All posts tagged death

unwound

breaking open into a night which ticks silently by trying to figure why there is (there is what, is not the point) but just that there is and you can fill in the blank (but the typed keys wrote black but i erased that for in the blackness there is a blank that envelops us until we become so numb that we beg for there to be feeling). where was i  besides riding this wave of gone tide hoping to lampoon a whale to travel me to a land that holds an island where a native can teach me how to love in an unselfish way without the baggage of g(G)od or myths or power that pulls us in so many directions until we unravel into a heap that has so many frayed ends that there is no end to the number of ways one could become unraveled / could we not just start all over from zero. water freezes but this blood keeps the core beating to earth’s rhythm while contemplating today’s deaths/ why are there so many deaths in winter, is it not already a cold bleak time that buries us into a hole and we struggle under the dark sky trying to take hold, rooting but losing our grip on reality as daylight continues to waver on the side of the road. forty is looming and there is still no answer to the question posed a decade ago. what shall catapult me forward /what shall bring me backward besides rewinding this dead watch and watch it not move forward again. a white tattoo winks behind the cursor. curse her once more in this mirror but how can you be angry at one who was strong enough to survive. they did not survive and perhaps that is the lesson for today beyond the lesson learned in lecture that started these thoughts as the ravens flew down hanging midnight’s curtain starting at 5:15 on this midwestern landscape begging for Poe and rivers to open wide, swallow this boat that got lost since the moon felt it needed a night off after all. where is faith when you do not walk with confidence – he states that only the faith-filled walk with confidence but if that means his brand of belief than these shoes prefer a hunched path for at least when i get lectured about intellectual arrogance i understand that it no different from the one he flames from the pulpit when they place a former Jew on display who has renounced God for God and all the Christians clap/ no one sees the irony. someday we will all meet truth / until then continue to watch this watch for when it starts to work again we will know that we are finally at our destination ~

 

(this post is in memory of deaths revealed today : 1. AM text from coworker who read the obit of a patron who was dear to me (he had actually visited me a month ago to say good-bye, to tell me he was dying) 2. read that the young founder of Reddit was found dead (by hanging)  3. Neil Gaiman writes a moving post about the sudden death of his rescue dog, Cabal, who came to him during a lonely time of life which I so understand for my rescue dog was given to me after a prayer for help – it was perhaps the last time faith was in this room)

 

 

1 Comment
by angela on 2013/01/13  •  Permalink
Posted in stream of thought, writing
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by angela on 2013/01/13

http://yellowhousecafe.wordpress.com/2013/01/13/unwound/

head swimming, remembering: it landed, heads up

people, the fallen, the saved – we are all human – blood – bone – nerves that make our pain; yet that pain we experience is uniquely our own. each circuitry is woven into our being, our ticking is precisely timed to how we are wound. who wound me? what happens when the clock strikes that chime that is to send me beyond, into eternity, but this body fails to yield. is it one who opens ourselves to power of one. are we really condemned to hell if we capture our own castle, raising the bridge to a remote level, raising a red flag so that any passer of our humble reservoir knows entry is not for them, not for any child of the living or dead. how does evil walk among us and live if we are the fruit of love.

He casts his thick arm about my willowy neck until it breaks, a swollen fruit from the vine of goodness, overwhelmed and heavy with a sun spiked bounty, a juicy nectar of sugar and time. It can be sacrificed for a table, to fill each lead goblet with rose and blood. I shed this blood so that you may enter into a fantasy of head dreams, a talisman not of stone, a liquid born of synergy.

If he, however, took me early, before I was ready to be plucked from mother root, a baby of not yet birth shall taste bitter in your mouth causing each tongue to swell and recoil. spat out that sip of evil. His hands have spilled me all over the earth, leaving nothing, nothing but… but what couldn’t be a ticking, a mindless turning of wheels behind fog scape mirroring what used to be.

The screams build silently, holy; a chorus of Christmas Eve hymnals. Suddenly, Mary’s plight seems so real.

How we wish to cast away this planted memory that takes its claws into fallen ashes. The saved will murmur, she gets what she deserves. How dare she dangle, eve of a split moon, casting her bright light among the cloaked brethren. She was, I was, just twisting in an autumn wind, playing a coin toss in my head, wondering if it lands heads, then we shall be dead… wont we?

Little did I know the fever dream would awaken into a world pulsing with rot. Stench of his unwashed soul heavy upon his breath. There was not enough midnight left to blank out the white glow that spilled through the broken panes, past the white curtain now torn, dancing a dervish of pending disaster.

