Raw

This is not a secret,
this rawness,
this tender place
that is your heart.
you wear it openly, afraid to be seen
but more afraid to hide,
because you know you can hide so well
that you lose yourself
completely

and you have sworn an oath,
Nordic in it’s ferocity,
that this will never happen to you
again.

And so you wear your wounds openly.
You dance in public.
You declare your love,
your heart broken,
the never ending battles
with their trail of blood and victory.

Images speak to you,
each one, the beautiful and painful,
every place your eye settles
there is a lesson, a possibility,
a story, a memory, hope, loss,
a cry for help.
Your mind is flooded,
overwhelmed,
a beautiful torture of images,
too many to remember,
too strong to forget:
beauty, anger, lostness, vibrancy, color, joy, loss….

There is madness in this,
and you forget too much,
the pictures mocking you as they fade,
then show up again,
unexpected,
inappropriate,
impossible to call up at will,
impossible to suppress,
ghosts,
with minds of their own.

Voices are your soundtrack.
Like music, their tone
speaks louder than words,
the words lost in timbre and innuendo,
their pain and anger,
their loss and hope,
their orgasmic cries of joy,
not in perfect language
but in imperfect assonance,
soft as a lover’s sigh,
or harsh as an animal in pain,
a murderous battle cry,
sure to wound. perhaps to kill.

You have witnessed that death by voice.
You have experienced its killing blow,
the death by a thousand cuts,
the slow seeping of blood under your perfect shirt,
it’s wetness reminding you terribly
that you live. That despite it all,
you live.

You are an imperfect warrior,
a wounded dancer, berserk in battle,
too often overwhelmed,
too slow to react,
too often lost in the din,
Poor, so poor at defending your heart,
holding it out out like a sacrifice
as you enter the fray,
so honest,
enemies and friends alike
are certain it is a trap, a lie, a slight of hand,
and even when you lie on the ground,
broken,
they watch, waiting for the trick.

There is no trick. That is the secret.
You die your slow death.
The blood is real.
But God is more stubborn than death,
more stubborn than your darkest places,
He raises you again and again,
as if you were his only soldier,
and puts you in the battle again,
knowing your weakness,
trusting it’s strength.

There is meaning in this.
You do not pretend to know where it is.
You have lost too much to claim wisdom or understanding.
You are raw to images, to the strange music of voice,
to the stories real and imagined
that fill your world.
Your eyes and ears bleed,
overwhelmed. Always overwhelmed, you bleed
words, art, strange music – a speaking in tongues,
better understood by others
than yourself.

About this poem

My poetry has become more immediate in recent weeks since my Mother died. Perhaps that is a reflection of my own rawness. Or perhaps it is the result of playing some of my last conversations with her over and over in my head.

This may be my rawest poem ever. I seriously thought of not publishing it. It hurts me to read it. But my mother, who read my poetry every day, often told me each poem was an act of courage. And Lord knows, I need courage.

The picture was taken at the Shelborne Museum north of here in Vermont.

Tom