Poetry Thursday
So, I decided after all to participate in the assignment of this week's Poetry Thursday. I wrote the poem below first, but it took me a while to figure out "Why I Love Poetry". So here goes nuthin':
I don't love poetry. It loves me. It's inside me. In every particle; every atom; every electrical impulse of my brain. It loves me and I can only love it back because, like a symbiont, it lives from me and I live because of it. It opens my eyes; opens my heart; makes me realize myself where otherwise I would walk around my life in a daze of not thinking (kind of like when you're in Wal-Mart and unconsciously buying shit you don't need). It's hard to shake that medicated feeling that society wants us to be in. Poetry keeps me sane and I keep it alive within me by opening my veins and letting it bleed from me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sister
My chest feels so heavy
and yet empty
Like you carved a hole in it.
You crawled in ten years ago and made yourself comfortable
like some sort of grown-up fetus
Vacillating sorrow and uncertainty
My tears threaten to spring forth of their own accord
to demand my attention
I try to speak
but
my throat closes so my voice is forced
as if with my every breath
my every word to you
were lies
It sounds that way, doesn't it?
Like someone who doesn't know you?
Maybe I don't really.
I don't know why you don't love me anymore.
I thought my imagination was playing tricks on me
Paranoid
You've called me that before
Said that sometimes I can't see situations for what they really are
Sometimes I can't
I'm not crazy, sister
I know I'm not misconstruing
you
There are days when I can't function for thinking of you
when you were here
in my heart
curled in my belly
Waiting on you to speak is unbearable
Almost like waiting for the other shoe to drop
expecting it
knowing it's there
but it never comes
And I don't know why I should have to be waiting for
some sort of retribution
from you
I hate your silent treatment
your punishment
I don't deserve for letting you
set up shop in my head
for loving you
as a sister should
unconditionally
Thoughts on a ticker
You know like the one on the news?
run through my brain and tell me
that I'm better off without you
My attempt at self-protection
Haven't done a very good job of that
have I?
If I didn't love you so much
I wouldn't be in so much pain
I need you
Without you
I'm not fully me.
That hole in my heart?
That gaping, bloody hole in my belly
that you burst from suddenly
You know, like the Alien from that movie?
It leaves me deadfeeling
corpselike
bloodytrailingfootprints
as I shuffle to the tune
of a Thorazine drip
I used to always reach out for you
run to you
for support
as if by the act of merely touching you
like the bleeding woman touching the hem of Jesus' robe
it would mean everything
would be ok
that you were really there.
Fearlatent, pregnant with abandonment
growing
now budding
then flowering
a redbloodfruition
Achingsister
Hurtingsister
When did you stop loving me?
I could hate you so easily
I could be as bitter
as green persimmons
I could launch words from those old catapults I built
they would cut you
sister
to the bonewithinyourbone
Can't do it, though
Can't hate you
I can only let you go.
Closure (of love)
Validation (of pain)
Mea culpa, mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.
Can you feel it?
Does it torturousrepeatitself in your brain?
Does it's vineycreeping crawl up your spine
curlyquetwine itself around
the neurons
axon terminals
dendrites
synaptic gaps
Do you function as I do not?
Sisterloveyou
loveyousomuch
goaway
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
© Robyn Fenner
Labels: Poetry Thursday
posted by Anais Nin at
8:38 AM
6 Comments:
(((Robyn)))
This poem sounds so familiar, yet so painful. To be cut from those you share a history with.
(((Brian)))
It is so painful because I didn't see it coming. It knocked me for a loop. I'm severed from her, at least that's what it feels like. And the worst part is that the severing is not my fault, but she keeps punishing me for it.
wow ... i followed a link and found you and this amazing poetry and i completely relate to why you love poetry ...
nice to meet you ...
Likewise.
I'm glad you liked the poem. I originally wrote another version of it back in 2002. Like you said in your blog for Poetry Thursday today, I wrote with clumsy words. Sometimes it comes out like that. I can't find the rhythm or the right words to express what is going on. Here I am 6 years later finally realizing the completion of it because this is exactly what is going on in my life right now. It was then as well, but the person I wrote it about convinced me that it was all in my head, which makes this time all the more painful.
Like all of your poems I've read, this one is powerful almost beyond words, and, from a purely poetic point of view, it is the best poem of yours I've had the pleasure to share in. Furthermore, I think it does an excellent job illustrating the complicated relationship with poetry which you so vividly capture in your opening paragraphs. Thanks as always for putting this out there for the rest of us to experience.
Hi Robyn,
Your preface for why you love to write poetry is a beautiful lead in to this emotionally charged, power-packed, agonizing (painful) beauty of a poem. I relate too closely to these questions that torture your soul. Tears are pouring from my eyes and seeping from every pore of my body.
Again, I feel the visual word placement you use of putting words adjacent to each other touching, shows that bond so well. We'll never know why those stopped loving us or box themselves in apart and make no attempt to heal the chasms. In our minds, the thoughts replay, the longing and love is yearned for- more than that, it's like a limb is cut off. My heart aches for you. We can heal but we will be different because of such that you wrote so eloquently about.
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