Stanley Pacion A BIG BOOK OF MY OWN: loss

Showing posts with label loss. Show all posts

Friday, October 4, 2013

KNOCK OUT

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KNOCK OUT

Describing the awful upset, the melancholy,
The force which has struck me so hard
That I have seemingly become unconscious
And have lost all capacity for right direction,
Has me contradicting every principle of sacred philosophy.

I am forced to postulate the existence of a physical soul.

Your absence, the thought of your
No longer being part of my life, has floored my spirit.

I fear that my vitality has been stopped.
My training in prayer has failed me.
I lack the muscle strength and the great breath,
Despite my belief in the audacity to hope,
I want the stamina to continue the match.

I have been hit, and I am down.
I bleed, darling, I bleed.
I struggle to my feet, I stand just before the ten-count.

Your blow has opened a cut above my eye.
What salve, what ointment staunches the blood!
The men in my corner struggle to fix it.

They will not let me face another round.

The bell keeps clanging,
I hear the terrible roar of the crowd.

The referee enters center ring. I have lost the fight.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

DASH IT!

DASH IT!

Dash it, Baby!
Is this the best we can manage.

Don't tell me! Have neither of us the sense,
Reason enough to know which way is up, or down?

Here's the key, there's my desk,
You already have my heart,
You can come and go,
Whatever pleases you, no problem.

Should you find a spare penny,
Lying anywhere about the house,
Keep it, and whenever you have found the opportunity,
Use it, toss it into a fountain and wish us well.

Don't be hard on me old girl;
I take my hat off to you.
We have had a run of bad luck.
Let's hope that things are bound to get better.

Well, are you happy?
I did say? I promised you, did I not, that
I would make you queen of my poetry.
Truth, haven't I? Who of us is happier?

You take pleasure in your business,
You have your list of details,
All the very many, important things “to do”,
And now with your father gone,
You have the legal consequence, and its paper work,
Plus the obligation of those household matters,
All those little things, which once he had used to handle .

How you must miss him!

I shall change the topic.

You seem to love your car and lengthy driving about.
I sometimes wonder where you go,
Yet I figure you run to your usual haunts:
The regular flea market along side the Delaware River,
And to those giant strip malls dotting the landscape,
The same geographic stretch between Princeton and Trenton,
Where once General Washington
Had fought and suffered for years,
Freeing countryside from foreign domination, those lands
Which today are parking lots
And lines of concrete block architecture
Housing big-box and other discount merchandise.
You disappear for days seemingly involved with your labors.

Not a word about your travels, not a single line,
No Internet connection, you claim.
And when I ask about your goings,
Why the haste?
You answer, "Antique show on Saturday."
Of course, I have heard that one before.
Then I ask you, where?
You say, “Pennsylvania.”

The dialogue becomes tedious,
Or is it me? Have I grown ridiculous?

Yet I remind you, Pennsylvania is a very large state!
As I query,
I see your thinking plainly roll in your eyes.
Weird, right? Can you believe it? Doesn't it look silly?
Maybe you practice some form of entitlement.
Might you genuinely feel you have no need to elaborate,
Or provide information about your whereabouts?
Still would you admit that when you read this verse,
And hear me repeat your response,
After all, what's the big deal to an honest question?

Strange, isn't it? You deign a one word answer, “Allentown.”

I imagine you understand what I mean, not that it matters.

Hello. Is there anybody out there?

Remember the colors of our dreams,
When the magic of delicious blue and yellow hues
Filled our bedroom, and the times that
A voice from some other world demanded we harken,
And in its ghostly-visage guise
Spun out tales of high romance and telling prophecy.
Come on now, the stars, the stars were shinning for us.

Forgive me, let me return, again, back to this planet.
Years ago I learned the reality --
Buying and selling no easy enterprise.

I know that you take very special delight in the scouring
Rack after rack, then picking through shelves,
Rummaging with a practiced eye the goods
Set for sale upon the tables.
And, to be sure, you have that ability for concentration,
And at level required to be successful at your shopping.

Seems, too, you have that lucky touch,
Procure gold when others see brass,
Buy silver at the spot price of base, white metal.

