Category: Uncategorized

Pain and grief,
Sadness and sorrow
Will I have the strength to make the morrow?

I fear my loss
Will forever emboss.
Can I shed this pain, no matter the cost?

Rage and anger
Are no stranger,
Especially towards the one born in the manger.

You watch your world burn
Through sickness and yearn,
Yet you expect yours not to turn?

The hate for you I feel
Is all too real
That there’s no longer a way you can make me
kneel.

Praying woman taken down,

As many more of yours will surely drown.
Yet I still need to yield to your falsified crown?

You are no longer the strength I borrow;
For looking to you, I now find anger and sorrow.
I’m flying from you like a fleeting sparrow,
And with me, I take my last arrow.

My feelings used to be quite reserved,
Though my eyes kept observed,
Seeing the claimed justice no longer served

Your numbers dwelling well deserved.

It’s been almost 3 months since my father died,
and two weeks since his service.
I’m writing this book…
I finally feel …
I am finally feeling again…
… like I have some strength to gather my words…
able to articulate what the last 4 years have done to and for me.
Honestly,
I’m still not entirely sure what I feel or what i am now other than empty…

Over it all..
wishing that for just a moment
to not be overrun
with thoughts of what still needs to be done…
All the bits and pieces of a life still unaccounted for.

For just a few hours a day
it would be nice
to not still be tied
to the traditional role
of a dutiful child.

No one tells you that the death of your parent
is also a death within yourself.
That it will hollow out the spaces of your heart
that you forgot existed.
(cause for a minute there you forgot you existed…)

No one tells you that grief is a force
Driving you to excavate the recesses of your soul
search out the missing pieces of yourself.

No one tells you what to do with yourself
when that time you spent waiting for death
is returned to you.

Or how jokes lose their humor
when you’re the only one inside of them.

No one tells you what the right amount
of caution is to take when everything,

anything
can trigger an emotional reaction.

They don’t tell you how your 5′ 6″ frame
quickly becomes all fuse
and the floor beneath
every step you take
is now
molten lava.

And how you dream about
starting a bonfire
with the paperwork.

Doing nothing more than
watch Rome burn…

MON. AUG 29, 2022

Have you seen what they do to heal burns?
Grief is like that
Peeling layers of new growth
Exposed, raw flesh
Months of this. Years even.
Joy sterilized,
grafted,
not your own.
The hands that run along the uneven wounds have learned to hurry over the screaming
pushing more than you’d ever be ready for.
It’s worse the second time – once blisters have formed
worse the third time
and so on.
I read somewhere that anticipated pain is harder to bear,
so we flinch.
Then comes the masking –
all is well with closed eyes
the
gritted teeth of self implosion
And we use drugs sometimes
And sometimes oblivion
And we use it all up until we feel nothing
It’s been years by now, we’d hoped for mere months
Still the screaming persists
The hands, rougher in their impatience for you to have at least covered the scar –
The unsightly, oozing lesion
Can you bury it when you know you’ll have to dig it out again?
Shovel to skin, bleeding like it will appease this one little word
The bones of it all read the weapon
and
put it on paper as if that explains anything.

Your knuckles are deep
in the dirt while
his shirt has just come off
& it’s skin & it’s sweat
& it’s not
as hot
as you had thought
it was going to be.
He’s a fish out of water
in the soil
where you’re trying to
bargain for a flower garden.

The radio is cut short
as the shovel
comes down sideways
in the dirt.
He’s doing it all wrong now
as if he knows how
to get under your skin.
He’s only here
because you thought you
loved more than just
the idea of him.
Because you thought
the sound of him
could drown out
the loudening loneliness.

You are repulsed
in retrospect.
The grass here isn’t green

& he’s just digging
more holes in the ground
for the neighbors to see.
This is when you consider
the consequences
to your actions.
The cost
of it all.

He mentions atonement.
This is your punishment.

My mind continues to suffer
From storms I failed to conquer
Nights become a time of scheming
For plotting the destruction of my own dreaming.

I mourn at my own grave
Weeping for the body of the slave
Whose thoughts denied his fate
Then choose to end what is great.

My mind continues to rush time
Losing track of my own prime
Then proceeds to outrun his fears
Of failures he constantly hears.

I run so rough
Like a child who can’t get enough
Of joy he thought was for lifetime
But only lasts for a moment in time.

My mind continues to escape the inescapable
Reality which I thought was imaginable
Turns out to be a battle
Of what is possible and impossible.

I felt more contradictory of dead
In places I created in my head
But truth has it’s own way to punish a man
That leaves him weeping from his own gun.

My mind continues to make everything numb
In feelings of death I succumb
To resist the bitter taste of reality
Burying the wounds of agony.

I refrain to endure
This pain that never fails to reassure
My human nature
Comes along with struggles I need to cure.

My mind continues to long for silence
Of this world that is so intense
But I constantly feel this void
In quiet times I can’t avoid.

I can’t wrap my head over this notion
When both creates commotion
Having one of the other
Means longing for the latter.

My mind continues to fear change
Extending to different range
When familiarity fails to meet
My spirit startled from the foreign beat.

I travel so often
To the days when the world is open
For my innocent problem
And laughter was my emblem.

Everything feels crumbling
Every second is rushing
While outrunning
I think I’m losing.

Up to these days
It’s still a puzzle I embrace
Figuring if I am blind
Or if it’s only in my mind

love without losing
yourself
like breathing
without filling
your lungs
til they burst open
and kill

the weight
of too much
sweet air

Write something bright for those who experience a thousand deaths each day.

Write some smiles for those whose pillows are moist with tears each night.

Write a few pure moments of love for those who could never call anyone their own.

Write a few droplets of soothing dew on their lips.

Write true happiness in their pounding hearts.

Write the fulfillment of unrealized dreams in their eyes.

Write floral bracelets of joy for their soft hands.

Write swinging earrings of solace for their ears.

Even if you write nothing else, dear Lord,

You must write freedom for them.

Narrated by Val Cole

Visual Design by Steve Rizzo

Produced by Matthew Toffolo

Performed by Val Cole

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

I was a scrappy little thing,
short, no-fuss hair,
T-shirts & jeans,
questionable hygiene
the term then was tom-boy
I don’t know what they call independent, strong-willed, opinionated little girls now

He was the neighborhood bully
big and smug, followed by toadies
I can’t remember why I nailed him but I surely did
I straddled him, held him down
and saw the fear in his eyes
that was enough

I knew I was supposed to be sorry
but I wasn’t