Posts for June 12, 2023 (page 9)

A question, no urgency to answer:
This blank emptiness and sadness —
is this what the world felt like
when your marriages were staring
into the abyss, on the edge of jumping?
I’d expected to be angry in the hours
and minutes before taking the leap,
not deflated and gutted.  

Yes: the anger,
what there was,
was gone by then,
taking with it
any love remaining,
and the long night of
what would never be
appeared in their places.  

(inspired by the poem “Dawn of the Long Night,” by Marianne Tefft)

decades ago we held hands
and sat hip-to-hip
in the sun and now
we take opposite sides of the table 
and look down at our manuscripts

I get itchy before a shoot — 
the word itself is anxiety-provoking —
photographing families, 
the responsibility of capturing them 
at this moment in time —
a tangible memory they’ll turn to 
in joy and in sorrow — 
weighs heavily on my mind.

To calm my nerves, I go through
my kit: two camera bodies, lenses,
a dust blaster, memory cards,
flash trigger, two lights
and a bounce, all in a case 
with wheels I pull behind me, 
luggage-style, as if I were traveling 
to someplace exotic,
the Mediterranean or Bali

and not, as it turns out, a postage stamp 
of a backyard that reeks of dog shit
in a bad neighborhood,
with no shade from the overwhelming sun, 
a father who hasn’t shaved and can’t believe
he’s giving up part of his Saturday for this,
a mother who’s so visibly over 
their two small children behaving
like tyrants, her pockets emptied
of gummies and Goldfish, 
that she can only muster a sarcastic grin 
when I say, in my cheeriest lilt
the incantation to make it all better:

Okay, everyone … now smile.

She picks up the beige handle, weighty solid,
a slight bend at each end, the cord stretching
from one end to its squarish base
Holding one end to her right ear the other the cord attached end
resting near her mouth She listens,
hears the sound of hope, the tone of possibility

She extends her left index finger and
hooks it into the dial cutout over the 5
turning the dial until it stops,
removing her finger as she watches
the dial slide back
Six more times the ritual is repeated

and then  

she waits  

She hears it 

bzz, bzz, bzz  

the sound of hopes dashed,

the end of possibility  

Her left index finger pushes down the peg in the handle cradle
and then releases it
hears the sound of hope,
extends her left index finger, hooks it into the dial cutout

I looked for you all this December day
Sun turned to rain then to snow
This brief winter day turned to dark

I thought of you all this day
Been grateful for you, for us
For our simple life, our health

Thankful for your patience
Your capacity for love, caring, ritual
Thankful for your memory of us

Thankful even for the torn ragged episodes
The sad, the shameful, the … but wait;
There you are

In your lit window upstairs
I beckoned: “Come out, come out.”
You shook your head and killed the light.

Augment
Auto transfer
Autonomous machines
Artificial intelligence
Anxious

They say that in the quietest room in the world

Once you stay long enough

You begin to hear the rush of blood

Through your head

The beat of your heart

In your temples

The creaking of bones

It would drive me mad

I wonder if it’s anything like the silence

At four in the morning

Waiting for my day to start

Sick to my stomach over things I cannot control

Wind barely whispering

Through the leaves of trees

The sky is dark but

Light enough to be eerie

They say that in the loudest room in the world

A balloon popping sounds like

A bullet from a gun

Consonants from a whisper like

Knives slashing the air,

Nails on a chalkboard or

Something

It would drive me mad

I wonder if it’s anything like the noise

In my mind

At 10 at night

A hamster on its wheel

Running in the same place

Accomplishing nothing

Mind preventing sleep

From pouring over me like water over the edge

Of a cliff

start as more
                     or
common more
                     or
          go in only 
                      a few

show the chamber
         smooth below
                in some
even weakness
                      or
                     loss

I’m sorry for when I spit
blood in your direction
because someone else stuck
a knife in my heart.