Lord knows, you love a good deal.
I have never known anyone, who enjoys a low price,
A markdown or a discount more than you.

Even your dessert, it appears, tastes better
When it comes at half-price.

Not to mention that you, my dear, have ever-ready
A discount coupon at point of sale,
Or in your wallet a glossy ticket with its boxed numbers
Whose final punch means a reward in kind for your patronage.

The cadences captivate me, little hope of reason.
The lyric overcomes me, little hope of any resolve.
Actually whatever the hard inventory I conspire,
No matter my tellingly, strict observations and remarks,
My heart says how lovely you are.

And so it goes, I succumb to the trying to figure.
I try to figure the source of it all,
Then I lapse from an ordinary confidence and come to believe

That I might be ordained and my voice allowed to carry
A radical theme first heard in the plain churches,
Now five centuries ago, my feelings fall backward to the faith,
By God, which held our course predestined in Heaven,
How else to describe these events?
I had to find you, and those inklings of our Destiny
Still remain and animate our hearts.
Wasn't it written?

Yet here is something that causes me consternation;
You appear to truly enjoy my company
When you know that I pay for your dinner.

Lately, that hour, or two, a quick repast, seems,
The only time you have to fit me in your schedule.

I realize that you are accustomed to international travel.
You stuff your backpack to the point your movement stiffens,
Yet heavy baggage means little to you,
Except, of course, should the airline catch
Your true luggage weight
And you must pay up for the extra kilos.

Then there is the situation with your mother,
(All kinds of complexities there!)
A topic I shall have to postpone,
A subject to tackle in another poem, or two.

And as for me, for me,
I sit up half the night writing poetry;
You must know I am lonely.
I seek company,
Your combination of intelligence, beauty and thrift
You, the solace I desire.
I fill the wee small hours of the morning.
Believing that the two pillows I see on the bed
Mean that, though now you travel,
You soon return to sleep and make a home with me.

Dare I say it? Must I resort to cliché.
Tears are streaming down my face.

Forget about it! I shall survive.
No need for undue concern, or worry,
I am probably naturally disposed to being
The gloomier of us two,
Yet I wonder how you push through the day,
How you bring a smile to your face, or roam open and free.

Dash it, Darling!
I am still caught up in the happy bondage;
Then, I wonder if either of us will escape it,
What I have called this thing of ours,
We are tied to it. You know it;
People in some future time and place will think of us.

“In the wee small hours of the morning,”

So the old song goes,
While whole, wide-world, deep asleep,
I'd be yours, if only you would stay,
Be in our bed and home with me.

My love, I drew a line for you.

I have difficulty believing that you remain remote.
Can it be? Who resists the hand of Fate?
Have you now and forever gone your separate way,
Can it be true? How may I come to accept that
You are no longer available to me?

Sunday, March 17, 2013

WITHOUT YOU, George Street Heartache

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WITHOUT YOU,
George St. Heartbreak

I am sick with watery eyes and body aches,
I fear I have the flu.
A congestion of the lungs has me coughing constantly.

Insomnia stains my eye sockets;
They look as though charcoal had blackened them.
For the first time in my life,
I look older than my real age.

Years ago, when a child,
I read auguries in the snarled patterns of clouds,
And practiced divination in how snow
Accumulated to subtle differences of height
On the post rails surrounding the corral.
I examined the frozen breath of horses.
I hoped to see some hint of good fortune,
But abstracted solely gloom and heartbreak.

Today, desperate and preoccupied,
I try to pick out the future from the way
Antenna wire twists against the white walls,
And runs up and down
Along the molding in my bedroom.
Once again, all readings seem dismal.

My mind has fallen into a trench,
And, like some foot soldier, I dig a deeper hole,
Hoping to escape an enemy barrage.

Yet I fear my own defenses, that mud may bury me.

I keep to the apartment all day,
Flipping over playing cards,
Looking for my destiny every time,
A queen of hearts appears from the deck.

It's going okay tonight, not too bad.

'Don’t be wearin’ that stickpin,
The one with the opal on top.'

