances can only be severed and sliced by my tranquillity.”
M: (Resigned) “I hear thine words. Do not abandon me. Do not destroy our civilisation of justice.”
W: “What we share, the bonds, are enjoyment. Listen though to mine lips: enjoyment is what - when it is to be compared with convulsive ecstatic quivers of satisfaction?”
M: (Puzzled) “And what of all our journeys to attain that unity? For all that, is it to be of mere insignificance? And if that be your truth, for what then did we toil and labour for unity of minds and bodies?”
W: (Laughing) “Did you understand from Life itself, that here it was, grandly to proclaim its furtive faces unto thine own awaiting face?! “
M: (Baffled) “It was so far too plain and vastly clear unto me these sceneries we faced before our loving bodies.”
W: “Yes, and I too, did see them with thee. Our four eyes, did see unity for that flicker of time. How true you speak! But, time clocked on, I saw you as you stood there, moving nowhere, unawares that it was your duty to squash onwards whatever vile breaths faced us.”
M: (Desperate) “And did I not? Did I abandon thee in these crushing paths?”
W: (Accusing) “No, you did not. Never, once did you abandon me. I ask of thee; for what sense do we feel a need for a continuation of these gruelling marches? For unity? For love? Or, is love unity? Was that and is this our reason for us to carry on with these shackles?”
M: “For assuredly, yes, and more yes, I tell thee! Toil and gruelling dawns, and unbearable evenings and the whitest of nights are all for the sacred attainment of that heavenly summit of joy I name as blessed ‘Love’.”
W: (Assured) “And, Sire, what if my nerves, blood and ****** hunger tell thee in truth that we, all of us, need no longer, and need never in truth, to undertake these paths, for we find naught that nourishes us at the blessed summit of your definition of what ‘Love’ is?”
M: (Confused & Sad) “So, I falter here and now upon understanding your speech; do I reason from thee that our loving days in unity are frivolously bygone now?”
W: (Calmly & Gracefully) “Do the wandering birds, and do the blind bats, and do the reckless storms, and do the blindly, raging waves and do the supremely arrogant oceans eternally march on in but one direction only with the savage passage of time within their particular lives? You did pronounce that you built planets for our unity; well then, did you not view how planets endlessly revolve along the same path?”
(Pause)
W: (Calmly & with Dignity) “For, Sire, I am not as a Planet - could you not feel that throughout our journeys? You endlessly query and question ‘who’ it is that ‘I’ am? Well, I speak this much on myself; I am as the birds, and the bats, and the storms and the waves and the oceans.”  
M: (Angry) “Woman! I can only then tell of thee that you are naught but feuding clutter and violent disarray!”
W: (Unconcerned) “Those are your words. Not mine. Speak for what you wish, Sire.”
M: (Angry) “And I stand here, before thee, in anger – nay, more, more! In fury!”
W: (Laughing) “For what? For the deeds that created but sticky, and grimy grains of sand for the undoubted pleasure our eyes?”
M: “And so you label our truths, our love so much! Fair indeed, you speak, Woman of Justice.”
W: (Arrogantly) “Man! Express your delights for your own delights. And, alas, there the circle and reality ends – and it ends only for you. That is one morsel of truth for you to ponder. What we ‘created’ and what we ‘loved’ was never and never, ever be the same for you as it is for me. Are you a sincere believer that your personal vision is the same sight all other seeing creatures envision?”
M: (Angry) “Woman, you enrage me! Your arrogance is drenching thine rags.”
W: (Sarcastic) “Tis the Man with no reason who allows his breath and words to be a veritable cesspool of fuming stenches!”
M: “But I, that I am, no longer can define your contours?”
W: (Pointedly) “Precisely, Man, precisely. Perhaps, now you have come closer to the vulnerable shores of reality!”
M: (Confused) “Do you express that you are ever varying and so for that reason there is not a one unified you?”
W: (Calmly) “For we are all ‘varying’, to borrow your word – if you do so allow me, Sire. There was never ‘unity’ of soul, nor mind, nor self, nor of any one personality. This, I desire, that you may understand.”
M: (Aghast) “Then if that be your truth and then, are we naught but multitudes of ever changing confusions, Lady of the Desert?”
W: (Calmly) “Yes and no! For those who are muscular and full of fertile vigour in their flesh, and in their intellects, and those that are severely and strictly scholastic, then they do need and they can succeed in time, in their never ending struggle to bring together the mutually antagonistic factions of that which constitutes our beingness. And, as for the dense brained soulless beings, then, it is equally veritably true that, a descent into madness can be rapidly produced, since from their erratic constituents, they cannot attract together these antagonistic and mutually-hating emotions in some vision of cohesion, and thus mayhem can be fashioned.”
(Silence)
M: (Calmly) “So, pray do tell me, where does Love and Justice and Truth and Morality stand in your universe?”
W: (Serenely) “That has been mine desire to hear the words being produced from your lips, Man!”
(Pause)
W: “So, now perhaps, your sight may be getting clearer, for your question is certainly apt. Foremost, we pathetic mortals, we the be are forever slimy specks of sand that  crumbles, must necessarily seek to survive and flourish within whatever forest, desert, meadow we find ourselves cast upon.”
M: (Startled) “At what cost, Woman? At the expense of Morality?”
W: (Rapidly) “Yes and no.”
M: (Shocked) “Horrendous! How can you spout out such filth?”
W: (Quietly) “Restrain your stupidities, and give more room to your intelligence, Sire.”
(Silence)
W: (Gracefully) “In times of trouble, what can Man do when he be forced to embrace evil, even though he finds the act of the embrace loathsome, but he does what he does for the truth of his vital existence to continue. Only when he need never embrace vile, and then allows himself to commit the act, then he is for certainty to incur the everlasting wrath of God. Evil is thus never one truth to be utterly rejected, perchance you may now see. ”
M: (Calm but Tired) “I follow your words and their ideas therein.”
W: (Gracefully) “When you talk to me on Man and everlasting, conflicting changes within that self-same creature, I tell you with all the earnestness that I possess, of what God has scattered and endowed upon me; for this beast, we all call in unity Man, this creature has far too many a numberless number of mutually self-contradicting, distrusting, loving, hating, inspiring and a never ending number of feelings and emotions that are in constant flow and change – as in any rapid river descending unto its eventual destination, which in its case, is the sea, while in our case, it is Death itself for sure.”
M: (Despair) “And how can this beast ‘love’ anyone within this welter of confusion?”
W: (Rapidly) “He cannot!”
M: (Rapidly, Begging) “But Man and Woman do love with bristling passions! Do you deny that, Woman?!”
W: (Calmly, eyes downwards looking) “Yes, and no. Since the beast has needs, based on his vastly intricate constituents, to ‘love’ his fellow beast, he imagines and believes

You were born five years before the Spanish Civil War that would see your father exiled.
Language came later to you than your little brother Manuel. And you stuttered for a time.
Unlike those who speak incessantly with nothing to say, you were quiet and reserved.
Your mother mistook shyness for dimness, a tragic mistake that scarred you for life.

When your brother Manuel died at the age of three from meningitis, you heard your mom
Exclaim: “God took my bright boy and left me the dull one.” You were four or five.
You never forgot those words. How could you? Yet you loved your mom with all your heart.
But you also withdrew further into a shell, solitude your companion and best friend.

You were, in fact, an exceptional child. Stuttering went away at five or so never to return,
And by the time you were in middle school, your teacher called your mom in for a rare
Conference and told her that yours was a gifted mind, and that you should be prepared
For university study in the sciences, particularly engineering.

She wrote your father exiled in Argentina to tell him the good news, that your teachers
Believed you would easily gain entrance to the (then and now) highly selective public university
Where seats were few, prized and very difficult to attain based on merit-based competitive
Exams. Your father’s response? “Buy him a couple of oxen and let him plow the fields.”

That reply from a highly respected man who was a big fish in a tiny pond in his native Oleiros
Of the time is beyond comprehension. He had apparently opted to preserve his own self-
Interest in having his son continue his family business and also work the family lands in his
Absence. That scar too was added to those that would never heal in your pure, huge heart.

Left with no support for living expenses for college (all it would have required), you moved on,
Disappointed and hurt, but not angry or bitter; you would simply find another way.
You took the competitive exams for the two local military training schools that would provide
An excellent vocational education and pay you a small salary in exchange for military service.

Of hundreds of applicants for the prized few seats in each of the two institutions, you
Scored first for the toughest of the two and thirteenth for the second. You had your pick.
You chose Fabrica de Armas, the lesser of the two, so that a classmate who had scored just
Below the cut-off at the better school could be admitted. That was you. Always and forever.

At the military school, you were finally in your element. You were to become a world-class
Machinist there—a profession that would have gotten you well paid work anywhere on earth
For as long as you wanted it. You were truly a mechanical genius who years later would add
Electronics, auto mechanics and specialized welding to his toolkit through formal training.

Given a well-stocked machine shop, you could reverse engineer every machine without
Blueprints and build a duplicate machine shop. You became a gifted master mechanic
And worked in line and supervisory positions at a handful of companies throughout your life in
Argentina and in the U.S., including Westinghouse, Warner-Lambert, and Pepsi Co.

You loved learning, especially in your fields (electronics, mechanics, welding) and expected
Perfection in everything you did. Every difficult job at work was given to you everywhere you
Worked. You would not sleep at night when a problem needed solving. You’d sketch
And calculate and re-sketch solutions and worked even in your dreams with singular passion.

You were more than a match for the academic and physical rigors of military school,
But life was difficult for you in the Franco era when some instructors would
Deprecatingly refer to you as “Roxo”—Galician for “red”-- reflecting your father’s
Support for the failed Republic. Eventually, the abuse was too much for you to bear.

