In Verse, Therapy

[inversetherapy]

The long lesson

It began so long ago - was it 60,000 years or 600,000? This story of learning, centuries of finely calibrated calculations, expansive theories, ambitious experiments, castles in clouds built with room for remodeling.

Now we know so much. We come from the sea. And the womb. We share building blocks with apes. And stars. We are one of billions. And so is our galaxy. Our sun is insignificant. Our planet, even more so.

Yet in our coding is a striving to matter. To master. To ascend. To leave a mark. That is the goal. The itch. To create. To pollinate. To know. To grow. Go. Go. Go.

That is why we have learned to love in all the ways we do. Like mayflies, and octopi, like wolves, like toads, like eagles, and oaks, lotuses, and saguaros, fangs, wings, prickles, stings, giddy, glorious, savage, electric, guttural purring power games, twisted antlered pirouettes, entangled like quantum particles, selfish like single celled amoeba, violent volcanic passions, silent aquifers of devotions.

Each of us an experiment of love. And an experimenter. We are the body of knowledge. The double blind testing. The modification of the hypothesis.

So when I mess up, forgive me love. You might be a couple grades ahead. You might have had better teachers. But we’re all still learning. And I don’t believe any of us has graduated yet.

[inversetherapy]

Same thing

In this small pool of sunlight I sit watching a play enacted by motes about how things grow and change, find purpose and lose it.

Only when you look back can you understand that spending time and wasting it are the same thing.

Only when the curtain falls can you see past blinding desperate desire. There is nothing to cling to, nothing to clutch at, you were never the actor as much as you were the stage, you were never the tree as much as you were the earth, you were never the kite as much as you were the sky,

and the chance and the joy of rooted growth of tethered flight of being moved of being seen of being found of having been.

We are all wards of light. Only in the dark places can we grasp that. Light holds out its hand at both ends of the tunnel. Take it. Or let go. It’s the same thing.

- SJM

[inversetherapy]

How the Grinch saved Christmas

I bumped into the Grinch yesterday at the corner of 34th & Mistle Row. He stood contrite by a Red Kettle, the familiar silver bell in tow. He said he’d just been at Rudy’s, polishing noses, brushing manes; he was also volunteering at the soup kitchen down on Holly & Main. He’d done all-night shifts untangling fairy-lights up in attics since fall, and adding extra green stripes to candy canes – “mintier kisses for all”. He had co-produced the new carol by Ed & El – what a doozy! He was even trying out a recipe to make eggnog more boozy. “It seems you’re on a mission,” said I, “you’re more than doing your part! I wish you luck but I am surprised, what brought on this change of heart?” “It matters not what cause you pick,” said he, “save the holidays, save the whales – even if it seems naively wide-eyed, gullibly guileless, pointless, sure to fail – Go on, save a forest, or a relationship, or the myth of a magical wish-granting elf – the truth is one must save something in order to save oneself.” - SJM (written Dec 2021)

[inversetherapy]

The punishment

If you got through unscathed you didn’t do it right, she used to say.

We’ve all killed a few plants. We’ve all regretted getting the dish we ordered. So what?

She would push her plate towards me - help yourself! But I never did learn how.

So what if this smile is an afterthought? So what if some parts stay broken?

So what if I still won’t take her calls? We’ve all done it - punished someone for not being the person we so desperately want them to be.

SJM

[inversetherapy]

To the tv show writers

Please make them bent and broken in the most creative manner possible.

Make them choose the thinnest ice, hottest potato, slipperiest slope. The blaring-sirens grinning-skull tether's-end madcap freefall.

Make them weird and wonderful, irresponsible and irrepressible, sanguine and tragic, scrutable and redeemable, in ways that we can’t be. - SJM

[inversetherapy]

What I'm doing with my time

They told me time was a river – one flowed with it, until one drowned.

They told me time was an arrow – one flew with it, until it pierced one’s heart.

Last night I dreamt of a grand library. I tiptoed through its gothic masonry looking for clues, and in each book I met a ghost, and each ghost was me.

So now I know that time is a story, and its essence lies not in purpose or direction, but in the telling.

And I have read One Thousand and One Nights, and One Hundred Years of Solitude, I have read The Hours, and In Search of Lost Time. So I am well prepared.

The next time they want to know what I’m doing with my time, I know just what to tell them.

– SJM

[inversetherapy]

Placeholder

Find me in that undulating space between shoreline and ocean, the gaps in certainties and absolutes.

In empty flowerbeds, waiting.

Words can only carry meaning in the spaces held by silence, narrow pathways like aisles in the cathedrals of forests. You can find me there, kneeling with the rocks in penance, bowing with the trees in thanks.

Among the gravestones, you will find me unmarked. A placeholder, I fill only spaces here and now, in the crevice of a mind, in the fold of some heart, soon to weather and fade, like twilight on this bench in this park in this city.

In all such things conjured of dust and light, I make space for you, o future star-dweller, so you might see the arc of possibility from what has been to that which may yet be.