I found it rummaging at a local swap meet.
I have heard about the reputation of opals.
Many people consider the gem as a bearer of bad luck,
Especially should one buy it for one's own self adornment.

My luck isn't very good in the first place.
I don't think me wearing an opal
Changes the outcome of life that much.

No eulogy for this affair of heart.
No photographs left here for me to remember us.

I see no people down the street to witness
Me driving off in the Ford alone.

Rainy and cold outside today,
Happy couples walk the avenues,
Huddling close, tight, one to another.

Your name has been deleted from my speed dial.
It has vanished from my computer screen.

I guess these musings are the closest
It may ever come to a biography of us.

I must wonder if this whole fantastic romance
Does it amount to no more now
Than make-believe, a wild course of my imagining?
Is it a footnote in this big book of my own?

No children will be named for us,
Not that you wanted it anyhow,
The children being named after either you or me.

No admission will ever be charged
For entrance to the home where we once lived,
Spoke ardently of love for one other,
And I attempted verse to celebrate us for the ages.

And despite all the noise coming from the street,
All the appointments I have to keep this evening,
I can only lie on the floor and look to the ceiling.
The light is going out of my eyes.

Some people lust after money.
Others seek a hundred different lovers.
Lots of people crave more than a fair share.

I, I just want you, your love, dear,
And while life goes on without you,
I feel increasingly impoverished.
I have fallen into awful ingratitude.

A grand poverty of spirit besets me.

I exaggerate my mood,
And in a panic I envision a national calamity.
My citizenship revoked, I am a refugee,
Lost to my wife and child and forced to flee home.

I have abandoned my bed and kitchen utensils.

I know it wrong for me to venture
Such outrageous scenarios;
Yet when I sit here alone, still I feel,
That prayer fails and in my life today, Abomination.
I am bereft of Succor, as if, God punishes me.

Sadly I postulate notions contrary to the faith of millions.
The awesome numbers whose testimony concerning Grace,
Its power in everyday life, mirrors the notion,
The every hair on our head has been counted.

And, too, I betray a personal belief, which chief tenet holds --
The breath of life requires daily thanksgiving.

The wind and rain seem harder now,
The storm windows occasionally shake,
Yellow leaves are being driven into slithering sheets,
Upon the sidewalk and curb stretching along George Street.

Lost in other worlds, mind running a narrative from guise to guise,
Assorted characters riotously clamor in my head.
Some appear as wisps of smoke, resembling ghosts,
Hazy semblances, others as identifiable faces, ancients,
Or people from my everyday life both current and past.
Sometimes they appear alone or they chatter all at once.

They seem to plead for life, or to want to live again.
It could be that they wish for some sign of recognition.
I guess they want to be remembered, vainly hope that these lines
Increase their chance at immortality.
I see and hear so much anguish from them.
While they continue in their importuning,
They throw me a line or two, even a stock phrase.
They try a hapless image, or urgently intone a fetching conceit.

Someone just whispered in my ear that I should tell you,
I write a verse which is a tear drop on the face of time.

Any chance to play a part, any bit in the script,
Causes them to go on and on,
Plaguing me with endless story lines and denouements.
Those voices, their ghost-like figures and faces, ultimately exhaust me.
Then they prevent me from falling to sleep,
Demanding a fierce edit,
A late-night rewrite of this or that aspect of the tale,
What might have been, what has been,
The bright white light, the turn to bloody, stinking thinking,
All promise of happiness broken, the terrible details of remorse,
Me being here planing refuge in warm, sunny clime, an expatriate;
You back in you native land breaking chunks of ice
Just to enter the front door of your home.

It really does not matter where we are for the fact remains,
You no longer on the bed sleeping next to me.
Your body warmth is unavailable to me

Yet how I sort and file our hearts' drama,
However I work the backwards and forwards,
The comings and goings, the delete, the copy and paste,
I am at loggerheads. I feud with myself.

Was I born to loose you?

Whether I direct the faces and voices to entrance or exit,
Stage left or right, the players, all their insistent monologues,
The show in its entirety, all of it
Falls upon the end-point of this, the one central moment,
And nothing remains but this very minute,
Right where we are, at this place, at this instant.

