Showing posts with label abused. Show all posts
Showing posts with label abused. Show all posts

3/27/20

Lost - Charles Bukowski

they say that hell is crowded, yet,
when you’re in hell,
you always seem to be alone.
& you can’t tell anyone when you’re in hell
or they’ll think you’re crazy
& being crazy is being in hell
& being sane is hellish too.

those who escape hell, however,
never talk about it
& nothing much bothers them after that.
I mean, things like missing a meal,
going to jail, wrecking your car,
or even the idea of death itself.

when you ask them,
“how are things?”
they’ll always answer, “fine, just fine…”

once you’ve been to hell and back,
that’s enough
it’s the greatest satisfaction known to man.

once you’ve been to hell and back,
you don’t look behind you when the floor creaks
and the sun is always up at midnight
and things like the eyes of mice
or an abandoned tire in a vacant lot
can make you smile
once you’ve been to hell and back.

3/2/18

The Forms - Sharon Olds

I always had the feeling my mother would
die for us, jump into a fire
to pull us out, her hair burning like
a halo, jump into water, her white
body going down and turning slowly,
the astronaut whose hose is cut
falling
         into
              blackness. She would have
covered us with her body, thrust her
breasts between our chests and the knife,
slipped us into her coat pocket
outside the showers. In disaster, an animal
mother, she would have died for us,

but in life as it was
she had to put herself
first.
She had to do whatever he
told her to do to the children, she had to
protect herself. In war, she would have
died for us, I tell you she would,
and I know: I am a student of war,
of gas ovens, smothering, knives,
drowning, burning, all the forms
in which I have experienced her love.

5/24/17

HEAVENLY CREATURE - Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz


For Missy


I remember the day you showed up at the bus stop:
quiet, pale, a thick veil of dark hair, we stared

at each other through overgrown bangs. We were just
beginning our dry sentences at Baldi Middle School.

In those days, our jeans would be tattooed weekly
with the coded names of every boy who flicked

his eyes our way. The backs of our hands became
necks and lips for practicing on. I once even

doused my backpack with my brother’s cologne,
a sad effort to at least smell like I’d had a boyfriend.

Walking around your housing complex, we’d stare
through the windshields of every man who drove by.

We thought of our bodies as dangerous chemicals,
our breasts as match tips waiting for love’s flinty gaze

We were sure all the boys around had firecracker hearts
just waiting to explode. And look, I know I know I know

I am not telling the whole truth. Things in your house
were different, were not right, were accepted because

maybe no one knew any better, or maybe they did
and didn’t care. And whenever the whole dark truth

would spill out, I remember I’d gather my features
into the center of my face, unable to figure out

the right combination for my concern, for fresh alarm.
I’d forget how to sit, how to blink, breathe. It’s true,

sometimes you look back and all the things
you should have done rise up like volcanic islands,

whole civilizations, whole existences, whole lifetimes.
But what did we know then? Fourteen, I took

the hammer of my dumb tongue and tried to tap
comfort into your impossibly small ears,

your impossibly small fists. We were kids,
and the future was our dependable escape plan.

We’d be gone soon, so you had just better suffer through
it all now. We’d be gone, so until then, I tried

to make you laugh. I’m sorry I never realized
I could’ve unlocked your exit earlier, that I

could’ve released your story from the shogun
of my own throat. The letters you send me now

are like postcards from that hopeful future:
you are okay, you are alright, with no return address.

So this poem is a telegram to let you know that
I still think about you, that I’m still proud of you,

that when I remember you, I always remember you
as beautiful.

12/11/15

How to kill a living thing - Eibhlin Nic Eochaidh

Neglect it
Criticize it to its face
Say how it kills the light
Traps all the rubbish
Bores you with its green

Continually
Harden your heart
Then
Cut it down close
To the root as possible

Forget it
For a week or a month
Return with an axe
Split it with one blow
Insert a stone

To keep the wound wide open.

The Untrustworthy Speaker - Louise Glück

Don't listen to me; my heart's been broken.
I don't see anything objectively.

I know myself; I've learned to hear like a psychiatrist.
When I speak passionately,
that's when I'm least to be trusted.

It's very sad, really: all my life I've been praised
for my intelligence, my powers of language, of insight.
In the end, they're wasted--

I never see myself,
standing on the front steps, holding my sister's hand.
That's why I can't account
for the bruises on her arm, where the sleeve ends.

In my own mind, I'm invisible: that's why I'm dangerous.
People like me, who seem selfless,
we're the cripples, the liars;
we're the ones who should be factored out
in the interest of truth.

When I'm quiet, that's when the truth emerges.
A clear sky, the clouds like white fibers.
Underneath, a little gray house, the azaleas
red and bright pink.

If you want the truth, you have to close yourself
to the older daughter, block her out:
when a living thing is hurt like that,
in its deepest workings,
all function is altered.

That's why I'm not to be trusted.
Because a wound to the heart
is also a wound to the mind.