SEVEN

it's my life 

and you only get it once

these flowers smell too damn good

to be livin' in a funk 

can't hold me back

it can knock me down 

but I'm goin' be back 

STRONG 

down for whatever

exceptional 

let's do it 

Further

it's a labyrinth of turns

and each step

carries me further

from clarity 

Skin

treading lightly

tightly shedding its old skin 
leaving trails of night 
for light to bring chagrin 

in these hands I'll hide 
while this world collides
it's not enough for me 

it's not enough for me

Reclaim

veil the night
wakeful stars 

blow dread astray 

veil the night

wakeful stars

reunite

arms reclaim

fallen flames

Echoes

stories lie sleeping

like secret silver echoes

dreaming in colour

old passions murmur

their mortal hours caressed

in time’s warm embrace

faded lives whisper

love from fragile paper frames

alive in our gaze

Instead

So, instead of those words, I write these - - - 

care

solicitude

regard

concern

gentleness

esteem

respect

love
consideration

goodness

support
affection

kindness
safety

trust

This is not silence

If I wrote about how it was,
  

Alive

I found solace in the strangest place

Way in the back of my mind 

#44

Scars

That honours the scars of suffering transformed

The thing that abuse teaches you better than anything else is to doubt yourself. In writing about it, I have found myself wondering whether my child-mind has overstated the events of my childhood, whether it was actually as bad, as painful or as distressing as I remember it to be.

The whip-called-martinet that was made and used at home did not resemble the pictures on Wikipedia. It was sturdier, bigger, the hollow handle was made from some kind of metal piping. The cords were made of tough leather cord, square on the cross-section, cut diagonal at the tips. And those tips bit.

I remember this. I remember the pattern of the stripes on my legs and the bruises and the broken skin and the length of time it took for those wounds to heal. Weeks not days. And I have understood, for the first time I think, the severity of the whipping.

So for the first time in my life, I took a mirror and looked at the back of legs. And yes, right there in the places I remember the lacerations, are scars.

I have real scars. They are evidence of real abuse.

My memory is accurate. I have not imagined that any part of this was worse than it really was.

I don’t want to overstate the whip-called-martinet. It is not the whole of what happened, but it’s the part I can tell that people might understand. It was an infrequent event that punctuated a span of experience that is so distorted and overwhelming and incomprehensible that I may never find the words to convey it. But the whip-called-martinet was a tangible expression of every other thing that lay behind it – every thought, word, deed that caused a whip to seem acceptable to those who wielded it. And it was in those thoughts, words, deeds that the greatest injury was done to the child who was me.

This is the house

This is the house that Jean built.

Read

read, or

read not

What lies

What lies behind us
 and what lies before us 
are small matters, 

compared to what lies within us.

(Attributed variously to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau.  Source unknown)