A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to a Chap book

I have been bouncing around a number of ideas lately in regards to my poetry.  I promised myself that over the break from school, I would choose pieces for a chap book – a collection of roughly 24 poems.  I have rolled a number of them around in my head and, over the last couple of days, have been gifted with a couple of pieces which will make great capstones for the book. 

The publishing bug has bitten me, and like all artists, the little taste of exposure has enticed me to chase more of it.  So I do. 

The funny thing that has happened on the way to this chap book is the exorcism of much of the poisonous blood I have carried about my relationship to my mother.  I knew that journaling is a great way to release and heal but I had forgotten the healing power of poetry…sounds so stupid when it comes onto my page…but that is what is happening.  My voices in my head have been dictating poems about her for months and, out of my Morning Pages have come many pieces with her as the star.  I don’t know if it is really helping but I know it shows the bruised places in me about our fucked up relationship and my fantasy life of how much I wish it weren’t so.

Such is the way of the world:  we are sold a bill of goods promising us that our homes will be safe, our parents will be the tv sitcom perfection we dreamed of as children, and as we age that relationship will never change but will become richer and more beautiful.  Perhaps, for some people that is, indeed, the reality – lucky them – but more likely, the reality is closer to mine than the fantasy. Let me share with you the pieces that have cracked me open.

Today I offer you a couple of pieces which will, inevitably make their way into the book.  They are new.  Brand new: one from yesterday and one from today.  I am quite pleased with them.  I hope you enjoy them, too.

to the locked up parts of me i promised to protect

Somewhere.

Somewhere in the back of her mind –

so far back it was in a place she could barely reach without the aid of a step-stool –

somewhere, deep in the back of her, lives a shadow in the figure of a girl;

a woman-child.

A shadow,

an outline –

like the carbon-burned shadow forms blasted,

melted into concrete in Hiroshima or Nagasaki –

an outline of something once female hovers

with memories of dolls and tea sets and Easy Bake ovens

but somewhere closer –

so much closer that the step-stool was useless –

somewhere close in her, lives a memory of all of that hair,

all of those eyelashes,

and ankle socks,

forming some kind of wordless allurement to touch,

sans invitation,

sans desire,

sans understanding of the weight of the hand on her thigh,

her head,

her breasts.

The laughter burned in her ears and scorched her brain

like the Hiroshima hand prints left on her body

and she shut her eyes tight in quiet solitude,

promising never to be female again.

R. L. Elke

Dec 29/16

newtonian laws as they apply to my mother

Law #1: an object (me) will remain at rest or in uniform motion (my peaceful life) unless acted upon by an external force (you).  Objects (me) will remain in their state of motion (my life) unless a force (you) act to change the motion (fucks me up).

My life remains at rest in an orbit of its own making,

with an energy allowing me constant motion forward, somehow,

in spite of the many attempts,

by other bodies,

to make it otherwise.

Your external force of “cookie and a punch” parenting launches me off course –

careening into foreign bodies –

looking for uniform motion once again.

It’s inevitable and always happens like a perpetual motion machine knocking me toward you and away from you over and over and over and over and…

Law #2:    F (net force) = mass x acceleration

This law has certain limitations (as do we).  It does not apply to changing mass or if the object is moving close to the speed of light or on an atomic scale – relativity and quantum mechanics apply, respectively, in those cases, but is effective for the solution of standard problems including the effects of friction (any time we are around each other too long).

As so was my adolescents around you,

when your disdain for my round, pre-womanly body forced me to quickly change or –

see Law #1 –

be cast into isolation from the adoration of your gaze.

I am not sure if it was my size or my masculine edge –

my connection to my father –

that forced you to slap me with that famous, transformative phrase:

You have such a beautiful face, Ramona.  Boys would like you so much more if you lost weight.

What you didn’t know is that weight is not mass.

What I am made of could not be altered –

should not have been able to be altered by the gravity of your words –

even though it weighed me down,

weighed on me for years.

Law #3:  All forces in the universe occur in equal but oppositely directed pairs (us).  There are no isolated forces; for every external force of equal magnitude but opposite direction which acts back on the object – for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction (our dance).

“There are no isolated forces” –

which dooms us, really, to this mess of back and forth,

to and fro,

embrace and push back;

in this waltz of abuse enrobed in good intention.

I push,

you reach out.

I step to you,

you move away.