Once while standing at attention in a corridor with the other cadets waiting for
Roll call, you were repeatedly poked in the back surreptitiously. Moving would cause
Demerits and demerits could cause loss of points on your final grade and arrest for
Successive weekends. You took it awhile, then lost your temper.

You turned to the cadet behind you and in a fluid motion grabbed him by his buttoned jacket
And one-handedly hung him up on a hook above a window where you were standing in line.
He thrashed about, hanging by the back of his jacket, until he was brought down by irate Military instructors.
You got weekend arrest for many weeks and a 10% final grade reduction.

A similar fate befell a co-worker a few years later in Buenos Aires who called you a
*******. You lifted him one handed by his throat and held him there until
Your co-workers intervened, forcibly persuading you to put him down.
That lesson was learned by all in no uncertain terms: Leave Felipe’s mom alone.

You were incredibly strong, especially in your youth—no doubt in part because of rigorous farm
Work, military school training and competitive sports. As a teenager, you once unwisely bent
Down to pick something up in view of a ram, presenting the animal an irresistible target.
It butted you and sent you flying into a haystack. It, too, quickly learned its lesson.

You dusted yourself off, charged the ram, grabbed it by the horns and twirled it around once,
Throwing it atop the same haystack as it had you. The animal was unhurt, but learned to
Give you a wide berth from that day forward. Overall, you were very slow to anger absent
Head-butting, repeated pokings, or disrespectful references to your mom by anyone.    

I seldom saw you angry and it was mom, not you, who was the disciplinarian, slipper in hand.
There were very few slaps from you for me. Mom would smack my behind with a slipper often
When I was little, mostly because I could be a real pain, wanting to know/try/do everything
Completely oblivious to the meaning of the word “no” or of my own limitations.

Mom would sometimes insist you give me a proper beating. On one such occasion for a
Forgotten transgression when I was nine, you  took me to your bedroom, took off your belt, sat
Me next to you and whipped your own arm and hand a few times, whispering to me “cry”,
Which I was happy to do unbidden. “Don’t tell mom.” I did not. No doubt she knew.

The prospect of serving in a military that considered you a traitor by blood became harder and
Harder to bear, and in the third year of school, one year prior to graduation, you left to join
Your exiled father in Argentina, to start a new life. You left behind a mother and two sisters you
Dearly loved to try your fortune in a new land. Your dog thereafter refused food, dying of grief.

You arrived in Buenos Aires to see a father you had not seen for ten years at the age of 17.
You were too young to work legally, but looked older than your years (a shared trait),
So you lied about your age and immediately found work as a Machinist/Mechanic first grade.
That was unheard of and brought you some jealousy and complaints in the union shop.

The union complained to the general manager about your top-salary and rank. He answered,
“I’ll give the same rank and salary to anyone in the company who can do what Felipe can do.”
No doubt the jealousy and grumblings continued by some for a time. But there were no takers.
And you soon won the group over, becoming their protected “baby-brother” mascot.

Your dad left for Spain within a year or so of your arrival when Franco issued a general pardon
To all dissidents who had not spilt blood (e.g., non combatants). He wanted you to return to
Help him reclaim the family business taken over by your mom in his absence with your help.
But you refused to give up the high salary, respect and independence denied you at home.

You were perhaps 18 and alone, living in a single room by a schoolhouse you had shared with Your dad.
But you had also found a new loving family in your uncle José, one of your father’s Brothers, and his family. José, and one of his daughters, Nieves and her
Husband, Emilio, and
Their children, Susana, Oscar (Ruben Gordé), and Osvaldo, became your new nuclear family.

You married mom in 1955 and had two failed business ventures in the quickly fading
Post-WW II Argentina of the late 1950s and early 1960s.The first, a machine shop, left
You with a small fortune in unpaid government contract work.  The second, a grocery store,
Also failed due to hyperinflation and credit extended too easily to needy customers.

Throughout this, you continued earning an exceptionally good salary. But in the mid 1960’s,
Nearly all of it went to pay back creditors of the failed grocery store. We had some really hard
Times. Someday I’ll write about that in some detail. Mom went to work as a maid, including for
Wealthy friends, and you left home at 4:00 a.m. to return long after dark to pay the bills.

 
The only luxury you and mom retained was my Catholic school tuition. There was no other
Extravagance. Not paying bills was never an option for you or mom. It never entered your
Minds. It was not a matter of law or pride, but a matter of honor. There were at least three very
Lean years where you and mom worked hard, earned well but we were truly poor.

You and mom took great pains to hide this from me—and suffered great privations to insulate
Me as best you could from the fallout of a shattered economy and your refusal to cut your loses
Had done to your life savings and to our once-comfortable middle-class life.
We came to the U.S. in the late 1960s after waiting for more than three years for visas—to a new land of hope.

Your sister and brother-in-law, Marisa and Manuel, made their own sacrifices to help bring us
Here. You had about $1,000 from the down payment on our tiny down-sized house, And
Mom’s pawned jewelry. (Hyperinflation and expenses ate up the remaining mortgage payments
Due). Other prized possessions were left in a trunk until you could reclaim them. You never did.

Even the airline tickets were paid for by Marisa and Manuel. You insisted upon arriving on
Written terms for repayment including interest. You were hired on the spot on your first
Interview as a mechanic, First Grade, despite not speaking a word of English. Two months later,
The debt was repaid, mom was working too and we moved into our first apartment.

You worked long hours, including Saturdays and daily overtime, to remake a nest egg.
Declining health forced you to retire at 63 and shortly thereafter you and mom moved out of
Queens into Orange County. You bought a townhouse two hours from my permanent residence
Upstate NY and for the next decade were happy, traveling with friends and visiting us often.

Then things started to change. Heart issues (two pacemakers), colon cancer, melanoma,
Liver and kidney disease caused by your many medications, high blood pressure, gout,
Gall bladder surgery, diabetes . . . . And still you moved forward, like the Energizer Bunny,
Patched up, battered, scarred, bruised but unstoppable and unflappable.

Then mom started to show signs of memory loss along with her other health issues. She was
Good at hiding her own ailments, and we noticed much later than we should have that there
Was a serious problem. Two years ago, her dementia worsening but still functional, she had
Gall bladder surgery with complications that required four separate surgeries in three months.

She never recovered and had to be placed in a nursing home. Several, in fact, as at first she
Refused food and you and I refused to simply let her waste away, which might have been
Kinder, but for the fact that “mientras hay vida, hay esperanza” as Spaniards say.
(While there is Life there is hope.) There is nothing beyond the power of God. Miracles do happen.
 
For two years you lived alone, refusing outside help, engendering numerous arguments about
Having someone go by a few times a week to help clean, cook, do chores. You were nothing if
Not stubborn (yet another shared trait). The last argument on the subject about two weeks ago
Ended in your crying. You’d accept no outside help until mom returned home. Period.

You were in great pain because of bulging discs in your spine and walked with one of those
Rolling seats with handlebars that mom and I picked out for you some years ago. You’d sit
As needed when the pain was too much, then continue with very little by way of complaints.
Ten days ago you finally agreed that you needed to get to the hospital to drain abdominal fluid.

Your failing liver produced it and it swelled your abdomen and lower extremities to the point
Where putting on shoes or clothing was very difficult, as was breathing. You called me from a
Local store crying that you could not find pants that would fit you. We talked, long distance,
And I calmed you down, as always, not allowing you to wallow in self pity but trying to help.

You went home and found a new pair of stretch pants Alice and I had bought you and you were
Happy. You had two changes of clothes that still fit to take to the hospital. No sweat, all was
Well. The procedure was not dangerous and you’d undergone it several times in recent years.
It would require a couple of days at the hospital and I’d see you again on the weekend.

I could not be with you on Monday, February 22 when you had to go to the hospital, as I nearly
Always had, because of work. You were supposed to be admitted the previous Friday, but
Doctors have days off too, and yours could not see you until Monday when I could not get off
Work. But you were not concerned; this was just routine. You’d be fine. I’d see you in just days.

We’d go see mom Friday, when you’d be much lighter and feel much better. Perhaps we’d go
Shopping for clothes if the procedure still left you too bloated for your usual clothes.
You drove to your doctor and then transported by ambulette. I was concerned, but not too Worried.
You called me sometime between five or six p.m. to tell me you were fine, resting.

“Don’t worry. I’m safe here and well cared for.” We talked for a little while about the usual
Things, with my assuring you I’d see you Friday or Saturday. You were tired and wanted to sleep
And I told you to call me if you woke up later that night or I’d speak to you the following day.
Around 10:00 p.m. I got a call from your cell and answered in the usual upbeat manner.

“Hey, Papi.” On the other side was a nurse telling me my dad had fallen. I assured her she was
Mistaken, as my dad was there for a routine procedure to drain abdominal fluid. “You don’t
Understand. He fell from his bed and struck his head on a nightstand or something
And his heart has stopped. We’re working on him for 20 minutes and it does not look good.”

“Can you get here?” I could not. I had had two or three glasses of wine shortly before the call
With dinner. I could not drive the three hours to Middletown. I cried. I prayed.
Fifteen minutes Later I got the call that you were gone. Lost in grief, not knowing what to do, I called my wife.
Shortly thereafter came a call from the coroner. An autopsy was required. I could not see you.

Four days later your body was finally released to the funeral director I had selected for his
Experience with the process of interment in Spain. I saw you for the last time to identify
Your body. I kissed my fingers and touched your mangled brow. I could not even have the
Comfort of an open casket viewing. You wanted cremation. You body awaits it as I write this.

