08-15-2012, 01:06 AM
.
I faced my demons one by one,
saw them for what they were
and banished them with mental magic
until I came face to face with my own mortality.
Death and his side-kick panic
blew through my pop-pseudo-psychology
like an eighteen wheeler blows through summertime
mirages out on hwy 180 between Hobbs and Seagraves
where my dad would drive from home to work and back.
He worked at the chemical plant where the “Mexicans”
—sitting among waves of heat rising off concrete—
made a lunch of hot black coffee and jalapenos.
It wasn’t suppose to happen the way it did,
she was suppose to be there to support him
when he had his first heart attack
and keep him alive until Denton Cooley
learned to do cardiopulmonary bypass surgery,
by stealing from the leg and giving to the heart.
She wasn’t suppose to die
having a meaningless and unneeded hysterectomy.
I couldn’t help him, I was only five.
What did I know of the panic that gripped him every night
lying there alone trying to sleep and seeing his own death staring back.
Emotional raw meat wondering at every chest muscle twinge
if this was it, but was too John Wayne tough to ever admit being afraid.
Today, I have an intimate relationship with death and panic,
waking up from an asthma attack in the dark of night
feeling like I am drowning and wondering
if I will ever catch my next breath.
Knowing makes me no more able to help him then,
than I am able to help myself now.
He needed her and her optimism,
the “everything’s going to be all right” mantra,
but she died out of time, drowning in her own fluids
due to an allergic reaction to magic ether juice.
So instead of being reconciled by her to a better reality
we were just two small helpless boys alone in the dark,
trying to make it until daybreak
when there would be enough distractions
to allow us to escape—for awhile—
the darkness in our minds.
©2012 –Erthona
I faced my demons one by one,
saw them for what they were
and banished them with mental magic
until I came face to face with my own mortality.
Death and his side-kick panic
blew through my pop-pseudo-psychology
like an eighteen wheeler blows through summertime
mirages out on hwy 180 between Hobbs and Seagraves
where my dad would drive from home to work and back.
He worked at the chemical plant where the “Mexicans”
—sitting among waves of heat rising off concrete—
made a lunch of hot black coffee and jalapenos.
It wasn’t suppose to happen the way it did,
she was suppose to be there to support him
when he had his first heart attack
and keep him alive until Denton Cooley
learned to do cardiopulmonary bypass surgery,
by stealing from the leg and giving to the heart.
She wasn’t suppose to die
having a meaningless and unneeded hysterectomy.
I couldn’t help him, I was only five.
What did I know of the panic that gripped him every night
lying there alone trying to sleep and seeing his own death staring back.
Emotional raw meat wondering at every chest muscle twinge
if this was it, but was too John Wayne tough to ever admit being afraid.
Today, I have an intimate relationship with death and panic,
waking up from an asthma attack in the dark of night
feeling like I am drowning and wondering
if I will ever catch my next breath.
Knowing makes me no more able to help him then,
than I am able to help myself now.
He needed her and her optimism,
the “everything’s going to be all right” mantra,
but she died out of time, drowning in her own fluids
due to an allergic reaction to magic ether juice.
So instead of being reconciled by her to a better reality
we were just two small helpless boys alone in the dark,
trying to make it until daybreak
when there would be enough distractions
to allow us to escape—for awhile—
the darkness in our minds.
©2012 –Erthona
How long after picking up the brush, the first masterpiece?
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.