In a hole down by the river bend for long have I waited the waters edge
For long have I driven the drive
To see you through the worlds window
Hollow stovepipe landing me closer
To a bridge of my own building design
Paper thin walls and
Planks to stand on
Hovering towards an open window
Fall back into line
They all said
Stepping lightly
Land hardly making
A sound
Care not what I have done than
Now is the now of my understanding
“The yellowing slant of late September … “
Thrilling skill, reserve and hidden wink,
they call it a “hidden reserve” in the quote,
“literature” end quote
Where did you find that swagger?
that confidence that sway?
I’ve always been the one to make too much of everything.
I could be sitting in band or seminar and be filled or fueled
on another’s beauty. In my new car, I imbibe landscapes,
and roads, and varying velocities, and barns, and make
the acquaintance of trees, and a film strip of postcards.
I want to make a quilt of sorts out of the things I have seen
in the summer months, as if you could take out a July road trip
in February; I thought July looked good on everybody and
every place, and now, with my goldfish eyes, I wonder about
the yellowing slants of late September. Forgetting so easily,
it takes on a dreaminess, which may be the person I am when
alone with my thoughts, or the who am when I’ve unzipped
my limited beliefs and go skinny dipping in the scene, and speed,
and accelerating into the curve.
It may be a time to flirt with complete abandon, or harvest some
of the sweetnesses of a lingering moment, or a bon mot I do
not want to forget, but taste again and against the edginess and
dagger cold. I am not sure where to put it so that I may find it later.
Dog tired. I remember this feeling from so long ago but it’s not a choice. Get up and go. The children are awake, the sun is slowly rising, the floor is cold, the snoring has eased, the dogs are whining to go out. Here goes. Fortunately, no hangover, only from a long day of traveling to this never land of adventure. Sideways rain through that little window on the plane just before kathump- landed safely albeit not gently. This week does not promise to be gentle. Maybe I should keep my seat belt fastened. Yeehah! Ida-fucking-ho. Here’s what I need right now. Idaho, my grandchildren, my daughter, my husband. The love my son used to so carefully sway me rather than push me to come. Here’s what I need right now-here is where I am.
Absolutely everything
must go
I got left in the free
pile with the random
cooking utensils
romance paperbacks
a broken fan, cookbooks from
the 80s, a tennis racket
and those sneakers you
lost last summer
good company for a
Sunday afternoon.
Hey there! I took another look at my life.
It does not say how long I will be around.
But with the time I have left I
Need to work on it,
Make it better to be.
I will do my best,
So I took another look at my soul
To make it whole again
I took another look,
Because really?
I never really looked at myself,
I just told myself that everything was just fine.
Until it wasn’t
But there I was in prison
In a nine month drug program—
And in the back of my mind
I figured I would always get some kind of high once in a while.
Everything was fine
Until it wasn’t
Because that same high
Took my husband’s life
So everything was not fine
So I took another look…
Who cares?
We’ll certainly I don’t
I gave up caring a long time ago
Without caring nothing can hurt, it just
doesn’t matter
Only the numb matters
I just don’t want to feel a thing
I don’t want to participate
I don’t want to be seen
Really, I just want to cease
Or better yet, not to have existed at all
I’m no good to myself, nor anyone else
I don’t matter
I don’t fit in
And you can’t make me care
I’m picking up my marbles and walking away
I’ll be a vapor, disappearing in the sun
Please, won’t somebody care
Because I really can’t go on living like this.
Angala has been a WFR regular for years now, and her voice is honest, kind, and true. Here are five of her recent poems.
What I forgot to Tell You
No more doubts
Just a reflection
Why was I this way?
I got a feeling you were reading my mind
Why was I pretending?
I lied all the time, To myself
Wasting time
It was all the same
I got a feeling the bottle fed my doubts
Why did alcohol want me?
Why did I crave its poison?
I cried all the time at the bottom of hell
I know today alcohol was reading me, studying me as I cried in my bed wishing I was dead.