You were alone, even in death alone. In the hospital as strangers worked on you. In the medical
Examiner’s office as you awaited the autopsy. In the autopsy table as they poked and prodded
And further rent your flesh looking for irrelevant clues that would change nothing and benefit
No one, least of all you. I could not be with you for days, and then only for a painful moment.

We will have a memorial service next Friday with your ashes and a mass on Saturday. I will
Never again see you in this life. Alice and I will take you home to your home town, to the
Cemetery in Oleiros, La Coruña, Spain this summer. There you will await the love of your life.
Who will join you in the fullness of time. She could not understand my tears or your passing.

There is one blessing to dementia. She asks for her mom, and says she is worried because she
Has not come to visit in some time. She is coming, she assures me whenever I see her.
You visited her every day except when health absolutely prevented it. You spent this February 10
Apart, your 61st wedding anniversary, too sick to visit her. Nor was I there. First time.

I hope you did not realize you were apart on the 10th but doubt it to be the case. I
Did not mention it, hoping you’d forgotten, and neither did you. You were my link to mom.
She cannot dial or answer a phone, so you would put your cell phone to her ear whenever I
Was not in class or meetings and could speak to her. She always recognized me by phone.

I am three hours from her. I could visit at most once or twice a month. Now even that phone
Lifeline is severed. Mom is completely alone, afraid, confused, and I cannot in the short term at
Least do much about that. You were not supposed to die first. It was my greatest fear, and
Yours, but as with so many things that we cannot change I put it in the back of my mind.

It kept me up many nights, but, like you, I still believed—and believe—in miracles.
I would speak every night with my you, often for an hour, on the way home from work late at
Night during my hour-long commute, or from home on days I worked from home as I cooked
Dinner. I mostly let you talk, trying to give you what comfort and social outlet I could.

You were lonely, sad, stuck in an endless cycle of emotional and physical pain.
Lately you were especially reticent to get off the phone. When mom was home and still
Relatively well, I’d call every day too but usually spoke to you only a few minutes and you’d
Transfer the phone to mom, with whom I usually chatted much longer.

For months, you’d had difficulty hanging up. I knew you did not want to go back to the couch,
To a meaningless TV program, or to writing more bills. You’d say good-bye, or “enough for
Today” and immediately begin a new thread, then repeat the cycle, sometimes five or six times.
You even told me, at least once crying recently, “Just hang up on me or I’ll just keep talking.”

I loved you, dad, with all my heart. We argued, and I’d often scream at you in frustration,
Knowing you would never take it to heart and would usually just ignore me and do as
You pleased. I knew how desperately you needed me, and I tried to be as patient as I could.
But there were days when I was just too tired, too frustrated, too full of other problems.

There were days when I got frustrated with you just staying on the phone for an hour when I
Needed to call Alice, to eat my cold dinner, or even to watch a favorite program. I felt guilty
And very seldom cut a conversation short, but I was frustrated nonetheless even knowing
How much you needed me and also how much I needed you, and how little you asked of me.  

How I would love to hear your voice again, even if you wanted to complain about the same old
Things or tell me in minutest detail some unimportant aspect of your day. I thought I would
Have you at least a little longer. A year? Two? God only knew, and I could hope. There would be
Time. I had so much more to share with you, so much more to learn when life eased up a bit.

You taught me to fish (it did not take) and to hunt (that took even less) and much of what I
Know about mechanics, and electronics. We worked on our cars together for years—from brake
Jobs, to mufflers, to real tune-ups in the days when points, condensers, and timing lights had Meaning, to rebuilding carburetors and fixing rust and dents, and power windows and more.

We were friends, good friends, who went on Sunday drives to favorite restaurants or shopping
For tools when I was single and lived at home. You taught me everything in life that I need to
Know about all the things that matter. The rest is meaningless paper and window dressing.
I knew all your few faults and your many colossal strengths and knew you to be the better man.

Not even close. I could never do what you did. I could never excel in my fields as you did in
Yours.  You were the real deal in every way, from every angle, throughout your life. I did not
Always treat you that way. But I loved you very deeply as anyone who knew us knows.
More importantly, you knew it. I told you often, unembarrassed in the telling. I love you, Dad.

The world was enriched by your journey. You do not leave behind wealth, or a body or work to
Outlive you. You never had your fifteen minutes in the sun. But you mattered. God knows your
Virtue, your absolute integrity, and the purity of your heart. I will never know a better man.
I will love you and miss you and carry you in my heart every day of my life. God bless you, dad.

PASSION PLAY

Ayad Gharbawi




Location: Desert Shore, Bitterly Cold Night, next to strong waves from the ocean.
Characters: Man ((M) and his Lover, a Woman (W).