Was that you? I could have sworn it was you.
Were you waving at your village's web cam yesterday morning,
Believing that by chance I was watching?
Had you wanted to wish me a furtive hello?

Remember the old, Sunday school lesson?
We are meant to share the Curse,
Adam's Fall when once he bit the apple.
Time itself remains nonredeemable,
All mortal experience always, eternally present.

Do I hear an objection?
Darling, do you suggest some musing about our future?
Perhaps we have another day, another place.
OK. We shall call it 'Chapter 28', yeah, yeah sure, that's the ticket.
We set sail, and merrily make our way, find home in a land,
Far away, on the other side of the baths of the eastern stars.

What powder or liquid allows us to suppose a tomorrow?
Our minds pretend our continuance!
That phantasm that we awake and have another day,
Who can guarantee the next sentient instant?

The telephone is not ringing,
No mail in the box.

I must wonder if anyone manages to bear with me?
Would such good person allow me one more turn of phrase.
I wish to take this sad poem and make it better.

At least I am not drinking.
And given severity of my current heartbreak, thank God.
From Him what strength, what glory of accomplishment!

Sunday, March 10, 2013

21:59, Time Flies

21:59, Time Flies

Tempus fugit,

So the ancient adage goes.

But it prompts me to say,

Hey Virgil, this is stupid stuff,

Because for me at home alone

The clock has stopped.

Then, when I take another glance,

I realize from the timepiece's face

That I had been mistaken, my impression wrong.

There has been some activity.

The clock’s hands have apparently moved.

Yet far from time fleeting,

The hours drag, even the second hand --

Its motion becomes imperceptibly slow,

When you are gone and

Day and night must be faced alone.

And you write to me and say that before long

You will return home. You declare that

Less than three weeks remain,

Soon, you add, your absence today turns to memory,

And confidently profess, “time really does fly!”

But for me, however you may try to comfort me,

Your consolation, it does nothing to hasten the hours!

When I hear the clock, note the spaces

Between its regular tick-to-tock, those intervals,

They appear as if they were eternity, and your absence

-- Your face no longer upon your pillow,

Your body missing from your side of the bed --

You, you seem now to have been gone forever.

I know. I know. You suppose that I exaggerate!

Yet I am not acclimated to them,

These phenomena of your leaving,

Your terrible disappearances for the sake of business,

These separations, I may never become used to them.

You were reared different from me.

When you were still a child,

Your father was a frequent traveler;

You became habituated to the longing,

And you learned to practice

The ruse which had told your inner self that

He will be home before you know it.

I can hear you and your mother practicing the phrase,

When dad was gone and you two sat at home alone,

“Oh the days go by so fast!”

The electronic image of time before me

(to the bottom-right on the computer screen)

Its numbers read 21:59.

It sits. It waits. Woman, Darling!

Woman! Can't you see what you have done to me!

My condition is desperate.

The clock no longer runs.

For me here languishing without you

Time stops, and my life suspended,

My daydreaming becomes nightmare.

The universe endlessly expanding,

With its boundary beacons actually accelerating,

Points of light at outermost fabric of space/time,

Increasing speed, faster and faster, and distancing apart,

Separately hastening from one star-light point to another,

All of them at once farther and father from the other,

Each spot, incredible luminosity endlessly hurling,

At quickening pace, ever hurrying and hurrying,

Scurrying to extend, stretching

The cosmos, picking up speed at the edge of empty space,

How would I ever hope to expect the bright of your eyes

To bridge the black night,

Where time slips into nothingness,

And the law of gravity no longer applies,

Every principle of attraction confounded.

Me having seen your face in every flower,

My longing here for you

Mean nothing when all spheres turn to final ice,

All moment gone, all hope forlorn

The electronic numbers of my computer clock,

Still sit here and read 21:59.

Monday, July 23, 2012

KIDNAPPED

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KIDNAPPED,

Wedding Night Abduction

A nightmare pulled you

From the bridal bed and out from the house;

You were screaming.

It carried you off through the wild desert.

