This is a haunting poem. I do not know what it is really about. I bow before the power. I don't know who wrote this. It wasn't me.
Please Don't
When I cut myself
It was with your stainless knife
I pulled out. It passed
Me by, the caress
Signalling the coming pain
And the red red blood.
Flowing down after,
Looking for you, calling out,
I try to say it.
Please, I say, don't.
January 15, 2009 10:28 AM
*******************************
Any plant in the wrong place is a weed. Any weed in the right place contributes. Any person in the wrong place is irritating to someone. Any irritating person in the right place is often successful. Timing and placement are often more important than effort. I just finished reading The Drunkard's Walk and found out that the role of chance is no secret to statisticians. Chance is more important than choice most times, except if you are willing to choose and choose and choose again, defying failure until you don't.
Grass
There's grass in the moss,
The Irish Moss I love for sure,
The intense green sharp-
It's almost yellow.
But this grass is sticking out.
So many thin blades,
A darker truer slick green,
Dingy against moss
Though it looks lovely
In the neighbor's fine green lawn-
But here it's a weed.
January 15, 2009 12:14 PM
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
God, I have been there!
ReplyDeleteSmiling for yours....:)
xx
Oh that first one. I have been there. Cuts heal with time, thank goodness. Though sometimes, it is hard to let them heal....
ReplyDeleteI have weeds in my poem from last night:)
I have been weeding a lot recently -- with regret at times. The sunflowers are popping up in my vegetable garden. I know the birds planted them, but I really do want tomatoes...Wrong place...
Hope you are having a nice weekend :)
xxx
The first one makes one wince like those kind of cuts do; they're the worst, the ones that are so sharp you don't feel them immediately...
ReplyDeleteMichelle, may you be sunny and your hide thick enough to take the blade. I hope your Mum has a good day today.
ReplyDeleteFaith, I was quite conscious at posting that Please Don't might hold a place close to your experience. I don't know though where it actually comes from. I was just the record keeper on this one.
Lucy, emotions can cut like that too. Also, entire life situations can act like blades, severing lives radically, surgically.
Hmm... blades in both poems, and unwanted blades in both cases, useful but only when they are in the right place. I wonder where that came from. I do know what you mean, though. Sometimes the poems write themselves through us, and we really aren't in control at all.
ReplyDeletethere's an EMO subculture that includes "cutters"..... the first poem reminds me of some cutter poems i've read..... it is actually a serious problem with some young adults. OCD behavior revolving around depression, suicidal gestures and self mutilation.
ReplyDeleteteens and young adults....
ReplyDeleteYes, Rachel, that is what I am talking about, that this poem started pretty much like any other of my poems, with a first line or image, but it quickly went its own direction, very much like a dowsing wand does. I swear I wasn't guiding it. And when I read the poem, I am not sure I know what is being expressed...
ReplyDeleteWhich leads to
Ghost, that this poem reminds you of the poetry of cutters is highly intriguing. I know about them from my wife's work as a social worker in child welfare. I personally have no inner knowledge of that space and hesitate to say I understand the peace it brings to cut. That at least is what I understand, that they claim a distress that is eased by cutting.
I do know that this is far more common than people might think.
Yes, Ghost, as your picture shows, what I understand is it is mostly young girls who cut themselves.
ReplyDeleteI have a 15 year old who is in the process of 'recovering' from cutting.....but this poem, well, it seems to me that it speaks of more than just the blade.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, it brings a certain relief, and the scars are real enough, inside and out.
And yes, it was a better day...thanks
xxx
Cutting goes way back, before EMO came to be... it was popular in jails, back in the days when I used to hang out with jailbirds, and maybe still is. I've cut a few times, way back when I was an angry teenager with self-esteem issues, and I had friends who did it, but I found I got more satisfaction from piercing and starving myself. Lovely world, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteI came back to read.
ReplyDeleteSeeing the picture Ghost posted put a shock through my system.
I was a cutter -- I think I have said that before -- long ago before EMO culture, before anyone used the word cutter. It was the only way I stayed alive in a way. It stopped me from doing more harm. I know that sounds strange...but it was true. I was 13 when I started and the last time I cut I was in my 20's. The urge never completely goes, but it is different now. I could never cut now.
Thank you, Ghost, for bringing the picture and the culture up. So many years I felt so completely alone about that "dark" side of myself...and yet, it is so much more common than I realized.
Here is a poem I wrote a long time ago. I hope, Christopher, you don't mind me putting it here...It seems to go with yours.
Love Poem
I love you well enough
that you are a secret beating
in my heart.
The rhythm of your name
moves through my veins.
I love you so well
you will never know I spent
three days just trying to see
the color of your eyes.
And a week wondering
if anything hung
from the chain of gold around your neck.
I love you well
into the days and nights
of absence.
The way the collar of your jacket
smelled still rises in me
when I least expect it.
I love you well enough
that I made one cut
hoping the blood would ease out the pain.
Hoping that by the time the scar
came my heart would be back to normal.
I love you like the whisper
of beech leaves rustling in midwinter
with the pale sun setting.
I love you
so well that in every song
I hear your voice.
I love you so
that nothing is left for me
except to wait.
Wait for what feels
like my life
to begin
again.
I love how when I was posting here, Rachel was posting too:)
ReplyDeleteFeels like home:)
xxxooo to all of you here on Christopher's blog:)
Yes, indeed, I love you all. What an amazing discussion.
ReplyDeleteHA! I've been arging with myself and others lately about the nature of weeds and I came to the same conclusion, although your poem demonstrates it so well. LOVE this! Find such comfort in agreement on this one. And I'm not just talking weeds, of course, as this can be applied to so many aspects of life!
ReplyDeleteErin, it's you n me, kid.
ReplyDeleteOh, Faith. (((Faith)))... Your poem, so powerful. And so strangely familiar, looking back. Love...
ReplyDeleteI came back and I'm glad I did. Faith - beautiful! Heartfelt. I feel it.
ReplyDeleteSometimes the poems do write themselves from our deeper places.
ReplyDeleteFaith , that poem is so lovely.
I don't know about cutting , as my escape was always water.
Cherie, I understand the water. I was a hyperventilate hold your breath don't move much be under a long time guy. I was in those days also a diver. Entering the water, concerned for form, and happiest as I entered in the right way. I loved doing half gainers.
ReplyDelete