His breath upon my face, a mixture of acidity, blood and rye. He had tasted his own blade, licked it dry, its dull edge cutting a lie across his tongue in red.

Passing traffic was not loud enough. The street echoed no ones footsteps. The was no need for him to cover this O, this scream.

he yanked a life out of me. he forced a life into me.

Some say the seed should have never planted if the land was truly sacred, a pure valley laying for a golden kiss. Yet, it now thrives in this hollow cave that was once a body in musical harmony.

Down the hall, the only music that plays is the chime of Grandfather’s treasure. Its sounding recants the nightmare, every midnight; every half hour; how many ticks of breath have passed since that last night of innocence sleeping.

Tonight, the coin toss is upon me. It shall be no ones game of fate but mine. They’ve already buried my mind, this ticking being destroyed how many hours ago with written condemnation. This nation of forgivers, forgive me, as I’ve forgiven you. There cannot be two of me. There cannot be one if there is one in memory. It, too, must cease to exist.

I know not what the tomb shall offer for this transgression of mercy. A question, whispered with blue breath, I posit to you:

how can he convict a child who could find no ending to the horror composed as her original story…

*******************

stream of thought posting
sources credited, ‘inspirations’ :
No Country For Old Men
We Need To Talk About Kevin
Rep. Todd Akin in the news
Bible

3 Comments
by angela on 2012/08/27  •  Permalink
Posted in stream of thought, writing
Tagged , , , , , , ,

Posted by angela on 2012/08/27

http://yellowhousecafe.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/head-swimming-remembering-it-landed-heads-up/

mars event, or daydreaming on Mars

 

Elusive, she moves along the edge of shadow’s wings when the moon has peeked under a shower of stars chasing a beast running the night’s silent song.  An oboe’s string sliding along the sliver of obsolete sound produced when a splinter of glass has raised the ante to produce a sound of everlasting peace from a piece broken by you. We mimicked black tape footsteps trying to master elegant dance steps before the final dance of our romance — our wedding day promenade.  The band shall beam our stars for a night, a night that we will eventually regret. Far away from here, but nearer than our next daydream while sleeping on Mars. 

Yes, what was that…what happens when we let our mind wander and shift between the line of conscious and the key of music that plays, opening up our music in the form of words. The above was floating along the melody of Nick Drake while he sang lowly and strings laced his lonely lyrics. A bed of flowers laid upon a land that could only be experienced under his pink moonrise, which turns golden beneath a touch of his tongue. If only we were as blessed by the beast of magical thinking, making guitar strings sing.

Every string seems to have a snapped inside this house, perhaps the stars have shot the muse dead; perhaps the sun has burnt the brains out of her head…

…perhaps, I should take the time to actually stop and write down all the words that come into my head through out the day.  Sometimes it is impossible (on the bike, at the circ desk, walking the pup) but sometimes is it pure laziness and the stories fade away before midnight. Tonight, I thought of another story, or perhaps it was a non-story, while sipping wine and reading the New Yorker waiting on dinner. The pen was right there… foolishly, I thought I’d remember.

This one, though, is a memory of a tale to tell from last nights final go while reading Dave Eggers latest, A Hologram For The King. The main character is having a rather hard time of it, his life is in the crapper and he has one last chance… as many stories go. He is readying to go, dressing for his last-ditch effort to save his company, and he feels the lump that he ignores. The lump upon his spine that has become a reminder of what may destroy him even if he succeeds. A lump of panic rose within me.

We ignore what we wish to not to face. C_ too ignored the lump that had imbedded itself within his body. He felt it daily until it became so large that it was easy to see. He told no one until he found himself on the floor. By that time, the cancer had declared war and took every prisoner it encountered until he was 50 percent occupied with enemy envaders. Nine months later, he would be dead.

This recant is clinical. It is the cold, hard facts of the black and white nature of what happens when cancer captures our castle. This isn’t a flip observation, but one I consider since I’ve been told that my risks for my body turning on me are at risk since I refuse certain western medicines. Many of us are told these things, many of us will choose to roll the dice.

What if… he questioned while dressing, I get cancer, won’t that being the final, the finale that will save this misery of failure. 

There is no failure, not really, for there has been no striving toward anything. The only thing that took my breath away for an instant last night, when I considered this glimpse of mortality… death is a long dark road of forever. What if this lack of faith that has come to embrace me lately seals this drift into a state of hate cast upon those of us who refuse to genuflect? The breath stopped until I thought – C_, E_, J_ all floated away from this world on a paper crane until the sun burned them gone. Not one of them would be allowed to ‘ever-after of holy, holy’ if the holy word is true. Surly, they’d be waiting for me.

