Our own or others Poetry

since I was ten, hard my life has been
at 63, and I am still not free
various questions way back then
when will life stop being hard again?
As a young man, I was full of testosterone
but now it's almost completely gone

A cruise. On my own,
The sounds of the sea, drinking
In the view and tea.

I want to go home
To my own warm bed
Why am I here?
No-one has said

I need to go home
Where people care
I don't know the address
But they loved me there

I must go home
I must leave this place
I want a hug & a touch
From a friendly face

We have all lost
The day I got the call it was hot. It was hot in a way that only the deep south can be. It had been a heatwave, a record breaker. Midnight wore a 90 degree cloak. Breathing the air was like holding your head over a pot of boiling water. Clothes wet with sweat, hair damp at my neck, weak from a day of enduring this heat, I came in and shed my clothing and just stood in the shower with cool water running down my back. Looking out the bathroom window, the leaves on the trees looked like they had given their best, and was drooping in shame. Across the cotton field out back of the house, waves of heat floated upward and gave an eerie feel to the evening. A feeling as though nothing was real. The sun hung in the horizon blood red, not letting go of the misery it was inflicting on this earth just yet. It would set, but it would set slowly. It would not give up its power even after the call. It stayed on the horizon, taunting me as if to say it is not done. As if to say "Remember me, I will be back".
I knew what my Brother was going to say before he said it. With death, sometimes its hard cold steel like hand reaches you before the actual words do. A hand that reaches across all time and space and enters your mind, trhough your heart and down to  your very soul announcing itself with a blow that knocks you off your feet: Cold to even beat the heat of a taunting sun. Before he could get the words out, a low mournful cry started in the center of my very being, and manifested itself as a high pitched cry not yet experienced in my 45 years. It was Mama: The vessel that I had launched upon this earth thru: The blood, flesh and bone that initiated the very heartbeat in my body: The wondrous mechanism that formed the body I occupied. She was gone; gone as though she had never existed.
 
When a person leaves this earth, shouldn’t something remain behind? Shouldn't their breath, or their thoughts, their feelings? Shouldn't you be able to see their footprints in the grass walking across the early morning dew? Shouldn't you be able to feel their touch on your face, as they wipe away the tears that their leaving brings? Should there not be something more than broken dreams and scarred memories; but all I felt was an emptiness that has yet, and never will be filled again; an emptiness that leaves me forever searching.
Before her leaving, there was always somewhere I belonged, always someone that was on my side, regardless. She may have told me I was wrong and I may have been. But only Mama could look at the big picture and know the reasons for why i did or did not do something, or whether I did nothing at all. Looking back on the days after the call, I remember the feeling of getting hit by a train, flying through the air but not yet hitting the ground. The pain was there, and it was real yet I somehow managed to make it through those days. The pain then manifested itself as a white hot current running through my very existence.

I'm not sure when the current of pain began to ease. It was not all at once, but rather like a candle burning lower. I began to want to shy away from the pain. I finally came to a point that I didn't want to be there any longer. I came to a place where I did not feel guilty for not grieving and locked it in a place somewhere deep inside, but not so deep that I couldn't visit when I wanted to. The resiliency of the human soul is immeasurable. You come to a place that the memories no longer tear at your very fiber. You begin to want to smile again: To laugh with your brother about a time when Mama corrected the both of you for fighting. Now that she’s gone you can see the wisdom in that. All the two of you have now is each other. Oh you will hurt, there's no getting around that. But it is something we all must go through. It is the law of nature for a child to bury their parents. You have to do this for them so they do not have to do it for you. If we think our pain is unbearable, imagine what it would be

Compassion and Getting Used
 
Naive caring people confuse
Their compassion with getting used
Wise compassion does not enable a person from taking responsibility
Wise compassion encourages them to deal with their reality.
 
Friendships are healthy when they are a two-way street,
But not when they are only a one-way street.
Users creation unhealthy relationships like a pansy scheme
Helping them like a one-way street is just an enabling dream.