----------------------------------------



W: “Search as I forever do, in manifold ways unknown, I seek but to love thee, and the meagre goodness from Life, with steely ardour - my armour faithful.”
M: “Alone I may be, and still, yes I love thee; these days heavy are and beset I am by burdensome trivialities, but I remain trusting, though my corner so narrow remain.”
W: “My Love! Your speech I hear aloud and thine lips I live within and yet, my Love, all Solitude I am. Man! I am unaided! In this journey of sinful thorns, my love, in this unforgiving journey, this blurred odyssey, I stand alone”.
M: “This trial you speak of, but I do know of it well; so, listen then: within the strength of trusted togetherness we can plough on, though everlasting harm shall do its spiteful tricks, warm to our united truth shall we remain.”
W: (Surprised) “O! My love! This thought I cannot hear! My life, my destiny, is but mine. And all have their own solitary roads of jagged rocks to embrace, like it we or not. We heartbreaking earthly sad beasts, either fiercely clutch at integrity, or we do let it go to perish away.”
M: (Confused) “My Love! I do hear, I do hear. But when Times decide on burdening us, what then can we achieve? To face Reality within the frail arms of solitude is to ignore, to refuse the severe threats of repulsive grins.”
(Silence)
M: (Passionately) “O! My sweet! Only in us, can we envelope, through joined, clasped warmth can we be as one united! The screams that so truly are meant to slice us off, only we, our Unity, can destroy. For mine eyes can only find sleep in your ears, and it is so - for otherwise nothing and no one can be.”
W: (Angry) “My Passion too is bubbling for thine bewildered ears. Am I not your soul? Do we not suffer as one? Do we not reflect as one? Am I not your lover true? Is not our warmth not weighty to our fickle bones?”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) “But, Lover, this much ought I to formally declare unto thee: For our eyes, and all eyes, envision unequally at one another. Till eternity, in its casual, indifferent flicker, snatches at us all wretched mortals, the gazes from lords to paupers remain veritably mismatched. O my passion! My woeful heart! These words I thunder forth defines love unfeigned, and what mine eyes do pour out unto thine ears is authenticity true.
(Silence)
W: (Passionately) “What joined mem’ries you choose to caress may possess thee, but your exactness for what love is to you, doth not dwell in mine mind. What tears, what weepings you do, fall stormily upon thine own soul’s wildernesses. You choose to be chained by changing visions and indefinite sentiments of light weight – though so poignant at the moment they veritably are?”
M: (Inquiring) “My love! I cherish thee; where hast thou been in thine mind, for now ye talk of that truth you relate to in your heart. Your pronouncements, what depths I do feel! Can it perchance be that my passion has strayed our winds far from me?”
W: “No, my love! Why is anger, I feel, lush on thine tongue?”
M: (Surprised and Frightened) “Anger! I am too distant from that affliction! But yes, I feel my words make only for unstable murmurs in my breath.”
W: (Quietly) “Then, do tell me, lover, who do your murmurs betray - myself or yourself then?”
M: (Quietly) “Perhaps so, perhaps so. But my anxiety wilfully demands of me to eradicate your vision.”
W: (Firmly) “You answer naught from my undemanding question. Or, are mine meanings too violent for you? What aches thee?”
M: (Passionately) “My sweet! In so many moments, I created mysterious planets for thee! Bizarre worlds of contrasts and opposites and musical words of antiquity and sensual ravines. My love! I, my soul, my life, my inner deepest breath, tempted as I am by Fates’ inscrutable cruelties to ashamedly yield, I have yet always expressed to mine eyes’ heart, though they be in bleak darkness, to faithfully fight without pause all shades of vice and still yet - with loving integrity; I have stood with arms of righteousness and love for thee up and never down! Yes, sincere good and venal ill remain joined in life for all to feel, but you knew it was not for me to disentangle them. And so, I pronounce unto thee, still, and yet ever and ever more, my love for thee, though still beholding a thousand mountains before me, I remain sturdy for thee; I remain undisturbed by burly laws, and by exotic dictums, I stand fierce and unhurt, save in your absence.”
W: (With Sadness) “My beloved, your vivid voice stabs the falsehoods for thee, and I say unto thee, unto thee your excessive and unreasonable chains, and for myself my unreasonable and extreme chains remain.”
M: (Shocked) “But I burden thee with no steely chains, nor verbal fetters! For naught I produce for thee save grace, passion and freedom to love for us both to be in Unity Sacred! Dost thou embrace my visions as ‘shackles’, then ‘tis better we agree to class that which we are as but madness! Hear me, for my tears now must truly change their colours!”
W: (Determined) “Your feverish hands clutch only upon mine erratic wings!”
M: (Anger) “Never! Never! For I clutch only to destroy all malevolence; as for thee, Lady of the purest, untouched, guarded, secluded Ponds, I seek to unshackle for you the scattered, scared shadows that yearn for thine sovereignty. And what is this ‘sovereignty’ but our Sacred Union? What curse deemest you I impose? Do you equal my purest passions with atrocities? Murmur unto mine ears, your clearest love for me.”
W: “Ah! You enquire of me my ‘sincerity’ for thee? What demands!”
(Silence)
M: “I see naught but heaving forests of love betwixt us, and yet, you discover my words being ‘demanding’?”
W: (Drily) “Perchance, your visions are indistinct and ever more blurred, through these years cannot be ignored.”
M: (Begging) “My love! All mine life, though it be lengthy, I fought most venal tyranny, and for this moment, you question my righteousness?”
W: (Indignantly) “I have been plunged into seas hostile and I have plunged in a thousand miles of inert minds troubled beyond conceivable comprehension and I have yet to have my Right for my own greedy, ravenous flesh to be vigorously and forcefully embraced by sensuality and serenity. Yes, I do love thee, and yet in our union, as in all unions, I have been adorned with naught, save snickering, gossiping scenes of festive *****, games, chatter and farewells, themselves festooned within silly and sincerely stupid smiles and frowns, and shallow tears and never ending ludicrous chatter unworthy of monkeys conversing. I have met programmed rows of pats, respect and all other so-called decent intents and gestures, but, where, lover that you are of mine, where does my personal heart, throb and manically vibrate, save in your heavenly imaginations?”
(Silence)
W: (Quietly but Determinedly) “My love! I truly thee love and with passions, I tell you, of proportions of precise exactitudes; in your eyes I have witnessed symphonies of exquisiteness; and, I of thee ask: where dwelleth your own love for myself in thine body?”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) “Do you recognise the changing structures that form this, that I name ‘My Love’? In my solitude eternal, I do evermore and always do pause, and be pensive, and be thinking of questions, such as ‘where’, ‘why’, ‘when’ ‘how’, and ‘which’ should be my path; I am forever and ever more searching, seeking the heavens of every corner, and the irritable tempests, within my changing self as they themselves do try to seek me, and we forever, through inconceivable murkiness, do try to assemble the everlasting entirety of these disorganized puzzles into some measure of comprehensible cohesion that ‘I’ am. That is how the ‘I’ you love is forever changing and thereby formulating itself, and within all these meandering passions, and endless errors, where am I to feel thee? Where? And where do you seek me? In which land? In which forest? You trivialise my beingness as you focus upon my lands as being that which so effortless to find, and yet, you are much too distant from an understanding of my conflicting, emerging civilisations.”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) If the utterance ‘Never’ is pathetic for thee, then allow me to introduce you to my latest heart: for it screams out that single, protracted utterance! Never! My love, these winds of raging wraths, both within and outside by flesh, must and can only be annihilated by mine own sincerities – were I not to play against my own self. My uncontrolled desires and, yes, thirsty manic passions can only be tempered and thoroughly satiated to the utter brim, by mine own loving, sources of pleasure, my own uncontrollable ecstasies. As for the rest of ****** pleasures, my own erroneous words, speeches and utterances can only be severed and sliced by my tranquillity.”
M: (Resigned) “I hear thine words. Do not abandon me. Do not destroy our civilisation of justice.”
W: “What we share, the bonds, are enjoyment. Listen though to mine lips: enjoyment is what - when it is to be compared with convulsive ecstatic quivers of satisfaction?”
M: (Puzzled) “And what of all our journeys to attain that unity? For all that, is it to be of mere insignificance? And if that be your truth, for what then did we toil and labour for unity of minds and bodies?”
W: (Laughing) “Did you understand from Life itself, that here it was, grandly to proclaim its furtive faces unto thine own awaiting face?! “
M: (Baffled) “It was so far too plain and vastly clear unto me these sceneries we faced before our loving bodies.”
W: “Yes, and I too, did see them with thee. Our four eyes, did see unity for that flicker of time. How true you speak! But, time clocked on, I saw you as you stood there, moving nowhere, unawares that it was your duty to squash onwards whatever vile breaths faced us.”
M: (Desperate) “And did I not? Did I abandon thee in these crushing paths?”
W: (Accusing) “No, you did not. Never, once did you abandon me. I ask of thee; for what sense do we feel a need for a continuation of these gruelling marches? For unity? For love? Or, is love unity? Was that and is this our reason for us to carry on with these shackles?”
M: “For assuredly, yes, and more yes, I tell thee! Toil and gruelling dawns, and unbearable evenings and the whitest of nights are all for the sacred attainment of that heavenly summit of joy I name as blessed ‘Love’.”
W: (Assured) “And, Sire, what if my nerves, blood and ****** hunger tell thee in truth that we, all of us, need no longer, and need never in truth, to undertake these paths, for we find naught that nourishes us at the blessed summit of your definition of what ‘Love’ is?”
M: (Confused & Sad) “So, I falter here and now upon understanding your speech; do I reason from thee that our loving days in unity are frivolously bygone now?”
W: (Calmly & Gracefully) “Do the wandering birds, and do the blind bats, and do the reckless storms, and do the blindly, raging waves and do the supremely arrogant oceans eternally march on in but one direction only with the savage passage of time within their particular lives? You did pronounce that you built planets for our unity; well then, did you not view how planets endlessly revolve along the same path?”
(Pause)
W: (Calmly & with Dignity) “For, Sire, I am not as a Planet - could you not feel that throughout our journeys? You endlessly query and question ‘who’ it is that ‘I’ am? Well, I speak this much on myself; I am as the birds, and the bats, and the storms and the waves and the oceans.”  
M: (Angry) “Woman! I can only then tell of thee that you are naught but feuding clutter and violent disarray!”
W: (Unconcerned) “Those are your words. Not mine. Speak for what you wish, Sire.”
M: (Angry) “And I stand here, before thee, in anger – nay, more, more! In fury!”
W: (Laughing) “For what? For the deeds that created but sticky, and grimy grains of sand for the undoubted pleasure our eyes?”
M: “And so you label our truths, our love so much! Fair indeed, you speak, Woman of Justice.”
W: (Arrogantly) “Man! Express your delights for your own delights. And, alas, there the circle and reality ends – and it ends only for you. That is one morsel of truth for you to ponder. What we ‘created’ and what we ‘loved’ was never and never, ever be the same for you as it is for me. Are you a sincere believer that your personal vision is the same sight all other seeing creatures envision?”
M: (Angry) “Woman, you enrage me! Your arrogance is drenching thine rags.”
W: (Sarcastic) “Tis the Man with no reason who allows his breath and words to be a veritable cesspool of fuming stenches!”
M: “But I, that I am, no longer can define your contours?”
W: (Pointedly) “Precisely, Man, precisely. Perhaps, now you have come closer to the vulnerable shores of reality!”
M: (Confused) “Do you express that you are ever varying and so for that reason there is not a one unified you?”
W: (Calmly) “For we are all ‘varying’, to borrow your word – if you do so allow me, Sire. There was never ‘unity’ of soul, nor mind, nor self, nor of any one personality. This, I desire, that you may understand.”
M: (Aghast) “Then if that be your truth and then, are we naught but multitudes of ever changing confusions, Lady of the Desert?”
W: (Calmly) “Yes and no! For those who are muscular and full of fertile vigour in their flesh, and in their intellects, and those that are severely and strictly scholastic, then they do need and they can succeed in time, in their never ending struggle to bring together the mutually antagonistic factions of that which constitutes our beingness. And, as for the dense brained soulless beings, then, it is equally veritably true that, a descent into madness can be rapidly produced, since from their erratic constituents, they cannot attract together these antagonistic and mutually-hating emotions in some vision of cohesion, and thus mayhem can be fashioned.”
(Silence)
M: (Calmly) “So, pray do tell me, where does Love and Justice and Truth and Morality stand in your universe?”
W: (Serenely) “That has been mine desire to hear the words being produced from your lips, Man!”
(Pause)
W: “So, now perhaps, your sight may be getting clearer, for your question is certainly apt. Foremost, we pathetic mortals, we the be are forever slimy specks of sand that  crumbles, must necessarily seek to survive and flourish within whatever forest, desert, meadow we find ourselves cast upon.”
M: (Startled) “At what cost, Woman? At the expense of Morality?”
W: (Rapidly) “Yes and no.”
M: (Shocked) “Horrendous! How can you spout out such filth?”
W: (Quietly) “Restrain your stupidities, and give more room to your intelligence, Sire.”
(Silence)
W: (Gracefully) “In times of trouble, what can Man do when he be forced to embrace evil, even though he finds the act of the embrace loathsome, but he does what he does for the truth of his vital existence to continue. Only when he need never embrace vile, and then allows himself to commit the act, then he is for certainty to incur the everlasting wrath of God. Evil is thus never one truth to be utterly rejected, perchance you may now see. ”
M: (Calm but Tired) “I follow your words and their ideas therein.”
W: (Gracefully) “When you talk to me on Man and everlasting, conflicting changes within that self-same creature, I tell you with all the earnestness that I possess, of what God has scattered and endowed upon me; for this beast, we all call in unity Man, this creature has far too many a numberless number of mutually self-contradicting, distrusting, loving, hating, inspiring and a never ending number of feelings and emotions that are in constant flow and change – as in any rapid river descending unto its eventual destination, which in its case, is the sea, while in our case, it is Death itself for sure.”
M: (Despair) “And how can this beast ‘love’ anyone within this welter of confusion?”
W: (Rapidly) “He cannot!”
M: (Rapidly, Begging) “But Man and Woman do love with bristling passions! Do you deny that, Woman?!”
W: (Calmly, eyes downwards looking) “Yes, and no. Since the beast has needs, based on his vastly intricate constituents, to ‘love’ his fellow beast, he imagines and believes

Distance brings proportion. From here
the populated tiers
as much as players seem part of the show:
a constructed stage beast, three folds of Dante's rose,
or a Chinese military hat
cunningly chased with bodies.
"Falling from his chariot, a drunk man is unhurt
because his soul is intact. Not knowing his fall,
he is unastonished, he is invulnerable."
So, too, the "pure man"-"pure"
in the sense of undisturbed water.