Is it possible that the dead can shine upon the living? I swear today, his smile landed upon my lips as I turned my face to the sky while scripting a triangle in the middle of the Y. A smile brighter than any that has touched these lost eyes, stretching me toward the ceiling. There was no doubt, he’d be there to greet me.

Despite what was said in lecture tonight. Burn me, if that is my penance, but certainly these charred ashes of spent bone that God bothered to create will blow into another cloud of those that couldn’t find their way. May that wake of sand be where the lonely land and converge. May that be where the words and music can break open lonely, dark nights allowing us to finally

daydream on Mars. ~

 

2 Comments
by angela on 2012/08/12  •  Permalink
Posted in creative mind, stream of thought, writing
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by angela on 2012/08/12

http://yellowhousecafe.wordpress.com/2012/08/12/mars-event-or-daydreaming-on-mars/

Reading Wallace while reading Tsypkin while reading Green -

“That the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle.” ~ David Foster Wallace, on Kafka

I’d say my reading style is how David Foster Wallace composed his thoughts.** Nothing remains linear. A line is certainly drawn, but it is crossed, sectioned, upended, and oft fractured. When I read, the eyes scan down, seeking that next word three sentences away. Fingers hold pages here and there. I flip often.

A luxury day. Eighty plus degrees…in the Midwest, in March? I feel our poles melting as I write; a trickle down of too many years of environmental exposures. Mother; even her tears are hot as they fall to moisten the brown ground.

I sit, tired, but anxious of mind. Five books stacked precariously on the small metal chair that imprints ugly patterns into my skin. Fresh brewed coffee’s heat competes with the humidity, swirling just inches from the lip then stopping. The pup, the heat is already too much; she sighs, stretches to her side and sleeps.

Books: which book do I pull first from the deck? I finger the blue one; the white one … David Foster Wallace wins. Consider the Lobster: and other essays. I desire essays, but feel guilty after reading Adrienne Rich (and following VIDA on FB); should it just be just the feminine scribes I read?

Wallace’s words; however, vindicate the choice a bit as I read his critique of John Updike. In “Certainly The End Of Something Or Other, One Would Sort Of Have To Think,” Wallace expounds on why Updike is oft not liked by anyone under 40; well, except for him; but especially, not women. He quotes a quote he swears he has heard from a female regarding Updike:

“Just a penis with a thesaurus.”          (It took the edge off my catholic guilt.)

Wallace’s style feeds my impatience with prose. The finger dance begins as the eyes start to wander, scanning the contents of other chapters. Soon I’m dipping into a checkerboard of words on page 275, leaving page 56 behind.

“Host” captures me with its oddity. I’ve two fingers holding up Updike in case I return.

“Host” (I surmise) is why some readers dislike Wallace. It is a piece about a radio program jockey, and/or a radio station; FCC detail; radio politics; media politics to local politics; to famous court cases; and back again. There are arrows and boxes woven around text in every nook of the page. Ironically, the style soothed my self-proclaimed ADD style of reading.

(It didn’t last more than a few pages. I moved on to Kafka)

Wallace’s Kafka; or Wallace on Kafka: “Some remarks on Kafka’s Funniness”. Not sure if I should be worried that the Kafka example used, a cat and mouse fable, struck me with laughter. You see, the point he makes is that he cannot teach Kafka to college students because they don’t really ‘get’ the funny. The fact that Wallace has an affinity for Kafka’s twisty funniness helps me to understand his death just a bit….perhaps.

(Death. Unintentionally, it unwound before me as I read. I’ll expound later.)

I leave Wallace for a while to read choice two, Summer in Baden-Baden. A unique used book I found recently. It’s the story of a man who is obsessed with Dostoevsky. The man is so smitten with the diary written by Dostoevsky’s wife, that he boards a train to travel to where it all ends. Darkness fuels this write. Why shouldn’t it as author, Leonid Tsypkin, a Russian medical researcher, wrote ‘underground’.

Summer was smuggled out of the Soviet Union to the USA for publication in 1981. Sadly, Tsypkin died in Moscow in 1982.  I’ve just started, but already feel its weight. A heavy read for such a thin book.

[Sidebar: Wallace calls me, again. Thumbing through, I find on page 255, that he writes of Dostoevsky. I don't stop to read, but smile at the synchronicity.]

Book three: John Green. An unlikely mashup with the others in my stack. It is today’s blue candy before the green day of tomorrow.*** The Fault In Our Stars, settles my restlessness in its easy flow of dialogue. I read with a passionate bent, reminiscent of my teen years; but, why not, for Green is an edgy author for teens.

