About That Poem…

I put a poem on this website a few days ago. It’s called My Father Pain and I hate it. I didn’t sit on it long enough before pushing it on the world. I couldn’t sit on it. I didn’t want to sit on it. I wanted it to be anyone’s problem but mine.

I wrote it, toyed with it, and published in a few hours.

It’s about my father who says he’s stoic because he doesn’t know what the word means. He has no positive emotions to show, but god damn does he show the negative ones. His face gets tight around the mouth and he’ll talk without opening his mouth much to keep it that way. He shows that he’s angry at you. He shows that he doesn’t care about you unless you’re living in a way he approves.

My father gives no shit about my mental health.

He thinks it’s fixed with pills that he too often has to pay for.

He doesn’t understand that I am in pain and that it’s a pain that prevents me from doing things that are normal for him.

Or maybe he does and just doesn’t give a shit.

He does find ways to be mean and I wonder if he wanted children. Catholic. He was a guy who provided our family a way to eat and be safe. He never talked. He refused to play any games. When he took interest in something I did it was sports and not intelligence or art.

He coached baseball one year and was clearly more forgiving and nice to the other children.

People, adults, said things.

He said he had to be harder on me so he didn’t look like he was playing favorites.

I don’t think I believe that.

He’s always nicer to strangers.

I don’t think he loves me or my sister. I don’t think he wanted us. I don’t think he cared about us.

I remember him visiting me in the mental hospital.

He told me a story about what he saw when he went to heaven.

He says he went to heaven when he died during emergency surgery for a few minutes.

This, of course, is bullshit.

Even within his religious beliefs it’s bullshit.

You don’t die and go to heaven.

You die and wait.

Sorry. Sidetracked.

He told me he talked to his father. His father said that my father had to go back because his grandson was in trouble. My father told me he assumed it was my cousin, but now he knew it was me.

My cousin had problems, but was self-sufficient.

I was medicated to a level that my pharmacist warned my parents about and had just got kicked out of college.

There was nothing stable or regular going on with me.

Clearly in my father’s delusion I was the one in trouble.

He didn’t want to see it.

Because he actively tries not to care and I don’t think he does care. I think he feels it was his duty to care for me while I was in the hospital after my second attempt that needed medical attention.

Second.

I hate this.

He has never been proud of me.

He has been openly upset and ashamed of me.

He has told me how shitty I am.

He doesn’t love me.

The poem is about if he ever did and what did I put him through to make that stop.

I know in my head that I didn’t do anything.

I know in my head none of this is my fault.

I know in my marrow that I am unlovable and that I ruin lives of anyone in proximity of me.

So what I know in my head doesn’t fucking matter.

January 16, 2019 Intermittent Transmission


My Father Pain

Was there a start?
If so

Why did it stop?

What were the things I did?

What were the things I made you live?

Why did it stop?
Assuming, there was a start

January 1, 2019 Vers Libre


Satie

These sounds belong
To the full moons
To you

In 57, on our 42nd
(Please, let us last)
We will listen then?

The next?
In two weeks
Can we listen?

December 1, 2018 Vers Libre


And a Good Breakfast

Let me fuck you outside
During twilight
Fill you with coffee and myself
To start the day
To start a beautiful day

November 23, 2018 Vers Libre


Finding and Losing: Three Bits of a Single Thing

Bit One: Finding a Loss

I needed a better pen so I wouldn’t be dumb anymore.

If I found the right pen my handwriting would be better and my teachers would stop making fun of me. If my teachers would stop making fun of me the other kids would stop making fun of me for being dumb.

I was a dumb kid with great grades so my teachers didn’t like me.

The cat ranp three? What does that mean?”

I don’t know.”

Is that what it says?”

I shrugged.

She pushed the volume and condescension of her voice up, You think that what it says?”

I didn’t move because I was bracing.

You wrote it!”

She looked around as if she was expecting some of her better fifth grade students to give her high-fives. Which was pathetic of her and is depressing to me that I thought something so implausible could have happened.

I remembered later while I was writing a d” that I meant to write, The cat ran up the tree.” The d” I was trying to write looked more like a b” and I went over the backward d” so many times that the paper tore. It hurt me and so I ended up getting my mother to take me to the office supply store.

There were no more pens to try there other than a $20 pen that could write in space and my mother told me I would never be in space.