So it has gone on since the beginning when I appeared,

unbidden –

bad timing and all –

forcing your life away from the one you had longed for:

a working girl in the city,

an escapee of the chattering hamlet which had cast you in a role you did not want

or deserve…

a theme in your life.

I forced you to take the role of wife and mother and you,

unconsciously/subconsciously,

reacted in an equal and opposite direction,

of rejection in order to survive the changing forces in your universe;

setting the stage for the rest of the movements of us:

to and fro,

embrace and push back,

stepping toward an running away –

the waltz of heartbreak we dance.

We are forces of nature,

doomed to be ruled by forces we cannot see,

to ways of being we may not want

because Newton has given us no other choices

because “there are no isolated forces” –

everything seems to force our motion onto predetermined paths.

I don’t know.

Perhaps our release lay with Einstein.

R. L. Elke

Dec 30/16

On This Solstice

On this dark night – the longest of the year – I listen to Joe Rogan’s pod cast whilst preparing food for supper and for the Christian feast in 4 days.  There are men who remind us to look to the sky and re-connect with the inhabitants therein – the heavenly bodies encircling us and our ancestors…the light reaching us is the same light reaching them hundreds of thousands of years ago.  Their light is our light.

They knew the power of the solstice and the equinox and the high drama of the fight of light and dark – the fight for the survival of all of us and all living creatures with which we share this orb of earth, air, fire, and water.  They knew what to do on these nights – to go to the top of the highest place and raise hands to the sun, praying for its return.

I had planned to do that.  It never happened.  I still may go to the park yet tonight and reach to the stars and thank them for their light, protecting us from the blackening night and all of the monsters hiding therein.  What I have done, however, is to marvel at what a difference six months make…how the Sun King anoints us with his warmth and leaves us too soon.  How I had written a poem about the summer solstice and how it felt like such a rip off for the first day of summer to come even before school was out for the year…for the days to shorten before my longest, blissful days had begun. 

There is no such sorrow on the winter solstice, strangely enough.  There is no such sorrow – even in this impenetrable darkness, there is no sorrow…there is only a drive to burrow deeply into the sacred spaces of myself and confer with the elders; to sit with the ancients and feel their wisdom whisper to my bones.  Only a pull to my tarot cards and to warm soup and black teas flavoured with orange and clove and rum.  Only a desire to dress in nothing but furs, to feel that silky touch on naked skin and sigh a prayer of thanks to the creature for its touch...and to melt the darkest of chocolate on the tongue slowly so as not to never forget the taste of it.

When my older children were small, they would be allowed one gift to open for Yule.  They were allowed one gift and promised a story at bed time of the Holly King and the Oak King who fought tonight for the sun – to make sure that the sun would rise in the morning.  What I omitted was the version of the story in which the Holly King and the Oak King were two handsome men who were fighting for the hand of the beautiful consort – the Sun Queen.  The Holly King was older and had fulfilled his duty to the Queen and now it was time for the young, virile Oak King to take over until June 21, when the Holly King would fight the Oak King and the whole cycle would start again.  Both were supple and keen to serve. Both worshiped her so she would rise every morning, pleased and satisfied; for when she is satisfied, we are all satisfied.

I think of those lovers now, the men fighting until midnight, when she arrives in the doorway to say goodbye to the Holly King, and gathers up her new lover.

Gawain wore the Holly and, before the Christianization of the Arthurian Legends, was considered to be a manifestation of the Green God but also a manifestation of the Holly King.  There are stories of his banishment of the Red Knight, I believe, from the Pentecost feast in the Great Hall, which caused the disintegration of the Knights of the Round table and sent them to the four corners of the world to find the Grail…

So many interesting stories for this time of year.  So many based in reflection and taking stock and counting blessings and aching to be near those we love most.

This piece was my gift today from the angels of poetry:

For the Sun 

Deep in this fitfulness digs discontent –

a tick infecting flesh with madness,

delirium,

or dread of days darker than these.

Not today –

on this day of darkest days,

when Night holds captive the Sun

for much longer than we dare imagine,

today we love light and entice it to stay for one more drink

because, baby it’s cold outside,

and I left my coat laying on his bed.

Today we coax Night out

and create new ways to pacify his longing for darkness.

We need light today –

darkness has reigned too often this year.

Return to dance with us, beloved.

We miss your starry eyes.

R. L. Elke

Dec. 21/16

Blessed Be you this Solstice and may Light love you always.