The first page explores death. It sucks me in; it sucks the breath right out of me. The girl, Hazel, cannot breathe. She is dying, slowly. She breaks it down for us, though, saying, do we not all fall into oblivion some day?

Something catches in mid gasp - the character’s words ache inside me. A fog lifts and I remember two years ago today. Innocence lost to a sudden death. The depth of her light was immense. e_ was a good friend who passed at age 38. The cold on that day froze Mother’s weeping.

Reading allows us to escape; yet, others read to understand from what they are trying to escape. Our humanity is indeed linked to our self, which is linked to our ability to cope in a life that is ours, but not really our own.

Sadly, I doubt if David Foster Wallace ever was able to escape. He seemed to understand too well that the final page had been written without him.

** In no way am I eluding that I am in the same ballpark as Wallace. Wallace was a genius who wrote brilliance in abundance

*** Tomorrow, which is actually today, is St Patty’s Day. I’m keeping the fort all weekend in libraryland. Please know that all of you who have visited; liked; and or commented, shall get a visit in the next few days as well. I’m always humbled when someone takes the time to read. Thank you!

11 Comments
by angela on 2012/03/17  •  Permalink
Posted in books, life, writing
Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Posted by angela on 2012/03/17

http://yellowhousecafe.wordpress.com/2012/03/17/reading-wallace-while-reading-tsypkin-while-reading-green/

I chased a silent echo today ~

Smoke

Image by AMagill via Flickr

The hallway buzzed artificial intelligence. Its naked lighting turning winter skin a harsher shade of death. An echo reverbed from slush crusted lug soles, leaving a sightly murky trail of life’s current existence.

The world stopped spinning me sideways when the air-filled with an olfactory song.  Vision gone black, a blindsided pattern; years tripping backward until I sat next to you in a smokey den surrounded by Coltrane’s horn.

A pocket of memory captured me. Stuck in an alternate universe, a time warp, or was it sleepless mind-game?  I passed through a dark mass, your mark of eternity; or was it simply someone who wore your leathered scent, mixed with Kentucky burn and cinnamon?

Sax floated away until I played on the sands of Van’s mystic, finding a note to loosen me. Hunting you down this hallowed hall, I only found sterile sounds and plastic smiles. Tightening, this flower’s sigh to heavy rains;  folding tired arms to this angled frame. Colourless cinder blocks absorb me.

It’s almost my birthday. We almost missed it then; there was no reasoning from that frozen ledge. Your scrawl across an empty card started a fissure; cracking poorly cemented fears. I was too late. Hospitals offer no solace for we the living. There is little gesture in ‘I’m sorry” when the metal bed only holds your broken shell.

Tonight, I’ll close these hungry eyes; searching fluted caverns for that film playing our beginning. Perhaps tomorrow, I’ll transverse those slick tiles, seeking your silent echo. A string vibration, awakening the lost life that still remains. ~

5 Comments
by angela on 2012/01/26  •  Permalink
Posted in writing
Tagged , , , , , , ,

Posted by angela on 2012/01/26

http://yellowhousecafe.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/i-chased-a-silent-echo-today/

where we don’t go ~

Fashion a riddle and I shall tell you a rhyme.

Did you happen upon this solitary line with faith, one eye aimed
at gold horizons, the other cast in shadows drowning in the lake.

Bring your fortune to the table, God never gambles with a sinner’s soul.

A fool’s gold is a poor man’s treasure if he believes it will buy him forever.

Dead man walking has 100 men sleeping with guns and ammunition.

Pray yourself to sleep, the grave grows silent agonizing over your
impossible dreams.

What do you mean with that diamond of love pouring blood over everything?

Did this writing move your universe to another space; time goes wide,
a sleepwalker slips between chasms we devise in a lover’s wake.

A hush suffers until I scream into black coffee smoking softly.

Did you know, you shouldn’t feel words written by a stranger’s soul?

May we all know peace, as we flow down this languid river, our
bodies bursting, not of lust, but of God’s offering to console.