"It is not necessary to seek out
a wasteland, swamp, or thicket."
The opposing pitcher's pertinent hesitations,
the sky, this meadow, Mantle's thick baked neck,
the old men who in the changing rosters see
a personal mutability,
green slats, wet stone are all to me
as when an emperor commands
a performance with a gesture of his eyes.

"No king on his throne has the joy of the dead,"
the skull told Chuang-tzu.
The thought of death is peppermint to you
when games begin with patriotic song
and a democratic sun beats broadly down.
The Inner Journey seems unjudgeably long
when small boys purchase cups of ice
and, distant as a paradise,
experts, passionate and deft,
hold motionless while Berra flies to left.

Man-Moth: Newspaper misprint for "mammoth."
      
          Here, above,
cracks in the buldings are filled with battered moonlight.
The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.
It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on,
and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon.
He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties,
feeling the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold,
of a temperature impossible to records in thermometers.

          But when the Man-Moth
pays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface,
the moon looks rather different to him.  He emerges
from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks
and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings.
He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky,
proving the sky quite useless for protection.
He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb.

          Up the façades,
his shadow dragging like a photographer's cloth behind him
he climbs fearfully, thinking that this time he will manage
to push his small head through that round clean opening
and be forced through, as from a tube, in black scrolls on the light.
(Man, standing below him, has no such illusions.)
But what the Man-Moth fears most he must do, although
he fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt.

          Then he returns
to the pale subways of cement he calls his home. He flits,
he flutters, and cannot get aboard the silent trains
fast enough to suit him.  The doors close swiftly.
The Man-Moth always seats himself facing the wrong way
and the train starts at once at its full, terrible speed,
without a shift in gears or a gradation of any sort.
He cannot tell the rate at which he travels backwards.

          Each night he must
be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams.
Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie
his rushing brain.  He does not dare look out the window,
for the third rail, the unbroken draught of poison,
runs there beside him. He regards it as a disease
he has inherited the susceptibility to.  He has to keep
his hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers.

          If you catch him,
hold up a flashlight to his eye.  It's all dark pupil,
an entire night itself, whose haired horizon tightens
as he stares back, and closes up the eye.  Then from the lids
one tear, his only possession, like the bee's sting, slips.
Slyly he palms it, and if you're not paying attention
he'll swallow it.  However, if you watch, he'll hand it over,
cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink.

There once was an alien from outer space
Whose craft crashed in its resting place
His spaceship was on red alert
But he managed to escape unhurt
and subsequently disappeared without trace.

to every family that has lost someone to the war on drugs, i offer you a piece of my heart. take it and make it yours.

when the other children ask if i miss you, i answer no. how can i miss someone who has not even left? you are still alive, i feel it; i know it to be true. you live in the paper thin walls of our home, a ghost lingering on the dining table.

(i'm sorry there's hardly any food laid out. sometimes mother forgets to buy any or her hands shake too much for her to cook -- i don't know if it's from the cigarettes or the lambanog. brother is always out nowadays, trying to make money. he leaves before the sun is up and comes home long after mother has gone to bed. i think they're like this because they can hardly bear to look at your seat without dying a little more.)

grandmother tells me to talk some sense into mother. "just because he died doesn't mean she can let her children die too. she is just sad. she needs someone to talk to." what she means is: comfort her. but i wonder. what comfort can you offer a dead man walking?

sometimes i stare at the sky from the hole on my ceiling, and i wonder which star is you. is it the bright one that is always at the center of my vision? the one a little ways to the left? on better days, brother joins me and takes my hand in his. i swear it's almost like you're back, laying beside me.

it's hard without you here. we miss you. when i see the other children and their fathers -- whole, unhurt, *alive -- i feel a pang of pain. it's like hearing the gunshot all over again.

i don't know if you were still alive then, but i was the one who called for help. i screamed until my lungs gave way to the torrent of pain that filled even the spaces between my bones. i don't know (nor do i wish to) if you were still alive or if you had already had a taste of sunset.

it's a little funny. you had promised me we'd go to the lake that day. just you and i. you had gotten a job the week before and you wanted to celebrate with your favorite daughter. (i didn't have the heart to remind you i was your only daughter.)

and i want you to know i am holding you to that promise. when we meet again. in space. heaven. eternity. in whatever version of the afterlife we end up in. we'll go to the lake.

just you and i.

The gods let this baby be born
As a thing they could reclaim
One day with cruel delay
Boils from black plague desecrated her skin
Right before her second birthday
A lesson on how a life can be stolen
Shortly after it begins
Or how we're without hope to the whims
Of the bored gods before us

To save the last of his kin
The father implored the science
Of the village sage and physicians
He was turned down at every door
Their medicine was not meant
To save the poor nor destitute
  
Resolute in his faith
there were good gods who gave grace
Unto children without sin
He next beseeched healing power
from varied institutions of the miracle men
Preyed over by priests, rabbis, and sheikhs
He sacrificed and spent
every cent he had saved
And their churches took his tithes
But did not take her pain away

Grief striken, defeated, with no recourse
Liquid sedated in a pub,he feels remorse
" our child will join you soon,
my dearest departed wife"
a pubhand overhears him saying,
"you can still save your daughter's life!"

"listen as I entail
The hidden trail you must trek
before the antelucan hour strikes
Her magiks are only ripe
in the dead of the night
Nestled within that loury forest
Her cabin obscured from mortal sight
Resides an occultist of such cunning:
A bog witch named Blight"

The pubhand helped him to more mead for free
Unprompted he then proceeds to lead
The father through that place he now seeks
-claiming his shift had come to an end
As they drew closer to the cabin
Something happened most curious and queer
The pubhand turned into a black cat,
Scurried off into the brush- to dissappear

Influenced by fermented spirits in his blood
He pays heed to their whisper
-Her cabin door is ajar
And they beckon he enter

Now in Blight's place of power with his offspring.

"oh hapless father when you sing,
How the gods do smile
You worshipped the very ones
who wish to **** your only child
they're vile and malcontent
All they know are delinquent tendencies
They'll torture her spirit for sport,
When she dies you see
But by my incantation
That needn't come be"

"drain the blood of a bat
with deviant intent
Recant the name of your gods;
You now resent  
The blood will brew all the while
-in my elixir
When the little girl drinks:
it will fix her
It will turn her pale white
You will fear she has perished
She will stalk this earth
Forever parched with ravenous thirst
And a stark aversion to sunlight
NOW YOU MUST CHOOSE:
A dead child!
...or a creature of the night?"

The father did as directed
He did not second guess
Unaware of the sorceresses subtle gesticulations
-Were creating a hex
He's blind to machinations set in motion long ago
The wiccan pours her will into a binding circle
As the child drinks the concoction slow

His daughter's vitality returns
The plague is receding
Fangs sprang forth
as she bites into her father's neck
Blood trickles down in specks
The girl keeps feeding
And feeding

all gods once assembled to fight Blight
The powerful mad goddess would direct
her sadistic debauchery at their human subjects
-human praise appealed to the god's vanity-
Her godhood sealed by the Parthenon
in a prison comprised of flesh
Divinity bound;
betrayed by other gods
There were too many for her to resist
A former god trapped in mortal form
Blight's punishment was to simply exist

For 300 years Blight had waited for a night like this
An ancient curse she could wield
As revenge for imprisonment
Finally obtaining the last two ingredients:
A child that was pure
And a father's consent

A direct strike of lightning sets Blight's cabin ablaze  
still in her binding circle, she's indifferent
And unphased
From threats of fearful deities who see
She's about to set her nocturnal creations free
Undeterred by their show of force
she releases her two vamps
with a flick of her wrist and no remorse

Iightning strikes within an inch of Blight
She leers at the heavens
Much defiance and mirth
In the distance a village screams
As her fiends burn it down to the dirt

The Parthenon replies:
Bellowing cumulonimbus clouds
decries her decision
Such chaos;
now her scheming REALLY has their attention
The.Ones.Who.Watch. Above

See all.

Throughout panoptic thrones they peer
pained fury for this village culling:
Blight jeers
Sanctimonius thunderstorm brings fervent rain
Their vain,pious tears-
The skies can not contain

The gods cry.

"Oh, how i wonder what will worship gods then,
When humanity dies?"

Luminous surges of lightning bolts strike
Tries to smite this emboldened bog witch
...Yet, in spite of their wish,
she somehow stays unhurt...

Blight smirks.

Humorless soul burning plunder
Of fraternity and success
By unnamed ,unseen blood and flesh
Escaping through unimaginable pits of hell
Not leaving a folklore,a  story to tell.
A new decease spreading through mankind
From a single human body
Frightening name, shrieking mankind
Whenever this disease comes in contact with them.
Appropriately a plague
Running in tempt
Spreading to face
Something like vendetta ,something unsafe.
Entering into new age
Through the plague of dissatisfaction
Morose ,cruel,not leaving a fly  unhurt
Being risen as group of beasts...
Dissatisfaction,a word which shouldn't exist
Flows now through the blood stream of every body
Leaving poison to spread
From toe to head
Keeping love in custody.
Why this plague of dissatisfaction?
Why an unturned page?
why this spread of cruelty?
Why not try but fail?
Unanswerable questions,i think these are for me...
I'll just sit and stare at the poem as the
Plague of dissatisfaction spreads till eternity.

Was there a time when dancers with their fiddles
In children's circuses could stay their troubles?
There was a time they could cry over books,
But time has set its maggot on their track.
Under the arc of the sky they are unsafe.
What's never known is safest in this life.
Under the skysigns they who have no arms
Have cleanest hands, and, as the heartless ghost
Alone's unhurt, so the blind man sees best.