It was always the same when we talked
Alcohol was my distraction from my mind
Sober now I don’t pretend or lie
I forgot to tell you I don’t miss you, no more doubts
One day at a time
Take a Look Around
Screaming, crying, throwing
Take a look around?
Things are not like they were when your world wasn’t upside down.
Smiling. Giddy, joy, proud
Take a look around?
Places, people, things I found I can enjoy again simple pleasures like babies coming into the world, strangers smiles underneath masks I sense with smell
Take a look around ?
The world is slowly coming back together again
Sometimes I forget the simpleness of the front door but if I pull turn around and look at my home I’m reminded it’s a cozy place not scary like before
So I take a look around and find comfort in my gratitude and laugh a little with a grin.
I’m Not Going Back
Saving my last breath for you… Hell No
It’s hard sometimes to say the truth out loud
Pulling the truth out
I’m not going back to that time when the fear of their words scared the vomit through the bathroom door. Crying in the lunchroom all by myself
It’s hard sometimes to breathe in and breathe out
I wanted to run down the paths that led me home but instead I took a long winding detour that led me to broken door.
I drifted away for a while with every step I took, steps that showed me a different side of that broken smile.
Time takes time that’s why my footsteps move forward now and I’m not looking back
Today I need my pain to feel the truth
I don’t love you anymore
I’m not going back
The pain of my forgiveness, time to fix the broken pieces
I’m not going back to that day where my mind gave up on itself
I could have been my families tragedy even they let me back in
This is as honest as I’ve ever been
I sat in shame, guilt and pain but not today that was my back
There is no reason to relive all the pain
All my addictions each and every one still lives down in my makeup they scream every day to come out, I calmly smile and say no. Why go back when today is my creation?
No more shame, no more guilt, no more pain
I found joy
I found change
I found Grace
I found love
I found one day at a time
I won’t go back. Why?
Because I finally found me
It Was a Puzzle
You are not hidden
You will always be in the open
Waiting patiently for me to walk out the front door.
Just waiting to bully its words its glare as I walk place to place.
My heart trembles at the sound of your name
In your presence I was always defeated
Everything I’ve done
I am not worthless
I am not hopeless
I will stand tall
I will not cry in fear
I sent an army to rescue myself
This is where I am now
I no longer fear you
I look up and not at my feet
I know my HP had my back all along
My heart doesn’t tremble at the sound of your name anymore
Let the mountains roar
It was a puzzle for years, but not any more.
I Took Another Look
Some kind of magic
Don’t let me get comfortable
Got a tendency to let go
Won’t be happy either way
Addicted to blue
How lucky am I?
There isn’t too much to say
Go have fun
Got good at faking smiles
You wouldn’t even notice
The focus on a thousand eyes
I can’t undo what I have done
We can take all night, if we know where this goes
Why did I play with fire?
You got to grit your teeth while you smile through all the pain
If I let the ground swallow me whole
I am just trying to build myself back up to take another look.
What do you see?
Take a look around:
do you see your innermost motives
set in an array of artifice and votives?
Do you see me looking at you seeing me?
See with your humanity, as if through the skin
as you careen through your busy life
on your roller coaster cart.
Cats and rats scurrying around each other
in a game of catch as catch can
like bats chasing mosquitos in the dark.
Observe your surroundings before you scuttle off
to a restaurant in the upper section of town
to meet the friend who withholds
his permission to let you mount
the clouds and soar above him
or even next to him
stop to hear the robin in the old oak overhead
before you jump into a cab without finishing your bread
What’s the rush? Just shush
the motor in your head where it hovers.
Tread gingerly, compañero,
it’s over before you remembered
to savor the moments
you can never recover
We’re proud to share that the work of six WFR writers is featured in “Rebirth,” the current issue of Paper Dragon, the Drexel University literary magazine. The pieces are really fantastic, so be sure to share them. And thanks to Nonfiction Editor Beth Ann Downey and Editor-in-Chief Bill Vargo for inviting us to submit to their wonderful magazine!