Barton Hollow, a place I wish to go before our civil war ~

2 Comments
by angela on 2011/08/26  •  Permalink
Posted in poetry, writing
Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by angela on 2011/08/26

http://yellowhousecafe.wordpress.com/2011/08/26/where-we-dont-go/

turned -

the dead are talking tonight

Proust dines a la cart;
carte blanche, he says,
feed me black coffee
let them blues play

turn the page

she reads my lines,
“an old soul hand,
keeper of ancestry”
sadly, these ghost don’t
keep me company

turn the page

serendipity, eyes closed
I see my destiny,
crimson spreading under me,
sheet, dead white, covers pain;

turn the page

“Died, today. Shot.
Of unknown age.
Caught between cross-
lovers on the lawn.”

a page gone

turned -

1 Comment
by angela on 2011/07/13  •  Permalink
Posted in poetry
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by angela on 2011/07/13

http://yellowhousecafe.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/the-end-2/

I, II

I
Concrete crumbled upon the touch of unholy soles landing in a flip-flop miss mess,her step breaking surface; no biblical miracle, her body painting a shadow of mourning greys while sidestepping ribbons of magenta wisps, a trail for beaks, worms beneath that drowned while wriggling up against depressive pressure, thundering droplets falling in sheets while she sat knitting the night blackest black, a sheath of damask that hung itself to shade from Van Gogh’s sky.

II
She tries praying, but words collapse into puddles, indigo eyes gone colourless,mind disconnects; irises within a glass prism, wilting as they attempt to stand, up-rooted, primary red drying to brown; if they had voices, they’d question: why did you pick me, I was thriving in your fertile ground? She sighs as she tosses dead blooms: see you soon, tis a short good-bye. The grandfather wheel cranked again, time refreshed; her body bent over pulling summer’s final greens, her silver mane brushing barren ground, rootless and waiting to bury her heirloom seed.

****************************
If you read and are frustrated by these, no worries, as am I. The majority of this came via stream while in church Saturday night as I listened to the opening ‘jam’. (I don’t participate as I am an observer…there for the lecture). I tried to work on it today, tidy it up a bit(tis a mess with all that auto junk via iPhone notes) but I’ve yet to figure it out other than it is about death, despair and renewal.

sidebar>> really going to try to encourage the muse to get a bit more peppy or political, oy!

6 Comments
by angela on 2011/07/03  •  Permalink
Posted in poetry, writing
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by angela on 2011/07/03

http://yellowhousecafe.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/i-ii/

Icarus flew ~

Around my fourth played a band of memories
with yellowed string wound tight to hold;
this circle growing wider; days are growing cold.

Bones rattle about my ashen skin,
pearls of wisdom drip down hollowed planes;
a girlish smile ghosting in passing when silver shatters rain.

They told me to settle this dream;
abandon this vessel as you did me;
but I fashioned my own feathered wings,
silken sail lashed to beam.

Oh, Icarus, you sought the golden light
on your father’s waxen wings;

my own Icarus flew to seek his sun,
faith built upon quantum strings;

Tonight, I walk the city beat, his graffiti upon my heart,
I hear his echo, his parting words, and emblazon with my mark:
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew

as will I, as will you ~

**********************
I’ll admit, this is very much NOT a summer solstice poem. I fashioned it that way, but stanzas were cut (hell, the whole things was almost cut) BUT ever since OSP posted this Icarus graffiti I’ve been haunted. Today, I ran across two things that mentioned Icarus, ergo, I just had to fly with it (pun intended).

I’ve not decided if I shall post to One Shot Wednesday. All are welcome, though, to link up over at OSP. Share your poem with the community!

Photo by poet from OSP, Chris Galsford.

11 Comments
by angela on 2011/06/21  •  Permalink
Posted in poetry
Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Posted by angela on 2011/06/21

http://yellowhousecafe.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/icarus-flew/

Stories never shared, death got in the way.

The Harley’s growl stalked my steps as we started from the red light.

A cloud floated by as I spied for handmade white signs.

You haunted my walk along the mental sea of manufactured bleu vibrations.

Ghost danced all four corners and intersected in my mind.

Blank memories fill our empty pages.

Keep the coffee black and steaming (stolen from your eulogy).

Another hawk flew by and looked me sideways in the eye.

I swear his yellowed stare shined your laugh.

Someday we shall sit and rehash.

A banquet of words, a colourful feast.

Our own dead troubadour society.

I’m not a big believer in explaining what the muse is up to, but this one deserves a bit of explanation. Sunday I was walking the pup and a song (instrumental, cello) sent me into a deep contemplative zone. The song was called Le Mar (I think). At the stoplight, I heard a motorcycle and my thoughts flashed to a work mate who was killed on his Harley a year ago, almost to that day. My regret, he and I chatted many times, but we lost touch when he left. I learned a lot about him during the funeral… he actually was a gifted writer with a soft heart. I never knew. Try not to waste the moments. Stories need to be shared, everywhere.

7 Comments
by angela on 2011/06/08  •  Permalink
Posted in life, musing, poetry
Tagged , , ,

Posted by angela on 2011/06/08

http://yellowhousecafe.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/stories-never-shared-death-got-in-the-way/

« Older Posts
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 246 other followers