Those fierce moments in between

The day will come

THE DAY WILL COME

when you fall and feel you cannot get up

and when that day comes and feels like it’s won

you will pull yourself

inch by inch, of broken spine

cry by cry, scream by scream

until you stand

TALL AGAIN

and when that day comes

you will think on this and know

belief is half the battle

faith the other part

there is no room for query or supposition

let not the terrors a place at the table

the pure hearted know

healing comes from the soul

I tell myself this

at 4am over the toilet bowl

exhausted before I have woken

I tell myself this

when panic grips my chest like a thunder bolt

and whispers in my ear, it’s been six months

I tell myself this

when the person I was, is not the person I have become

but a whisper of what was

BECAUSE

we have a choice in our fight

to take it, to face it, or to back down

and though I wanted to give up, though I tried to let go

I’m still carrying the smallest candle of hope

it is in the stains of your disaffection

the hideous recollection of your breakage

when you see through the ugliness that doesn’t quit

and pain needling you like it learned to knit

those fierce moments in between

they are yours

and the day will come

full and bright and brilliant

when you shall, reclaim yourself

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There is a place

There is a place, to quench your thirst

It lies

Further than you can reach

And 

Nearer than losing hope

For if you fall short

And beseach the void

With nothing more than the scars of your trial

There will be no reply

From the dieties we cut out of paper and hang from the sky

There will be no response

From those Gods of the underworld, intent on war

And even calling upon Gia

She will cast a long weekend storm 

Drowning your faith in rain

Too easy to retrace and see again

The drizzle of despair, mocking courage

Only do not linger there on your knees

Carrying terror along a shiver of bone, knives on sleet

For haunted corridors have no permanent harness 

No freedom to defy, unless permission is granted

Only do not linger there in terror’s savage maw

Past fears may mount campaigns, but you

Sailed away on a blue midnight train

Wreathed in pale smoke and all unspoken dreams

For as long as you listen for fear, the record will remain

Stuck on a slow dance without willing partner

Choose your new shoes, write your own song

Frequent heartburn doesn’t hurt when you transfer to thirst

And drink deeply, for within the spring hope is refound

And God’s? They live not in clouds but within us

Lending the strength to never ever give up

Voyager

I woke up and I wasn’t, me anymore

I had the emaciated body of someone starving on a full belly

Of a broken promise, shaped like a hennaed woman

I took off my wig, spectacles, teeth

And the skin child stood empied beneath quizzical stares

Tested for her taint

The diagnosis throttled me

Nymphs in weeds

The uncertainty held me down

Poisoning in vogue

The loss sat like a stuffed bear

Snarling without glee

The smell of bonfire on my skirt

Mud beneath my eyelids caking sight

So many labels, sticky to the touch

Like toffee left to run, patching over who I would have become

If warm nightmares hadn’t stirred

An unease as vigilant as a curse

Wondering, whether to unlearn

Bravery, a tarnished metal band

Playing for the hard of hearing 

How to train a slack horse

To regain the urge to bolt from his stall

As sleek as otter, sweat steaming in fridgid air

Beseachment riding, her violin back

From small things can come great change

Tamarind stains mandala, winking in the earth’s center

Bend to listen, hear the wet hoofs thunder and grind to dust

Those somber things of past

Where tensed against expectation

Rain poured like a singular thought

Blotting out sound with puckered mouth

In carousel prayers, lie the warm seed with violet heart

Whosoever nurtures patience, may again discover

As from frost comes first flower, urging from dormant

The spring of hope, pure and boyant as you recalled

Returning home after passage through hell

See the signs and wonder, when before you missed out

From nothing comes Renewal, staining her skirts in dew

Unafraid of the unknown, a journey we grow into

Chasing nothing but the feeling of sun, filigree elm branches

Now free of the weight of snow, rosey buds unfurled and supplicate

As we divine beneath, with grateful hearts

Voyager of ourselves and the might of stars

The necessity of being

Men came out

Women emerged

No children

The children were gone

What happened the first month?

Outside bars and cement

Away from gas chamber

When legs and arms, mere bone

Unshackled could move once more

How

Did you pick up your lives then?

Learn the grace of living 

No one has ever said

Something so horrific cannot be vented

It can only transform into fire

from survival we are born, once more

A second life

Not a child, not young

Nor unscathed, but covered in scars

They are our metal, winking silver and rose 

We do not stand in new bones

But those that know the feeling of kneeling

Begging for the end to come

And when it did not

When we survived

Despite their best attempt to smother

It is a land of ash and terror 

To navigate and put back together

Those shattered pieces of self 

Willing meaning from devestation

How? 

With the blood of ancestors, fresh

Seeing them led to their deaths

Courage in silence, in suffering

How?

When nothing is left but the last straw 

And it erupts into flame, burning everything you were

How?

Do you design again a day, a week, a year?

With a face enured by fear

Used to screaming in the dark

How?

To go past the horror and walk into a new life?

We do it by taking the broken pieces of us

Head in the oven, wrists slashed in bathroom

Pill bottles strewn about like flotsum

All our aborted attempts to shut the terror out

We take the gore and the furnace

The golem and the hangman

In our minds eye we stand among graves

Tasting human ash whilst behind us chambers cough out families

And if that doesn’t kill us 

Nothing ever will

Because when you stand on the far side of fear

Your heart extinguished and cold, a lifeless thing

There is only survival

We are the feral leftovers

We rebuilt ourselves from nothing 

Like from clay we came, so again, a second coming

To defy the proximity of evil

We are the ones who refused to cease

Standing when nothing held us up

But the necessity of being

(For all who perished in the death camps and all who survived.)

Lay down your damage

A prayer was said

Shoulders touched

We bowed our heads

Even me, the last disbeliever

And as I bowed, I felt my crown 

Glisten as if, someone was baptized

A transfused light whispered

Lay down your damage

Separately unlock

Disease from health

Fear and habit

For we learn our lines

A little too well

In smoky glasses and from the bell

Tolling like a dry tongue overland

Where sound knocks on peace

Disturbing those who thought themselves free

A claim check, wet in your pocket

Salt stains on your cheeks

We cannot weep for who we were

Before the curtain came slowly to wooden floor

Only reach high to see

If in straining such weight releases

The trapped fur beneath us

Darting eyes the pretty prey

who can say

Yet we heave

Overboard those useless parts

Remade in full moon aching over Baskerville cloud

Not yet, not yet

But one day soon

Softly they capture

The soul set loose

She is the nimble girl who curled inside you, pounds for release

And panic is a thing with teeth

Set loose too soon

Let it pass in its frenzied rush

A drug addict to the hideous pulse of malformed balance

Turn away, instead, listen to the sway of pampas grass

And somewhere you are urging

Further than you dare trespass

For it takes in perpetual night

The eyes of a bird to spy

A way out without leaving

Blood in metal trap

Push fear back

She has overgrown her stay

Unhinge the cage

Be no more afraid

Of movement in darkness

Everything is possible when

You cease to hold the chain