Where did all the words go?

It’s not that my brain went silent

Seems the opposite is true

It’s not that I don’t have opinions

I have many, yet don’t have a clue.

I tire of ultra soapboxing rants

Get mired in shoulds and woulds and can’ts

What’s real flies by without a glance

As I watch the world dig itself blue.

If I turn it all off and imagine

I could wipe it all down with a glove

And surround the world in white lights

With my magical powers of love,

I’d submerge the pain of seeing

Obliterating being

Essentially fleeing

Into soft pink clouds above.

Perhaps I should take a small pill

A dose that would give me a smile

So I’d laugh off the drama around me

And pretend that I don’t taste the bile,

But then I wouldn’t see trees

That bring me to my knees

And so I’m praying, please…

Help us move beyond denial.

But praying involves belief

In what? I do not know

And hoping is a fairy tale

As rusted stories show.

What else to do but stop

Like fish from water, flop

Take sponge and then a mop

And let the water flow.

A flood, perhaps is needed

To purge the grime involved

To clean the slate and start again

Zipped up now, problem solved.

Ha, not my jurisdiction

My job’s to feel the friction

I have no inner witch-dom

To make this world evolve.

And so I’ve become silent

I watch as words go by

And feel my heart that’s breaking

While tears gone numb, run dry.

I take me to my tasks

Put on a loving mask

And hope this will not last

While clinging to the lie. 

©2011 Catherine Vibert

You Never Returned

It's been a long time since I posted in this blog...however, I'll be returning to the place that inspired this prose-poem next week, the land of the Cherokee, the rivers of the Tuckaseegee and Natahala. It made me think of this prose poem I wrote a couple of years ago and so I thought I'd bring it up to the top.

It was there in the misty mountains where my life began and ended. You left me at dawn, promising return by nightfall. I waited for years in the meadow of songs where we had built our love on pledges of golden sun and milky starlight.

You never returned.

Only the music of the storm was my solace. Shattered by the force of time and weather, I became blind. On my knees and with fingers numb from cold, I tried to find the path before me and stumbled into the dark echoes of the woods to seek shelter. Finding comfort on a bed of hemlock, I slept next to the gray wolf who consoled me as I wailed, holding me in his paws and licking my brow.

You never returned.

Only the laughing crows and battle cries of raptors could be heard in the forest. Songbirds fled to sing their cheerful melodies in less mournful places. My tears became the creek that flowed from the great mountains into the Tuckaseegee. Beyond an eternity of hope, shards of my crystalline heart can still be found.

You never returned.

__


Dedicated to those left behind on the Trail of Tears.