Night had little moon;

Darkness hid the cacti,

Making them all the more dangerous to life and limb.

The temperature had dropped to freezing in the Sonora.

I could hear you cry my name.

I had been cheated at the moment when life’s promise

Happiest, I felt the fulfillment of holy, holy prophecy.

Remember, please! I had been assured children;

One was to be monarch of new Golden Age,

A child to whom future ages might do homage.

I did not hesitate, but marshaled my forces

I frantically shouted with all my might, 'Help!'

I hoped to rescue you,

My beautiful wife, the love, the love of my life.

Still perfumed and boutonnière,

Heady with the day's excitement,

Like some native sorcerer, a shaman

Whose vision had been magically enhanced

Through ritual drink, I could see in the dark.

I ran headlong, inner light to guide me.

I chased the phantom that possessed you.

Your beauty, the allure of your physical self,

Your large brown eyes and olive complexion,

Your brunet tresses running down to your shoulders,

-- drapery of oh-so-special, awesome pulchritude –

The thought of your high intelligence,

Its value to material success in my life,

Your undeniable charm, your grace,

The mercy, at core, inspiration of my poetic ambitions,

Propelled me, you, the dream of you,

It animated my heart and lungs with incredible vigor.

I and my comrades launched search after search,

Soon the whole community joined to assist,

For eight days we scoured landscape,

Reaching down into the most perilous ravines,

We walked the vast expanse for miles around.

In the heat people fell to the ground exhausted.

Old timers said that they had not witnessed such uproar,

Since the days when war Yaqui stole settler women,

Who never returned, rumor reported, because

Squaws knew better treatment among the lodges and

Tepees than in their own homes from first husbands.

We never found you.

I went to the priests and sought advice;

I prayed to the Savior, but it was no avail.

You were gone; we felt you were no longer with us.

I knew it, yet could not let you go. I pined.

I learned that time had never been a friend.

Because these, because all my efforts proved futile,

I am now a broken man, dead unto myself,

Unfit, and utterly homeless, my existence over,

Devastated, no other woman may ever have me.

Sunday, June 3, 2012

HAD I BEEN BORN PERFECT

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HAD I BEEN BORN PERFECT

Remember I told you how I handled Sammy?
He was a bad case, eh,
What with his doing 8 bags o' dust at a time,
And then visiting local bars, so sick,
Upchucking right on the patrons' jackets,
While they sat there, all innocent,
People on their stools were having a drink!

I didn't talk to him for years,
Refused all contact, I was afraid,
People had not realized how great my fear.
He occupied my thoughts night and day.

I thought he might wind up in jail,
Or dead, or a victim hooked up,
Like some medical experiment,
Doctors without options, practicing
Last resort medicine, wires and tubes,
And a parent witness to nightmare,
The nasty ordeal when intervention
Takes place during hospital emergency.

It's not death, for death is but a word.
It is the way of it. I feared.

I called it love, my having nothing,
Absolutely nothing to do with him,
Until he went for help, because he seemed
Unable to help himself, and cease
The shit with which he played.

I did not know what else to do.

Once he called me and said,
'Dad, I've got the monkey off my back!'
But I hung up the receiver,
Didn't let him explain,
I couldn't take it, no more bullshit,
I knew he was still in the circus.

And Billy, a surrogate son,
You know the story, I … I treated him the same,
The same cold shoulder, not talking to him
Months on end, until he realized our friendship
Depended on his treating his two boys,
Like a proper father. I wanted him to put
His children first in life, and I meant it.

Forget about my smile and easy charm,
It's never smart to test my resolve.

2.

But, darling, when it comes to dealing with you,
I find no form of human love prevails.
No mere earthly style or mode of affection works!

Oh, the poetry!
Look to the poetry I write for you.
My heart wells up, the warmest regard,
Right up to the breaking point,
In poem after poem I tried to portray
How great, how utter the abandon,
I declared, were fate to bring us to a terrible juncture,
A crossroad where all choice reduces
To either my life, or yours,

Gladly would I give up mine, I would die for you.

To proclaim the veracity of your physical beauty
I wrote, RED ROOF INN.