I went to look around with the pen in my hand. I cut it open with some paper cutter thing, pocketed the pen, and put the plastic in one of the random safes they had on display.

At home, I went to a pad of paper to try it out and it turned out I failed.

The problem was me and a few grades later I was given a diagnosis that became more a name for me or at least a terrible club membership. I was dysgraphic.

Bit Two: Dealing With the Finding

Having dysgraphia meant I would never be able to write as legibly as others, which meant people would always think I was dumb. It hurt, but the other parts of the diagnosis crushed me. It’s not just the physical act of writing, but any organization of thoughts.

I wanted to be able to write legibly so others didn’t call me dumb, but I also thought it would help me with what I loved doing, which was storytelling.

There was always some kind of notebook in my hand and there had always been one since my third-grade teacher had given me a single compliment about being good at writing — which is all a sad kid needs sometimes.

In the months after finding out what was wrong with me, late into middle school, there wasn’t. I would still write. I would just try to remember any good idea until I got home to type it, then after I would re-read each sentence and change things around until I deleted everything in defeat. No matter what I wrote I felt like it had to be wrong.

At least my teachers stopped complaining about my work being decorated. I stopped doodling in the margins of everything handed to me since dysgraphia meant I couldn’t draw either. I didn’t know I couldn’t draw before I found out what was wrong but now I did.

Doodling was a hard habit to break so I broke it along with the lead of my cheap mechanical pencils. There was no reason to have nice ones or nice anything for writing anymore. So when I would start drawing little circles the lead would break and the slight annoyance would remind me that I was broken.

My head was on my desk after one of these moments in my favorite teacher’s class and someone called me dumb. The teacher told him that wasn’t nice and he said it was true because I was retarded.

Yeah, I’m retarded but I’m still smarter than you.”

My favorite teacher said Hall’ louder than I had ever heard her say anything.

We got up and she told him to sit down while she grabbed my wrist to pull me into the hallway.

She was angry and got on her knees to shake me. I had never had anyone tell me how smart I was in any way that I believed and I never thought someone could make me believe it, but she did and I tightened my jaw to keep the tears inside. She demanded that I tell her why she never saw me write in class anymore and the tears made their way out.

The next class period there was a stack of composition books at the front of the room and everyone had to grab one. She told us that we would write without stopping for ten minutes. She told us that we were to be in our seats with our notebooks open when the bell rang every class period and start writing until she told us we could stop.

Write about what you’re thinking. If you don’t know what to write you will write about how you don’t know what to write. Write that. Write that you don’t know what to write over and over again if you have to. Do not stop writing.”

This exercise hurt me because of intrusive thoughts about how I was bad, broken, and wrong. I did it every class period without stopping. Nothing had ever made me confront my thoughts and emotions like that did and I still write without stopping almost every morning.

I carried that composition book everywhere and I would even write in it outside of class.

Bit Three: Losing the Loss

I was in a bookstore with that composition book in my hand. It was summer and I had stopped writing in it. Not because the school year was over, but because there was so much emotional weight in the book that I didn’t want to fill the last few pages with something meaningless.

It needed an ending of some kind. It needed something to summarize everything in it. There were chairs and I decided now was the time. I sat down, opened the book up to the last blank pages and started to procrastinate.

I looked around and adjusted my position enough that I understood I wasn’t going to finish those last few pages that day or ever. My eyes were on the ground and the tips of my fingers slid over the shelves to keep me on any path. Having the self-awareness of other teenagers I was worried about how pathetic I looked. My head tilted back into a non-defeated position and I started to pretend to look at the titles on the shelf. I moved along the wall section-by-section with unfocused eyes.

There was a wall of sketchbooks and notebooks and my eyes suddenly cared. I pulled the least fancy one from the lower shelf that cost a quarter of the price of the ones at eye-level. It was a green A4-sized hardcover sketchbook and I headed to the cashier with a stride that was only stopped by a display of nice pens.

Written for issue 4 of Plumbago

April 29, 2018 Thanks for Having Me

Olfactory Nostalgia

The olfactory induced nostalgia of our first days
My lips on your shoulders
The pivot point to the crook of your neck
My head rests and waits for your arms

I wait

There’s a relief but only the scent is the same
There’s an ache from the loose embrace

I’m sorry

Thought and stopped being said a long time ago

Where is the grip we both had on our first days?

I wait

April 1, 2018 Vers Libre