I’m trying to be more aware of
the water flowing in Otter Creek
and the trees reflected on its surface,
the silvery branches, thinly decked
bright early green
against a blue cloud-puffed sky
Not long ago, I looked
across the puddled field
on the other side of the road
at a heron, sitting tall in the marshy grass.
Then taking flight, gliding
barely above the grassy ground
and rising quickly over the creek
to become part of the reflected image, the
newly leafed trees, the blue sky
and a couple of deep and dramatic
grey-white clouds.
Often, I forget to remember:
I’m trying to be more aware
of my surrounding
of my ever present brain
and its shenanigans
that ride me on repetitive routs
patterns I try to eschew
kind of like letting go
of an old foe
I surf the wave
of conditioned reflex
unaware how i share
my space with all around me
all of the all including the fall
from grace, before I could
even walk or talk
so many years of restrained tears
meet me on the verge of a surge
of emotion, from which I attempt
to glide astride
and ocean of salt and brine
that i made more
so very long ago
Awareness, that beast I
have tried to repress
now wants to vault out
and no longer behave
before I cave in
to an monstrous rave.
I stood on a tall great wall
100 feet above the ground
and I felt wobbly.
I tried to keep my balance
like a drunken ballerina
on a tight rope.
A burly phantom climbed up with a ladder
and I floated over to pull me down,
but lingered on the ledge of oblivion;
he threw me a ropelike a lasso, but missed.
To fall or to stall
the inevitable until
it came naturally?
He threw the rope, again
though not like a lasso, this time
and I teetered as it reached me;
it was a long way down!
But I grabbed the rope
and held on tight;
Then I fought to survive;
Then I wanted to be alive
to give abstinence a chance
without a brooding or rueful
backward glance.
I clutched on to salvation
and climbed down the ladder
one rung at a time
and out of the clouds
to descend to a less fickle world.
On the last rung, I jumped into the phantom's arms
and almost toppled him.
All at once, gratitude sprang up
and carried us both.
If only I could send you
the fragrance of the apple blossoms,
you, beleaguered ones, running for shelter as rockets and
bombs hail down.
Why do the nations rage so furiously together?
Why do the peoples imagine a vain thing—
the Psalmist’s plaint, so ever-contemporary.
The Sabbath bread is baking.
I offer my heart.
If only I could gather you here in the garden,
in amity, without judgment, joined in our common grief—
you Jews, you Muslims, you Christians,
you: Palestinians and Israelis,
together at our Sabbath table.
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
The commander cleared her throat and stuck the facts to the board. What they knew could be counted on one hand: the victim’s false identity, modest career, lack of close relationships, and his time of death.
She’d never been efficient at managing her emotions, still locked up for a few seconds when she passed that yellow tape, somehow worse after the promotions from 15 years of noticing how and why people kill. TV makes her and her colleagues look like observant rockstars, using clues and a penchant for puzzles to rid society of her worst. But that wasn’t the case, if you’ll forgive the pun — the solve rate was abysmal. Although the fanfare afforded to the high-profile ones helped the pill go down easier for the masses.
Her therapist would call this “overwhelming herself in order to underwhelm herself”. Progress.
A cough brings her back to linoleum, fluorescent lighting, and uniforms stress sweating as the solve window approaches. She’s been mostly successful at shoving back a too-cramped apartment, thoughts of mythical coins, and self-actualisation. Here there’s a man that needs justice and for now, that’s all she can handle being aware of.
Ric Cengeri of WDEV Radio’s Vermont Viewpoint invited Gary on to talk WFR. Check it out!