So once more he appears before my eyes,
And I am well aware he is no friend
Of mine, but a companion that I do not wish
To view; a companion that hovers around
In a reluctant mist; although never fails
To reveal his foul breath, his harsh whispers,
Together with his depressing stench of odour.
For I did not summon his deeds;
Never sought his favour; nor offered prayers
Nor burnt incense; nor gave from out
My own batch, the warm gift
Of wine to his altar; never in song
Have I praised his pale face,
His rotten black teeth; never bathed
My bare ankles, nor quenched my thirst,
In his poisoned waters. Yet he found weakness
Within a humble heart, an equally willing mind;
For he latched upon my soul, bearing
Fierce claws; and now, with his stealth clasp,
Arm in arm refuses to grant me space;
Feverously denies release.

Oh! How I do pray I could banish him
From my daily thoughts, my woeful strife;
For he seems present more recently
Than ever I can recall from drifting memory.
Be sure, he does not reside
On one of heavens branches; he would,
With all his deceit, be not allowed
To even graft upon the blissful airs
Most lowly of roots. His dulled stare,
Adamantly pierces through any desire
I have for the light ahead. A grey
Dusty cloak, that he wears draped
From his shoulders, like bitter winters
Shortened sun which shrouds the heavy leaded clouds,
And plunges the sky into deep sodden colour;
Saps any inspiration, which my dreams,
With kindness, revamp anew in sweet slumber.

My mission I do know sincerely, to be
Holy honest, is not entirely a struggle;
And shown before my sight appears
Respectively clear, is however, weighed
Toward the earth with added pressure
By his ****** presence alone. A strategy formation,
Delved from battlefields past, is a want
That seems out my grasp. Shall I
Soothe him with tender lyre strokes,
And with kind words may he leave my side
Willingly, at his own leisurely pace,
In unhurt peace? Why does he have such
Effect on me? How do I relinquish
Him from my sight? Shall I guide him
With me to fresh slopes of pastures green,
Showing his cruel appetite, the beauteous feast
Which bountiful Nature banquets? Do I
Attack him with all force at my disposal?
Unsheathe the sword? Balm protection
Around my clench fists? Do I ignore
His embrace which rivals a death-grip
Engineered from a lioness’ jaw, breathing
Smoke from her nostrils, clasping down
On her prey- unyielding, prey essential
To subdue pains that torment her hungry cubs?
Shall I believe him foe? How do I proceed?

I do realise with no barren shadow,
That he must be nursed into a corner,
Trapped, and halted, for if continuation occurs;
I fear Happiness, a fleeting sense,
Will never approach with ease, nor greet me
With a wave of her snowy hand, nor ever
Blush her lovely pout lips, and settle
Her most welcome custom, within my heart again;
And though my pathway be tedious,
Raised to the brim within a golden goblet
Of questioning; let my last task be this:
With a calm prayer to relight fading embers
From my *****. Kind souls, delicate muses,
Come to me, come to my aid,
Help relieve me of his burden.
Heap upon him glittering song,
Bow his cowardly head further down
From whence it came, and place
The dying mournful strains of the Swan within;
May dark unveil an ebbing stream
Of wondrous hue; let summer sun
Break through thick woods; may no shade
Shield me from intense light; let notes
Resound aloft upon high peaks;
May you pour nectar down my throat,
Place fragrant rich petals from perfumed flowers
On my tender tongue; and therefore,
Knelt before you, sister maids,
With submissive eyes gazing the hallowed ground
Beneath your feet; bathe me in tuneful grace
Once more; assist a humble servant,
Hear one solemn slave voice; for you
Will be praised within my lily-scented verse;
Forever will you be fed on my gentle honey-dew
Measure; if I only be granted solace
Within your flowing spring, deep
Between your sacred gardens fruitful caress.

There, lay outskirts. Through them are windmills lining
A vast expanse of amber sky, and there they are refining
A pure blue wind, tinted such within by turning steel fins.

They did, they told you. No one would walk to the end
Of the blue windmills, no one could ever mend
The heart of our world, twirled in their spinning curls.

But, you, I know you. Is what you’ve done enough now?
Has the pain gone away, will your heart unhurt somehow?
It wasn’t you, they knew. And you know it to be true.

I left. This is for you, because I want the knowing
That I’ll see you someday in the place where it’s snowing.
It’s not a lie, allied your love and mine, so this time

I do, do want to see you, walking out in the wind
I’ll wait for you by the blue windmills, made of
paper and pins.

She is preserved at the greenery
fading inside the floating yellows
her mellow as the sun set strikes
face wondering on the future mirror

She longs to encase inside her cocoon
unhurt the pain pierced in her ribcage
the spent morrow of blunt perceptions
wavering the chronic deserted day

She is alone in a world of within
without the touch of the yester clouds*
the tremor of her upset is unreliable
watering the chronic ail she donned

She feels the crystal pain on the dial
rails of entrust and forgotten tense
the troubles of the self sacrifice travellers
trespassing ***** gates of wired shield

She knows when her well is overfilled
finding a self that can embrace life
the compromised placid meanders
flowing the alive esse of a today

She moans of eons undignified
trying to excavate her sinking soul
the one that made her feel like she
revealing the reality of her unusual peace

She jumps like a seasonal seesaw
illusions parading the absolute truce
a muse of delicate authentic flavours
transversing the idealised time and space

She knows herself best when isolated
when the moon sinks and the night draw
when vagaries explode in the chaotic skies
*when the pearl starry sun stares in her iris

