Tuesday, June 10, 2008

in memoriam


Page Twnety-four


tues 10 june 2008 Greenfield

homeless 14 weeks today, 3 months tomorrow...
time for a poem. it's a longy.

Number 28

On the last Memorial Day
of my life,
I sank to sleep (2 a.m.)
without you,
woke 4 a.m. amid a dream of you,
without you.
Fifty-five such days before today,
all with your breaths,
your small beating hearts,
surrounding...
until now.

On this day
that I will never see again,
I sit in a cafe --
knowing, scrying, divining
in my realest self --
that this is not my life,
my place.
My life and place
are both at home with you,
and all my love,
and all my best,
and the sad leftover dreams
I had.

But there's no longer home,
no longer you,
no longer pretty dreams or sad.
All the space of soul is black,
cold,
lonesome as a grave.

And it's grave day today:
I cannot take part.
Inside me I visit them all
in a welter of flowers and tears:
our murdered child
and his suicided father,
our young man
dead away in Mosul
on the sand,
our friend, brain-dead on the pavement
right up there,
a suicided, murdered father of my own,
and all, and all the animals
I have laid gently, morosely, forever
into soil.

I'm powerless on grave day,
powerless as ever,
and we powerless
can follow neither heart, nor dream,
nor gift without assistance,
and you,
the stolen, vanished candles
were my last assist.
It's grave day.

2.

On the last Memorial Day
of my life,
I drown in random images
of all the ones before:
dad on parade in his whites
(how many years?),
cookouts and badminton games;
grown-up us with our babies
offered to grammy, matriarch,
at tables under trees
where chicken and steak were laid,
and all our little customs,
grown always more searing
by their loss.

When all of that had gone,
there was still you.
Memorial Days my soul
weighed like granite
for the want of all that was gone,
and you felt it, my granite soul,
my hard sorrow.
I cried or raged,
I lay in a zombie heap
or paced the floor,
and knew, divined
with unshakable knowing
that you were what kept me alive
among all the shards of breakage
on all those days of graves.

I rallied --
for you.
Cooked us something special,
listened to all the war songs,
soldier songs,
sang.
Lit candles for our dead,
walked under the stars.
Grateful for each one of you
still outside the grave.

Where are you to sing to?
They've kidnapped from me
all your willing ears.
Can't sing where have all the flowers gone,
ain't gonna study war no more,
johnny I hardly knew ya,
my bugle call of peace.

My existence has been nothing
if not war.
And all those battle-years
my patient, stalwart, truthful
troops marched with me.
Marched and loved
and loved my love
through fifty years of
ambush,
through every burning scar it left,
through every pool of blood,
the crippled limping of my legs,
and swollen lungs,
and pain that left me senseless in a heap
of screaming cells.

You were the last assist.
You were the troops
for whom I strove and soldiered on.
You were the stars and candle-flames
lighting up the soulscapes
of my nights.

Cold now, and dark,
the spaces where you were.
Where are you now?
If my soul can reach
to yours,
pretend I sing,
pretend we're still together:
gonna lay down my burden
down by the riverside
down by the riverside,
gonna lay down my sword and shield
down by the riverside,
ain't gonna study war no more. --- copyright 2008 by anne nakis

Click here to the poetry page of my website.

Update 12 December 2009: When I wrote this poem last year, I did so in Bart's Cafe, on Memorial Day itself, waiting for PN to come and visit and help me get some things out of my storage. We had a very good visit that day, an authentic one; one that rang of true friendship and not just the surface kind. When I wrote this, I didn't expect to be alive for another Memorial Day without my animals, without my own life. I believed fully that I would either die of grief or kill myself. As I did in fact try a few times to kill myself in ways that others wouldn't discern as suicide, and couldn't do it, I realized more fully than ever that I cannot kill. Even when killing is the best solution. Then there was only grief. I believe that the cells follow the soul, and that if the soul is dying, the cells will do the same. So I am disappointed that I was alive for a second Memorial Day in hell, and that I'm still alive now, approaching my second Yuletide without them, without me. Me as I was before human beings took everything away.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ website ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is heartbreaking...