Raise Your Chalice High
She gave me a white chip today
I’m no longer pissing my life away
maybe I’ll find another wife
to give me grief and strife
Raise your chalice high
to the guy in the sky
for he alone only knows why
we spit in the reapers eye
Then bitter tears came to my eyes
or was it the smoke so thick you
could cut it with a knife
to reveal the lies
she’s been whispering
to me all my life
Raise your chalice high
to the guy in the sky
for he alone only knows why
we spit in the reapers eye
Oh what great things
we could do a snuggling
staring at the ceiling
and insanely sniggering
Raise your chalice high
to the guy in the sky
for he alone only knows why
we spit in the reapers eye
So now I’ll say good night
and go to sleep
dreaming of holding
a red chip so tight
It wasn’t like this
when I was growing up.
It was strong and limber
when the green in my limbs
were still growing
It wasn’t always old and creaky
when I was still exploring myself
when all my love was self defeating.
It wasn’t enlightened by the awareness
of the brevity
of our delicate stay here
I wanted, so much to perish prematurely
so I threw much of it to the ether
as if i could breathe it in another dimension
Only after years of swaggering and staggering
only after spitting venom at the world
and having it spit contagion back
did a precious spark
give hark to my ear
Now, embracing the moments I have left
I sometimes reflect with remorse and regret.
The warmth against my body is comforting.
It’s Fiona.
My wife and I call the space between us in bed, Fiona’s Middle
She heaves herself into my back and heavily exhales.
When I was so sick from alcohol it was Fiona, gave me comfort.
Fiona was there, the warmth and pressure of her body against my back was comforting and calming to the shake I had within.
Now she is older. Her entry is not so much a leap but a step and a plop into her space.
She will be 12-years-old at the end of this month.
That is five years more than Hank, our first yellow lab, had.
Hank had the middle too. At his end it was Hank that was shaking and I was the steady warmth against him.
Now sober. I, like Fiona, have five extra years.
Who’s a good girl? I am. I’m a good girl
We didn’t talk about it.
We didn’t talk about anything.
We were talked to.
“Don’t do as I do, do as I say.”
“Stop crying or I will give you something to cry about.”
I started talking about it.
It didn’t go well.
I am now living in exile.
Shunned for daring to have an opinion different from you, Mother Dear.
Well, it is quite an adventure living “No Contact.”
It’s quite lovely really.
I don’t hang up the phone and feel sorry for you and sad for me.
I no longer search for remedies for your ills online only to have you ignore me.
We didn’t talk about it then,
And we won’t talk about it now.
Now that you have shown me who you are.
Now that you have exposed your ugly underbelly.
Now that I am getting healthier, I not only talk about it, I write about it.
The writing heals me.
It reminds me.
Every day it reminds me.
The page is a place to practice talking about everything I have been warned not to talk about.
As I write, I heal.
If I Hadn’t
There was a time I wore a coat of so many colors sometimes I got lost. Forgotten amidst my protection, which shell I was wearing, which disguise I had donned that particular day. Was I the good witch or the bad? On the yellow brick road or the path to destruction. Was I the queen or the pauper, the turtle or the hare? I could always run away but could I ever run toward? That’s an interesting idea because running toward is not something I do lightly. Not something that is easily done from under neath these many layers of colors I have so cleverly created. Can the world see them or are they only visible to me? If I hadn’t created them who would I be? Would I be normal, different, loved more? If I hadn’t been me, then who would I be, who would you see. You would still simply see me, If I hadn’t been me.
Ode to Johny
You can’t convince me there is only one way to do this. That your way is the best way, the only way. You have what I want so do it the way I do it. You tell me if I try it my way-How’s that workin’ for you? Had enough yet? This friendly face came across the room toward me on a computer screen not too long ago. He didn’t preach to me. He didn’t tell me how to behave, how to react, how to feel. He didn’t list off the only way do this thing that we were all reaching for. He asked me some questions, he listened for my answers then he asked me what I felt. I will never forget that face coming toward me on that screen that day. He didn’t try to convince me of anything. He still doesn’t. He is real today. He came out of the screen and into my life. He didn’t need to convince me. I am convinced. There is more than one way.