This year has been... So hard. It's been so ******* hard. There were times when I didn't know if I would make it. Times when I didn't think I had it in me to keep going and going after what I want and what I need, when they're always such long shots. Such dreams. Such ambitious dreams... I wanted to quit so many times. When **** left, I wanted to quit. I wanted to crawl under the blankets and stop being. I spent 3 days on Angela's couch after that night. I can never sleep in my own bed when I am truly broken down. I lose my home when I am raw inside. Couches, empty rooms, it doesn't matter where I hide but it can't be where I live. I wonder why that is. She couldn't have picked a worse time to tell me she loved me as much as I loved her and that it didn't matter. And then you... you were off in another world, off in another country finding yourself and your footing and everyone but me. You stopped answering my How Are You's. You didn't tell me happy birthday. Neither did ****. That was the first time I realized why holidays are the hardest for people who are sad. If you love someone and you are waiting for them to forgive you for being who you are, birthdays, Christmases, every holiday becomes a ticking clock: She has to say something. Will she say something? Will she really ignore me TODAY? Today, when the person who hated me most in high school said "Happy Birthday!! :D" on my wall on facebook? Today, when even my neighbor who grumbles about us being too loud grumbled a Merry Christmas? It becomes an agony when you realize that the answer is yes long before the day is over. Then you have to watch the hours tick by, trying not to hope, and by the end of it you just want it to be over, you don't even care anymore- you just want her not to have a reason to speak to you again, so that it won't mean QUITE so much that she is silent.
I had a lot of special days like that this year.
I wanted to quit when they told me I was small. When they told me I was quiet and bland, like vanilla icecream. The beast that lives behind my ribcage shook the bars that day and howled. (I spent a lot of time with it this year. We still hate each other, but we have uneasily realized that we are all we have.) That was the day I truly broke. **** was gone. You were gone. And the only thing I had to truly count on was suddenly in question. It was now or never, it was be better than your best, and I was barely hanging on. It was be a hundred and ten percent, when the past few months had whittled me down to a shadow of a person who barely remembered what it was to be fifty. It was push harder than you've ever pushed at the moment you are about to collapse and you thought you were going to be able to rest.
Those days made me. I hate that they made me. I hate that the biggest parts of me come from the days that eviscerated me, but they do.
I wanted to quit when **** came back and saw what I'd become. "You're wearing fake eyelashes?" she said, because she always did notice any weakness. She didn't say she saw my sunken cheeks, and the fire behind my eyes that meant I was afraid to die. "PROMISE ME you'll stay this time." I said, and I grabbed her shoulders. "But only if you mean it."
"I promise." she said.
She didn't mean it.
I knew, though. Somehow I knew that the girl I loved had left her behind, a changeling, a stranger. I tried to believe, but when she left the shock was only surface: I was too tired to be rocked to the core.
Then came the days when I truly didn't have a plan. I spent a few weeks on the couch. Anyone who reads this will not have seen me with ***** hair, in week old clothes, skinny and sleeping all the time. I make sure they never see. But for a few weeks, I had no one to pretend for and no reason to pretend and no reason to live. I only knew I WANTED to. Even then, from the couch, with my show babbling in the background, I thought, "There's gotta be something. A reason will come. I just have to wait." And a reason did come. It wasn't a very good reason, but it didn't have to be: Reasons to live are not really the reasons we live. The truth is that if you want to live, you will FIND a reason, every time. You will create one. My reason didn't mean a thing in the details. All it meant was that I was ready to rejoin the world, and live again.
I spent a lot of the in between months living on the surface of myself, just getting my feet wet. I went to work. They didn't know me there. Didn't ask. I liked that, it was simple. I waited tables, I cleaned up, and if I quietly did what I did, nobody bothered me. The biggest thing I could **** up was somebody's lunch. It was comforting. I chatted with customers as if I wasn't who I was. I was their smiling waitress with her hand on her hip, a hot *** of coffee, and a clever quip. That was a part of learning to live again, too. It was hard to stand there all day and listen to the radio. Memories would hit me and I would be unable to run away from them the way I could elsewhere. I learned to breathe through the pain, and discovered that it became muscle memory to endure it. It was almost easy by the end. The only deep thing I did with this time was to read Girl, Interrupted. As with most life changing books, I hadn't thought much of picking it up. I hadn't expected it to change me. But reading it, I could have wrote it myself. I knew how she felt, every moment, and the things she said stuck with me, stuck to me- the raw wounds that were still healing  inside me scarred around her words.
Then came the reckless stage. I was waking up. I began to listen to music again. I began to drive without knowing where I was going. I began to make choices just to see if they'd jar me enough to snap me back to my old self. They didn't. I didn't find myself again until just before school started.
Poor Giles (my car, the car that saved my life) was the cost of it. A rainy night, a loud song, and too much grief. Things really do slow down when you crash, you know. I thought they just did that in movies to be dramatic, but they don't, it's real. When I went off the road I knew I'd lost control. My mind was way ahead of me. My body wasn't in the place I thought it should be, and I remember distinctly but calmly wondering why it wouldn't listen to me and do what I wanted (it was, in fact, being thrown around by the force of the crash, and the signals from my brain saying "Move your arm!" couldn't compete with whiplash.) I woke up with the car crunched against a tree, on the driver's side, and the frame 6 inches from my face.
I didn't feel anything.
My body cried and shook as they strapped me to a stretcher, but inside I wasn't in control. I was sitting back quizzically. The moment they got me out of the car I knew I was unhurt. They cut off my clothes. My favorite bra was another casualty of that day. Cut right in half- the leopard bra I wore in the first scene I ever did in front of the UConn faculty for midterms last year. While they were wheeling me from test to test, I wondered if that was somehow symbolic. Flash forward to being in bed in a tiny room, a doctor giving me back my bellybutton ring, me asking where the pentagram necklace that **** gave me the night we met was, getting it back, putting it on. The IV in my arm was cold. I hate IVs. My mom cried, and I cried, but I still wasn't scared or sad. I cried because tears came out. It was a surreal experience, crying like that.
I didn't wake up fully from my brokenness until the nurse came in and said, "I'm so sorry, but we need your room. I'm going to have to put you in the hall." I shrugged, and they stuck me in the hall just outside. I watched them wheel a bedraggled looking man in. He was muttering. He reminded me of my uncle, the alcoholic, the one who had died the previous fall. I had a hunch that they probably had a lot in common. Interest piqued, I eavesdropped as they bustled around and talked to him. He had tried to **** himself.
That was when I woke up. I didn't really know it, but that was the moment. It was the first moment in months that I remembered my real reason. I asked my mother for a piece of paper to draw on, and she dug in her purse to find it. Ten minutes later I faked having to go to the bathroom so they'd unhook me from my tubes. I had a feeling my mother would think it improper if I told the truth. Before she could object, I slipped into his room, and handed him the paper. I said, "I made this for you. I hope you feel better." I wish I remembered exactly what I'd written. It was a simple little note and a doodle of a rose, and it said that he mattered, and that I cared about him. I got back in bed, sheepish, and my mom was as nervous about my infringement on someone else's life as I'd guessed she'd be. Five minutes later, though, the nurse came over with a piece of torn paper. He had written back to me. His handwriting was shaky and simple, like a child. I have that note hung up in my bedroom at home. He said, "You have touched my heart. Thank you! I will keep your rose in my heart. This is a life changing moment for me... Thank you!" I wondered if there was a plan, then. I wondered if all of that, the sadness, the crash, everything, had led me to be in that hospital and say something to that man that changed his life. And maybe it didn't change at all, I don't know. But I know that that moment changed me.
Back at school, I had a few blissful moments with you. A few nights of hand holding, a few beautiful kisses. I slowly taught myself not to run from you when I felt the gravity of my love separate me by the molecule. I found that I did have the courage it took to be in your arms, and that is when you lost the courage to hold me. Still, I'd take all of my grief and more for one moment with you, and I'll keep you in my heart till the day I die, whether or not you stick around.
In class, I was the first to break. To cry. Over months, I cracked open and a lot of the tears that fell were very old, and scalding. I hadn't known I was suffering until the cracks in me were widened and focused on. One day after a particularly raw moment, I walked across the street to the tattoo parlor. I didn't stop, I didn't think, and I got a tattoo that very moment. My butterfly, on my shoulder, to remind me that changing hurts, growing hurts. I loved how much it hurt. (Nobody said I was recovered fully.)
Suddenly then there was a choice before me. An opportunity and a challenge. Do something to make them remember why they chose you. Fight. Win. I dug deep. I thought, what can I say that I mutter to myself in the shower when I am not thinking about anything? What words have stuck to me? I dug, and I found Susanna Kaysen again. At 3 in the morning I sat in a chair, in the dark, in the center of the bare rehearsal studio and tore myself open.
I found the girl who, this past summer, in the thick of everything, had called McClean and tried to get a bed. Who for a week had begged to be somebody else's problem. I called a hotline. I wasn't suicidal, but only because I don't have it in me, no matter how bad I feel. I called and got a voicemail. Desperate, I called UMASS Memorial. I remember they told me that if I wasn't a physical danger to myself or others they couldn't help me, and I remember this phrase tumbling out of my mouth before I could filter it, "Should I just go slit my wrists and call you right back, then?"
I had asked for help, and the answer, resoundingly, was no. And so I spent those weeks on the couch, and then I got up and dealt with the fallout. There was no other way.
I found her and I invited her to say something. And what came out was... The biggest ******* to the things that had beaten me down those past months. I kept the lights off. I put on Bleed Like Me and danced without looking where I was going. I held myself to the chair and tried to escape. I screamed into a pillow until no sound came out. And I found Susanna Kaysen. And I freed the part of me that wanted to talk with all those wiser than thou gods who toyed with the thread of my fate, teasing it with blades- I found **** this. **** being hurt. **** being broken. **** being judged. **** anyone who looked at me and thought they knew what was inside, because Susanna was inside, no, someone different, even, than her- someone, something, angry and wild and powerful and dangerous, and she laughed, and I laughed, and we began to plan just how to say "**** this."
I spent a night with you, during that time. You held my hands. You said they were beautiful. You told me about yourself. You kissed me. You wrote, "Galaxies" on my thumb. I didn't write it on my ribs until I was sure that I'd want it there whether or not I was mad at you. I didn't have long to wait- you ran away again, and I tried to love you anyway, and I succeeded. I still try. I still succeed. It's not getting much easier, but if I know one thing it's that if I
Just
Don't
Give
Up
SOMETHING will happen. Something will come to me. If I know one thing it's that I can keep going even when I have no reason to, even when I have no fuel, even when I am utterly empty. If I just take the next step, and the next, one by one, I will end up SOMEWHERE new, and I will find SOMETHING to love. That is what I learned this year. By all accounts.... this year kind of ******. Although I had scattered moments of utter joy, I had long, smudged months of misery. But having gone through it, I am almost nostalgic. Because it proved to me, even more, that I am not fragile. I'm emotional, I'm intense, I'm unstable, but ******, I am NOT fragile. Like iron being smited, I went through the fire, I was hit over and over in my weakest places, but... in the end I have emerged, and I am not gone. And I am not fragile. Welcome, 2015.

The sun burned through his skin, the saltiness of the sea almost acting as seasoning on his flesh, he could make out the birds circling overhead as his vision cleared. They were seagulls, not vultures. Still, they had a menacing look about them. He sat up and looked around the little boat, everyone was asleep, Michael wasn't sure whether this was due to exhaustion or whether they were trying to conserve their energy. One thing was for sure, that fireball in the sky was draining them of everything liquid in their systems. He stared at the sea and, for a moment, considered drinking the salt water, weighing this option against the raspy dryness that he was feeling at the back of his throat. The salt water could wait.
He stood up, and the sharp pain in his chest reminded him of the arrow he’d been struck with, it was gone now, but the pain still remained. The guys must have found a way to dislodge it, brilliant lot. There was ocean everywhere, no land in sight, no hope. For a moment Michael wished it was nighttime so he wouldn't be able to see far enough to realize that he had no hope of finding land anytime soon, and also that fireball wouldn't be tormenting them so. He stepped forward then caught his breath as something moved in the water.
A shadow almost the size of the boat swam under it. Michael watched as it glided, gracefully through the water. He had no idea what he was looking at, only that it was huge. A shark maybe? King fish? Both sounded dangerous, and both sounded like food. He was delusional, but hunger tended to do that to people. The food swam a few meters away, teasing him, and then circled back. He swallowed dry saliva.
‘What are you doing? You should be lying down, save your strength Mike.’ Modi spoke from behind him.
So that’s what they were doing, saving their strength. Food passed under the boat again and appeared on the other side.
‘Shhh… food.’ Michel whispered, pointing. As if he would startle a fish that was bigger than he was if he spoke too loudly.
Modi came closer. A shark fin broke the surface of the water and dipped again. They turned to each other and both had a mini-heart attack.
‘We should turn and head back to the island man, I’d sooner face those savages again than this killer of an ocean.’ Modi was saying, fear written all over his face. He grabbed his rifle and aimed at the water, but Michael stopped him.
‘Save your ammo bruh, we might need it. And anyway, we’re in a boat, it can’t reach us. Stop freaking…’ but before he could finish his sentence the shark had bumped into the canoe, tilting it slightly, ‘…GIMME THAT!’ he grabbed the gun from his friend and frantically pumped four shots in the direction of the fish, which swam hurriedly away, unhurt. Michael fell back into the boat, breathing heavily. He was a mess, the smell of the caked blood and that of the sea water finally catching up to his nasal senses, he threw up.
‘Bruh, I don’t think that’s wise… you need to keep that food in your body, not the opposite.’ Hamisi was saying. They were all up now, the gunshots playing the part of an alarm clock. Time to wake up and face an awful reality.
‘Shoulda’ just let me sleep.’ Juma said.
Mentally, they all agreed with him.

