Rose

It must have been horrible,
what you did to me
The curtain remains,
a guard with my twisted face,
screaming in your voice,
snarling at my approach
I rage to not look
in the mirror

Oh I could be you,
after all, you live inside me
But then I would have your face
Though I yearn to remember
Not enough to relive it

 

 

 

 

NOTE: that is probably my brother in the first picture. I intend nothing by it, just thought it was a good picture for the post. The center one is me. 

Taking My Trauma to the Mountain

NOVEMBER 6, 2015 / KARENWALASEK

I went to the mountains with the overwhelming burden of my failing financial life embedded in my chest. Foreclosure, eviction, overdrawn checking account —I owned the whole ball—and it wormed its way to my deeper places like an alien parasite that grew and waited to burst through my chest taking my last bit of life force with it. It didn’t matter if everything else was going well in my life, that I was in my first year of a Ph.D. program that was expanding my horizons in ways I had never dreamed, that my chronic health issues were fading away due to interventions that no one expected to work so well, that my beautiful family was helping one another in all the nonmonetary ways beyond a mother’s wildest reveries, filled with a love, and compassion that surpassed anything I ever felt growing up. These whole-hearted accomplishments didn’t matter in a world that measured everything by late fees and economic bottom lines, that cared little for my family, or my life… or the precious grandchildren who might become homeless if I didn’t handle things right.

It didn’t matter if I was a casualty of a still looming financial crisis created by others, or if my husband Ron accidentally pushed the wrong button when opening his Fidelity Retirement account that sucked the five thousand dollars that would’ve circumvented all the above personal problems. No, it didn’t matter to our modern world if this single momentary error had created a cascading effect from which there was no normal safety net.

Read more: Taking my trauma to the mountain

Distance

1-

Facing ocean
overlooking East
a hillside

Mist is boiling,
over the edge

like cream

Breathing deep salt air
warmed by an unseen sun

Refrain: Opening my heart, to the distance of the stars

2-

A seabird
dives the satin mists

above me

With my heart
Swooping to the waves
below

Sees the fishscale flash
hidden from my eyes

Refrain: Opening my heart, to the distance of the stars

Bridge:

For a moment I am someone else
Standing here before the rising sun
and shrouded by
the silver mist

Another body in another time

When I stood upon this same lands end
Searching far into the deepened green
awaiting here
my loves return

Tears that burn
my eyes

3-

The longing,
lingers though the vision
is past

As though the vessel,
might return
to claim me

To this worlds keen edge
splitting the mists to light

Last refrain: Opening my heart, to the distance of the stars

©1991 R.L. Heacock –

Lyrics by RL Heacock is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at ronheacock.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at ron@hillhousewriters.com.

NOTE: These are the lyrics to a song which is on my 1995 CD Out of my Love. You can find the CD on Amazon – but don’t buy the new one for $69 (as if anyone would). Contact me if you want one.

Other music for download can be found here