Path Through Tragic Pain
 
God’s solution for crushing tragedy
is not an offer of a miraculous remedy.
 
God offers not a formula to eliminate or insulate,
Instead, God calls us on the path to participate.
 
God’s grace transforming our places of humiliation,
such is the journey of tragic redemption.
 
Wise words, pure and true, meant as a healing too1,
used wrongly are just cruel.
 
‘What ifs’ only chain us to the past.
Blame games bring healing that does not last.
 
Naive expectations seek for faith to work like magic.
Yet, by faith, we walk through the tragic.
 
Various addictions help excuse our real condition.
They block the way for helpful consolation.
 
Tragic pain easily becomes fused into a sick self-identification.
A calloused soul greatly needing tragic redemption.
 
Tragic feelings deep and real are not the centre of the universe,
‘No one knows the trouble I’ve seen’ needs another verse.
 
Other’s tragedies might not be as bad.
While some are far worse than what we had.
 
Sucking others into our misery,
creates a path to further insanity.
 
Locked in by self centred rage,
like a wild animal in a cage.
 
Bitterness creates an illusion of security and control.
Yet, it will not make one whole.
 
Expecting and demanding perfection creates dark isolation.
The courage to be imperfect brings salvation.
 
Controlling, rationalizing and intellectualizing spreads darkness in our souls.
while accepting ourselves as flawed returns the dawn of life into our aching souls.
 
Isolated souls existing around like souls, hurt, kill and destroy each other.
Connected souls living around similar souls treat each other like sister and brother.

Barnacles and the Tragedies of Life
 
Barnacles are like the tragedies of life.
On a wooden ship they destroy its life.
Those who run into them are diced.
Barnacles can shipwreck your or another’s life.
 
Ever hear that hurt people, hurt people too?
How can this not be true of me and you?
 
Difficult to do in the middle and after a painful crisis.
If we refuse to feel the pain and anger of being diced.
We end up numb and dumb just like ice.
 
To forever nurse the pain,
Leads to never being free to love again.
 
We cannot chose to be or not to be hurt by the barnacle like tragedies and people in life.
However, we can chose not to let those experiences make us like a barnacle in another’s life.
 
To be or not to be a barnacle is the question for tonight.
To feel hurt and anger, but sin not is a difficult fight.
 
However, it is the biblical way to a better day.
Yet holding on to it and nursing it digs a dark and dreary day.
 
People, we do this as if it will somehow accomplish something.
But honestly, that choice accomplishes nothing.

May I share a poem by an Italian poetress, Alda Merini ? I write the original text and a translation made just now by myself. I will check if there is an official translation
Ho bisogno di alleggerire le spalle. Perché è da troppo tempo che sono cariche di pesi che non ho voluto e non ho chiesto. E poi sotto ci sono le mie ali. Ci sono io, che ho bisogno di volare.”

I need to lighten my shoulders. For too long, they are heavy with burdens I haven't wanted and haven't asked.
And underneath, there are my wings. There I am who need to fly.

Hope my translstion makes sense.
The poem just says perfectly how I am feeling.

This is Who I Am and Always Will Be

 
What a cop out to say this is who I am and always will be
because of a dysfunctional family
 
Years of being in therapy.
can set one free.
 
Once one has seen the light
one can't claim ignorance in the fight
 
The choices now made,
can't be blamed on those others made,
 
What a cop out to say this is who I am and always will be
because of a dysfunctional family
 
One can say the end and chose to be free.
Such freedom hard work in therapy.
 
To excuse the lack of personal responsibility
keeps oneself inflicted by one's dysfunctional family.
 
Empower oneself,
Stop empowering to the old self
 
What a cop out to say this is who I am and always will be
because of a dysfunctional family
 
Stop waiting for others to repent,
Its wasted energy can be better spent.
 
To still wallow in the pain,
Produces no gain.
 
Stop empowering it,
by holding on to it
 
It's time to say the ending,
and now the beginning.
 
What a cop out to say this is who I am and always will be
because of a dysfunctional family