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A fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi. (In front of you, a precipice. Behind you, wolves.)

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

National Poetry Month--Day 20--Nonet Poems--Dad--Free Verse--Gone Man

 

Here's my free verse poem about my dad. I find it sad that he too wrote poetry, but none about his wife or family. I figure sometime soon I'm going to write poetry about Mom and slip it into the book of poetry he wanted me to transcribe for him. Anyway, here's my poem about him:

 

GONE MAN

She saw you, she thought.

The bright, quicksilver girl

With moonlight in her eyes.

You were her prince, her knight

You rocked her in your arms

And she saw possibilities in your eyes.

You shared corners of you

No one else had ever seen.

But not all.

Some, you kept back

For those 

Silent green spaces you shared with no one.

She was your pole star

The maker of your tribe,

The designer of your life,

But you began to belittle her efforts

To paint over the gold with brown.

You shared a gypsy existence.

Babies multiplied

Dollars did not.

But the you's of you were happy

Until you were not.

We came.

A quiz

A conundrum.

A trouble in diapers.

All too soon you were 

Dragging us across the planet

By the tiny arms.

Run! Faster! You're too slow.

Stop whining.

I'll give you something to cry about.

Until we ground you into place with inertia.

We, our needs, became your anchors.

Chaining you down

To a day long and dreary

None of our antics seemed to 

Waken your smile.

A dearth of  joy.

Only the mistakes. 

Punctuated with watermelon seeds

And a rare day on the slopes.

Once, when I danced on your shoes,

Embarrassed,

While other little princesses

Chattered away.

I was never enough.

Good enough.

Smart enough.

Charming enough.

You were always there,

The stony monolith,

Seemingly impervious to

Wind or water

The battleship

Plowing through the waves

On a course you set.

No plea went unchallenged,

No hope unexamined in

Fine detail beneath the microscope

Of fatherly castigation.

Hour on hour,

One foot and then the other,

You flailed from us all

Broken compasses, all lazy chairs,

Any witless falsehoods,

Any unworthy dreams or

Uncomfortable questions.

Determination built you.

Your children would not

Deviate from the pattern

You set out with

Knife-sharp edges.

Somewhere along the way

You lost all of that.

The ship sailed without you,

Left you ashore and wondering

How it came to be

That your kingdom had shrunk

To the size of one woman.

You raged at the too tight lack. 

You wanted to punch out 

The other side. 

The search eluded you.

Day in and day gone, 

You ached for a place to stretch 

Wings and walls and ideas

But they only held you inside.

One by one we escaped through a hole in your curtain wall. 

You couldn’t fill the breach, 

Couldn't go out the same way.

Couldn't see the good inside.

Couldn't find the good outside.

Stuck.

You searched and searched,

But nothing came.

You hoped you would be strong enough

To keep the enemy

Without.

But he entered anyway.

Entered and stole,

And took and carved away your ‘self.’

Walls of you fell and rolled and drifted,

Down into rushing rivers of

Manic activity, frantic,

But no more fulfilling.

Still the enemy chipped away.

Chipped until you began to let go,

Fingers aching from clutching

At what you had and 

What you were afraid you couldn't keep.

You watched her watching you,

Knowing she knew your lacks,

Knowing you had become 

Less

To the quicksilver girl.

You hated those lacks.

You hated the sorrow in her eyes.

You hated knowing

She knew how you failed 

Yourself and her.

Your edges grew hard and sharp.

Hers sharpened in tandem

To find

That you'd hidden 

All the you's you'd once 

Shared with her

Along with the ones you never had.

She wept.

You raged.

You looked for other treasure boxes

To hold the bits 

You no longer shared. 

But none came.



How strange to see you wither

As I slowly waltz in the flaccid circle 

Of your once-strong arms and watch.

The wind suddenly carving into

Your bastions and buttresses

And you,

Lost behind your eyes somewhere

Unable to call for help

Unable to find the words

To define your rage, to open the

Bars of your mind.

And your quicksilver girl,

So road-weary,

Defeated

Trudges along, 

Pulling your leading strings.

You yank at those tethers,

Trying to prove you don't 

Need them.

But you do.

You see us out here,

Getting away with things

You never sanctioned

And powerless to stop them,

Your rage builds.

If only you could recall

Where you put the keys to your mind.

If only your mind remembered the dance

Your feet still keep beat to.

If only you could go home,

Back to the simple place

Where deer came to drink and

You ran through green silences.

But you can’t go.

Not anymore.

Too many people hold the strings. 

Hole you hostage in this dank, hot Hades.

Distress. 

You clutch at the gone-ness

But can't quite reach.

No one will help you.

No one sees the hollowed-out inside of you.

You see with blank eyes.

Glimpses.

Flickers.

A shuffling waltz.

A fond see-you-later.

That faint, lost little smile

Barely there.

 

Time for bed--for the

Recklessness of sleep 

For the practice death

The facing of dreams lost and forgotten

Your eyes shutter.

Your unknowable heart shutters.

Your lips shutter.

Your mind shutters.

And you have become

A gone man.

Sand sifting away

Into the wind,

All that’s left

Of the monolith.

Someday,

You’ll be found.

But which you?

Your quicksilver girl wonders.

And I wonder.

Who will you be when the shackles fall away?

©2021 by H. Linn Murphy

 Nonets are the poem for the day. If you want to know how to write one, go here. And now for my double Nonet poem:


So many buried nuggets extant

Bits of grit rubbing places raw

I tried once to remedy

The lack, but already

His mind had retrenched

Into haziness

Too dang late

I wept

Dad

Pearl

Someday

From the grit

A gorgeous stone

Will grow and fill up

Our lives with nacred gems

Of thought and feeling and rich

Treasures that should have grown in life

Without the grit to mar and annoy

©2021 by H. Linn Murphy

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