I spent a year and wrote, NOW VOYAGER for you.

The time, when in Brooklyn I found you,
That early, that rainy morning,
I knew you were treasure.
You, the reason, I wrote, SERENDIPITY!

And that I might attest to your strength of character,
Express my fondest feelings for you,
I wrote, then, over and again, I rewrote,
DREAM CHILDREN, verse which pictured you
In future time the mother of our two children.

Oh, the tender thoughts! You on my mind
Beseeching you, and ever so softly, so gently
I sought to touch upon the strings of your heart.

And the letters, they are all love letters,
And we have a pile of them.

When in this correspondence, I said it wrong,
Overstepped the line, wanted propriety,
And for those errors in judgment and phrase,
The anger, when I fell, put my own bruised feelings,
Before yours, heart, and failed to acknowledge the gift,
That your inspiration had brought me to new life,
I implore you please forgive.

Whenever I lacked intellectual power,
Whatever defect of character blocked
Good sense to say it right with care,
Still it was you -- your well being foremost in my life.
My intent was proper, I wanted the best for you,
And you know it! And though I wish you forever well,
Such a love you might not find again.

Yet I doubt all my love allows you any easier a sleep.
And one wonders what technique,
What kind of human love might lessen
The pain, the disorder troubling you,
And calm the upset delivering us
To this grisly end, the final stages of our romance?

Here I pray to God.

I fall to my knees -- such the will to believe --
Ask that Munificence be granted,
The Almighty do, on earth,
All those things that I had failed to do for you.
God's will be done.

3.

Had I been born perfect.

How I regret, when a child,
I wasted time playing with crystal sets,
And in the basement of my parents' home,
Spent hours profligately upon
Imaginary laboratory tables with chemistry,
Meaningless experiments with liquids and powders.

I wish that I had I been born perfect,
A man fit, capable of grand devotion,
The kind of guy who might do you real good,
I would have turned about,
Practiced the illusionist’s trade,
And trained until I possessed every trick in the book.
Then I could live within the mirror,
Work the conjurer's art so that when you went to look,
When you had fixed a gaze upon your own mirror image,
Instead of you, the reflection staring back,
My picture of you, the way I see you,
The enchantment, my awe, which is you,
Whenever you stand before me,
And you and I would never loose that magic,
That image of you so bountiful and pure,
No confusion, still and quiet and safe,
You, never fade away from the center of sight.

There would be light, love, and just approval,
And it would be my voice ringing through
The reflecting glass, your search at end,
No more whisper of doubt, all courage,
End to frailty, sadness no more,
We would come to the world without poverty,
And know only hugs, freedom and peace.

Were that the case,
Had fate conspired to have me born perfect,
A man fit, capable of grand devotion,
The kind of guy who might do you real good,
I would have turned about,
Practiced the illusionist’s trade,
Trained until I possessed every trick in the book.
Then I could live within the mirror…

Saturday, June 2, 2012

BLUES, Deep and Bad

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BLUES,

Deep and Bad

I got the blues, tonight, honey.

I got the blues, deep and bad.

You’re not here and soon I leave,

I go abroad for a long, long stay.

I doubt we see each other ever again.

I sit at the end of the bed.

The bedroom couch is gone,

Much of the art is removed and sold.

The furniture arrangement, I must report,

No longer resembles anything you once knew.

The whole apartment looks different,

Not at all the same, nothing is the same,

Since you dwelled and laughed with me here.

Vivid recollections, your loveliness,

I need not close my eyes,

I picture you as you stand in your white hotel slippers,

And wash grapes under the faucet in the kitchen sink.

And my loving you, it frequently comes to mind.

That we had fallen and broken apart,

No words reach the depth of my regret.

Listen to the music coming over the TV.

Oh, sweet momma, daddy,

He has caught a wicked case of the blues.

Horns worry a lower pitch, run semitone in a six note scale.

The drum loops hit my entire bodily frame,

And when I fall, drop within myself, my soul clamors,

“A middle note is missing”.

My heart’s down, the shuffle strokes are down,

The rhythm accompanies the lyrics, all of it is down.

How did it all go wrong?