This place I hold, so you may know we are meaningless but for our ouroboric capacity to inhabit – pro tempore – the void blank spaces.

- SJM (written Oct 2021)

[inversetherapy]

Legacy

We run the helter-skelter race, chasing our due from life. But in the final rundown, a generation or two worth of remembrance is the most most leave behind.

A lifetime’s grist of ambition and angst leavened into a single hope – a name engraved on some dusty stone where someone rushing past will pause; a footnote printed in some musty book that no one will edit out as run-on.

Instead, I will plant an apple tree. Nourishing hungry wild hearts; its roots winding past Newton all the way back to Eve, the first to partake of that tart juiciness which makes life delicious.

Or maybe a sakura. Nudging lovers to lean in; poets to uncap pens. Each spring, proclaiming: We live for a moment. There is beauty in it. If we know how to look. Yes, I could make peace with death, with such fine a legacy. - SJM (written Feb 2022)

[inversetherapy]

Old Predictions for a New Year

Flags of hate will still fly above as below we battle war and disease. Still the young will sing of love, parents will still pray for peace.

False prophets will seek to rule through fears, true leaders, to listen from the heart. Old despots will still turn profits from tears, new poets will still turn loss into art.

Some promises made will not be broken, some hope will still dangle by a string, some kindness in deeds, in words unspoken, some triumphs this new year will surely bring.

– SJM

[inversetherapy]

Wrote it in Jan 2023. Still rings true in Jan 2024. Let's see what the Year of Elections has in store for democracy worldwide.

[inversetherapy]

The marvel

I don't count my steps as I pace the city’s mechanical heart – up escalators, down underpasses, crisscrossing chess-piece bridges and tessellated quays. They are mindless, yet mindful. I am neither. I peer at the clock tower. Hello marvelous automaton! Tell me again that ancient tale about duty done without complaint. Silly human, it booms back.

From the Great Barrier Reef my friend sends a video of a leafy seadragon. Suspended in its vast and deep space, it is neither captive, nor free. I am both. Hello marvelous creature! Sing me a simple song about self-acceptance. Silly human, it whispers back.

– SJM

[inversetherapy]

The old men

All the old men are dying Who will take their place?

Will I have to let my hair grow grey, let my breath falter, and preach what I seldom practiced? Will I have to lace my words with equal parts adage and irritability, calcify my biases and regrets, appear philosophical when I am scared?

Will I have to learn to think in the way only the old can - variegated spools of experience painstakingly hand-loomed into the quilt of surety; wild, wide straits of adversity skillfully sailed, bravely swum, stubbornly conquered; yellowed books of patient routine scented bittersweet with dried sprigs of nostalgia.

Will I have to learn to love in the way only the old can - detached yet with fierce worry, forgiving yet with expectant sighs, resigned yet with hopeful eyes.

Shakespeare said it’s just a stage, but I’m not that good an actor. Still, I will try my best to let my hair grow grey and to take their place.

– SJM

[inversetherapy]

Glass cage

Watch me soak in my stewpot of misery Stained laundry on the line ripples when you breathe too close Too close. My glass cage shudders when you munch snack by the fistful Not even a cent you pay at this new theatre of titillation at this new altar of suffering Always the same old story of pain bought too dear, sold too cheap.

– SJM

[inversetherapy]

All I have is this moment – the memory of the work it took to get here and the knowledge of the work it will take to continue. Today, I choose that work; the work of continuing, of showing up. The work of beginning and beginning, again, every day.

-- Jeremy Radin, “This body is a chore”

[inversetherapy]

Marking time

--prompt from @nosebleedclub "sands of time" (January #23)

– SJM

[inversetherapy]

Old Predictions for a New Year

Flags of hate will still fly above as below we battle war and disease. Still the young will sing of love, parents will still pray for peace.

False prophets will seek to rule through fears, true leaders, to listen from the heart. Old despots will still turn profits from tears, new poets will still turn loss into art.

Some promises made will not be broken, some hope will still dangle by a string, some kindness in deeds, in words unspoken, some triumphs this new year will surely bring.

– SJM

[inversetherapy]

The double cross

All foliage decamped en masse from the new bougainvillea this sunless Sunday last. Distraught, I turned to my Plath for answers. She knew the why of such things that go, leeched of magnanimity. The temptation of exquisitely worded lament, however futile. She knew.

Lo, overnight, an audacious little bud has arrived, blazing magenta against bare bark. I think I’ll read to it from my Kafka. He knew the how of such things that try, in spite of the absurdity. The sweetness of earnestly whispered hope, however torturous. He knew.

– SJM

[inversetherapy]

Serviceable

I am unsent letter validate my existence with your stamp of approval; paper boat, born to float however muddied the puddle; wrapping paper – be the gift in my embrace, if only for a day; I can even be the square that holds the chewed-on remnants of your absent-minded attention; or toilet paper – repository of your tears and visceral reactions. My fragility is a feature, not a bug – however you use me, I will fulfill my purpose.

– SJM

@writerscreed challenge: fragile