The Angels surrounds
the heart of the one
whose heart is broken.
No one can feel
or see the pain in your
heart but only you.
It is hidden away from
the mortal eyes.
Only your essence and
feelings can reach out to
the one whose heart is
disturbed and confused.
No one can touch or
understand how you feel,
except through the power
of love that heals and forgives.
The spoken words of love
are understood by the heart
that is so touched by the
spirit of counsel and
of love and forgiveness.
Only it's breath can cause the
heart to flutter to feel the warmth
of the bliss it exudes.
Can anything be as sweet and
lovely than a forgiven heart of
a wounded soul who has regained
freedom from the nightmares of the
tormented life conquered.
A sureness of a soul set free is glorious.
That is the impression of what the heart
desires for a free spirit unhurt by
unfortunate circumstances.
2018,Emeka Mokeme. All Rights Reserved.

Losing you was like jumping off the high dive.
At first I was in free fall.
I felt nothing.
Everything was calm.
Just atoms floating through time and space.
Then...
FLOP
Like hitting the pool stomach first.
The pain radiated out to my entire body.
No limb left unhurt.
Stinging, aching, unable to get over it and
Just climb out of the pool.

i'm weak
weaker than i used to be
or at least that's what they tell me-
thin and white,
a pale white, which will fade into pink.
but never red,
not anymore.
but i'm still happier now
sitting in this dark room, alone
the light from the small lamp
crammed on top of two boxes of apples
and below my fathers old, untouched, dress coats
in the right corner of my closet,
creeps past
the silver handled blade on my floor
past my pale, hairy, white-lined leg
past my empty, unmade bed
and dies, quietly, on the wall
behind the TV, which, in humming
disintegrates every word,
every word, which i want to,
need to
communicate to her
in some way
even if it it means tapping them out
on that screen slid under the TV.
it's red light is flashing, facing me- it's charging.
But why?
To reveal more **** disappointment?
To reveal the last thing she sent me?
"stop sending me stuff".
and right above all the,"i love you"s.
Right above all the **** lies,
because, if she loved me,
she'd be here,
the closet door would be closed,
the lamp, off
the knife back in my desk drawer
and my leg would be unhurt,
it isn't



©Brandon Webb
2012

Voice always waiting, waiting, wanting.
The stars are real but remain unused,
Unused and unhurt.

I saw wind and beauty wrong
(the arms should have been longer)
Wonder understands Miss Change lovingly.

It takes feet to stand.
The moon lies and memory matters.
Come, sit, watch the bad words with me in darkness.

Sound person.
High earth.
Ask the song fingers for something less boring.

We just like love,
And time and life and heart and
Something to be different, new today.

Feel the day
Way away, so far away
That day the thought train lost a good man.

Spirit never dies but neither
does it always return just
because we
need it
to.

Sweet wind that brings me desert dust and ashes
Or salty mist as blood on burning lips
Sweet wind that carries smells of roads and mountains
And rocks, and sands, and rusty wires, and tires,
And bullet-pierced sandbags, mines, and empty tins
And holy thorns that grow through them
And hot, bleak sky high over them
And dry, cracked clay embracing them
Sweet wind that brings me memories of war
Wind softly stroking dusty oleanders
And rushing all along the endless road
Wind –
Now tell me, when the land so lolls in sleepy peace –
Kids playing, women chatting, lovers dreaming,
Men building houses, furnishing, arranging –
All more fragile than cobweb lace
That busy housewives sweep away on sleepless daybreak
Sweet wind, tell me why I
I try to fill my mind with buzz and humdrum
Of knowledge – words, and thoughts, and numbers,
-- to stifle the voice, the shadow haunting me –
The voice that whispers softly, sweetly killing
To wake me up – to find myself again –
To send me far away where is my home:
To prison, madhouse, hospital, dodjo,
Wet dugout, earthquake rubble, secret lab
Where I belong, where all like me are going –
But still in vain,
For happiness, my prison guard and mate
Me torturing,
And happiness, the evil sheikh of nightmares,
His long, thin legs me strangling, hanging down
My shoulders,
His mud-brown hands me stopping ears, and eyes, and mouth –
And me
Who wanders through my days as empty rooms  
And endless corridors of giant fallout shelters
Where lonely steps reverberate in hollow hallways
And ruthless light
In which the shadow of my shadow
Me follows – counselor, and silent friend,
Unhurt by splinters of that broken magic mirror
That **** in air; may some benumb my heart
And let me play the game of words and numbers
That spells ETERNITY;
And let the sweet hashish of words and numbers
Make me forget;
Make me forgive, and live, and lie
That I believe the world of war will never come.

At first a few ornaments shook in the apartment
in that modern city block.
Complacent the warning ignored by the people
then a more violent shudder.
Running out fearing the buildings destruction
outside was total ruction!

Not from an earth quake they had first thought
but there had been a crash!
The unrecognisable craft fallen from clear skies
huge of an unknown design.
Fire and flames spread along a devastating track
there was no going back.

More appeared firing weapons into the fleeing crowd
masonry falling crushing many.
Helicopters gunships and fighter planes approached
being of no match to the foe.
On the ground weird creatures herded those unhurt
driving them precise and covert!

In those early days man had nothing ready to fight
to stop this alien massacre.
These battles were coordinated around the globe
an unprovoked desecration.
Secret protocols had been formulated by governments
on the possibilities of such events!

Satellite signals had been disrupted the attack a surprise
but the resistance had been planned.
Now to be implemented the fight back had begun
hidden basis and weapons brought onto line!
Powerful nations telling us aliens didn't really exist
yet were prepared for the time to resist!

The people don't really know what's going on!

The Foureyed Poet.

It follows me,
Every step that I go,
Never leaves me throughout the day,
Sometimes disappears at night,
But once I step under the light,
The evil side of me escapes my body
And hides beneath me,
My shadow.

The disappearance doesn't mean its gone,
It only escapes from me ,
Untamed.
In the absence of light
My shadow surrounds me,
Overwhelms me and causes my pupils to become narrow,
When my eyes magnify the darkness
Nothing can escape my sight.
The darkness is mine,
This time I follow my shadow.

When the light comes piercing through my window as the sun rises,
My shadow wakes up behind me as I stand.
My shadow is small,
My shadow goes through everything
I go through in the day.
As I fall apart from the dreadful experiences
Of the human life,
I am forced to become strong.
Yet my shadow is left untouched, unhurt, unaffected.

Yet, maybe that is needed in order to stick with me.
If it knew human emotion perhaps it would escape.
When I was with her,
She had a shadow too.
When I was with her,
My shadow was paired and it extended itself under the sun.
Now I'm not with her,
Perhaps my shadow feels the tearing away
Of what was once a part of it.

My shadow doesn't boil like i do under the sun,
At night,
My shadow forgets.

Shadow,
Can I be like you?
Lets switch places for a day.
Because in humanity,
Even sleep is not an escape from the nightmares.

Shadow

poem that comes pretty much out of blue skies
full versed song of a heavier soul roll in out of the darkened plains
novella written in the sweaty moments
before dawn after a night of  *******
in the the thick of it
where the words are physical
where the vision is blinding
who would you be if you were face to face with impossible me
bent and broken or loud and proud
would you be the poem
sweet and true
would you be some unfamiliar rhyme
distant and cold in your features as the sun set on your face
you are like that
you drop in on me out of the clear cold blue sky
whole and unhurt
unhinged but unchanged
a poem written at birth
you are still being written
so dazzle shine
be mine

Cunning, Cunning,
they need thy aid
who tread the earth
in human frames
from one ordinary sunrise
till one ordinary sunset,
a fleeting moment -
the breadth of a lifetime.
Thy helping hand
to smile, to please,
and sometimes
to shed a tear;
to love and be loved,
to be unmoved, unhurt,
to be indifferent;
to not be different,
to be like and be liked;
to hide and seek,
as well as to be
at two places at once;
to be the same child
to one's parents;
to be the same parent
to one's child;
to be in a family,
to be a friendly neighbor,
to go to work daily and
to change into a thousand
versions of oneself;
to write
but not give oneself away,
also, to write
to give oneself away;
to not be touched
by Art;
to not believe in another;
to not always be right,
to be a great hypocrite;
to live and let die,
that is, to survive;
finally,
to do the things
one does
to prepare for the end.

We were lying in the field
Behind my apartment
A mid-day meal
Wooden compartment

Your eyelashes extended
Your forehead and hairline
You intended
To find a fault line

The earth crumbling beneath
And car alarms sounding
Uncultured heath
Fractures abounding

Your dark skin mixing with dirt
Dangling from the rift
Dropping unhurt
Found gold to sift

Leaving with your small treasure
And I in the dust
Aim to measure
And readjust

You answered with a synapse
Startling my resolve with unrest
As I felt the change in the make-up of our ties
To each other. We'd built our nest
With texts and forgotten half-smiles -
Layered them with shadows unkempt
Leaking from our darkest sides.
It was an approximation to love, an attempt
By unwilling donors with unhurt prides,
To win the privilege of touch
Without losing sight of the lines.
Gossip didn't bother us much
We'd focus instead on the sighs,
Beats for our particular choreography.
But you've cut short our supply
With this silence, and now, awkwardly,
We fumble words, waiting for each other's turn.
In synapses like these, I ask myself what are we
When the memory of your skin still burns
And I miss your shadow on me.

Just before the sun is giving its birth
and millions of stars are embracing the earth
When all of the senses are being alert
and our souls are fully unhurt
Fully undressed and ready to convert
Unaware and completely impaired
with eyes wide shut and bodies off guard
Prepared to sacrifice and give away the heart
Those are the feelings of people in love
Those are the moments to cherish for life
All alone under the light of the moon
Waiting for her loved one to come home soon
Praying for the one to find his way
To come to her and forever stays