Adrift

 

Rudderless in a sea of broken dreams,
My declining state of mind entwines
with a tentacled sargasso that pulls
Me downward, downward into black, cold,
Unrelinquishing water.

 

I love the land and all her beauties but
Do fear the sea and have never gladly nor
Willingly ventured upon a bark in search
Of adventure high or low that would risk
My terra-bound life by the perils oft
Regaled by les ultimes survivants.

 

Adrift in my thoughts, I roam the scary
Shores of what this craven man fears the
Most, the uncharted waters of the soul and
Spirit that Will surely swallow down whole
This flailing, gasping wretch until every
Sign of life, hope and vitality is
Extinguished in Death's throes victorious.

House of Pain

Tonight's sunset is as spectacular as any I had ever viewed from the kitchen window in my former, beloved home-sweet-home.

A tiny abode it was compared to my current habitation. No longer within a mere four wooden walls of plain aspect and diminutive scale, I now am lost in a seeming infinite architectural spread that reaches toward earth's four points, an edifice of four expansive levels that demand I walk, climb, explore every one of thousands of hidden nooks and crannies. I am compelled to do this but find no joy in discovery. I want to go back, go back to the simplicity of my earlier life. I cannot.

It is becoming dark out of doors, a furtive, watery sun having limped its pathetic course through the closing chapter of a gloomy and damp spring day. Its brief, craven appearance has created more shadow than illumination, and this has tended toward my unease, prompting me to turn on each light of every room on all floors. I am alone - sometimes it is all right to be alone - but not at this time. This dwelling space of loss and loneliness holds me captive and I want only to walk out the door and go home. I can never go back.

I have been locked up within. No one hears my cries for help. They are swallowed down whole by the grinning and cruel emptiness of an outwardly beautiful home that has no soul so has stolen mine.

No one hears my cries for help. They are growing fainter.

I am silent as I watch the sun sink deeper and deeper into an eternal night. It is beautiful.

It is beautiful....


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Moving

I spent my entire childhood climbing up mountainsides, and, when not up to that daunting challenge [for whatever reason], I would settle for climbing a tree. What little boy doesn't love to climb? To see what lies beyond his tiny province? Perhaps a tall ship's sails looming on the distant horizon promise escape to that faraway land where Peter and Wendy and Jonathan and Michael now live. A kid's got to have adventure in his heart, if not in his own neighborhood, otherwise he'll shrivel up and blow away.

Well, my dad was a salesman and it seemed everyone in his district already had a Fuller brush of some sort as well as a stock of J.R. Watkins Natural Vegetable Oil Soap. His regular customers liked him for his friendly and honest manner and bought freely from his traveling store. The time came, however, to pull up stakes. Since my parents never had the capital to buy a home of their own, it was no big deal vacating a rental and locating a new one. Of course, the little apartment or house we bid adieu was left sparkling, all spic-and-span. That was Mom's and Dad's way. It spoke well, too, of the products my dad hawked.

When I said no big deal leaving behind a dwelling, I was not talking about the pain of being uprooted from the neighborhood and its beloved denizens, whether two-footed or four-footed. It seemed that just when I had made my nest in the crook of a favorite tree or discovered a poison-oak-infested mountain trail leading to hidden treasure twenty paces to the north of hangman's tree, I was admonished by my firm but not totally unsympathetic father that there were new hills and dales and seas to discover ... in a new town.

I didn't realize at the time of my agonized, perpetually uprooted youth that Dad had ever been a kid. How could I? He was an adult the entire time I knew him. Now that I think back on it, when he was out watering our sparse patch of green at my most-favorite-ever cottage, he always had this huge ear-to-ear grin on his face when I hooted and hollered and scrambled up the old Maple in our front yard.

Dad never told me so, but I have a sneaking suspicion that when he was a kid he loved to climb trees and mountains too.

I Awoke With a Start ...

 

I awoke with a start and sat bolt upright in bed.
 
I was dreaming ... perhaps I still am. There is no doubt about the house, however. That house. At this present moment are set before me the orderliness and tidiness of Mr. Clean and Jeeves themselves. I am home. My own home. Yet the smell and disarray of a dwelling long neglected persists in my nostrils and before my disbelieving eyes. Those who held title to this sinister house could not have known they would never be welcomed here. Not truly. I have no idea why I said that; perhaps it's just a feeling. Why I should think it, much less say it ... As I said before, I could still be dreaming. Scenes from my dreamscapes make sense like visions of Alice in her little world of wonder make sense.
 
Whatever this all purports to mean, I am certain of what I heard, what I saw. Something at the top of the stairway was moving. I was finished, at least for the moment, with taking inventory of the large container addressed to my mother. Time to investigate. I'm past fear. Well, we'll see.
 
Grabbing the banister - not unduly concerned about its filthy state - I pulled myself upward, slowly, as though my legs alone could not adequately perform the climb. However dark the upper landing might be, there was a sensation of movement that my gut picked up on, let alone my eyes straining to discern what should have been even the most obvious indicators of a presence. Atop the landing - at long last, it seemed - I clearly saw what had been moving, though I heard nothing but a muffled sort of cry. A door was swinging open, swinging partially shut, ever so slowly, gently, back and forth, from what could only have been, to my way of thinking, some draft. Perhaps an open window in the room behind the door. I hesitated momentarily, not initially from fear, but because that muffled cry broke sharply into a cutting sob. I felt myself blanch. A tingle shuddered noisily up the spine.
 
The door, of its own accord - so it would seem - opened fully before me. I looked cautiously into the spacious room, a bedroom ...

Love's Illusion

I have searched long for that love of all loves,
But it hastens not, though my winter's arrived
 
And leaves me desolate of every hope of warmth,
Comfort and a prospect of my name's immortality.
 
Nor will this elusive love reveal itself in my tiny dreams,
Allowing, at the very least, a gossamer of muted visions
 
That would elevate this worn and bitter man to a level of
Expanded vistas, kindling within flames of love's illusion ...

Mother and Daughter, continued

 

So much can be said in the silence of the lips. The eyes say what needs to be said: often so eloquently, so scathingly, so very to the point. Yes, the eyes have it.

 

Theresa, never before seeming to possess a thought of her very own, was forced  to think, to act without reservation. She was such a child in a number of ways, but her father's brutal execution turned her into an adult overnight. The physical comfort and security of her home could not, of itself, assuage the emptiness she felt.
 
As Renata approached Theresa, breaking into her daughter's troubled reverie, she put her cold hand upon Theresa's shoulder. She hadn't the emotional capacity to embrace and comfort her daughter wordlessly, as a normal mother might do. Yet, strangely, the readily confident and glib woman had no words. If there had been any, they would have stuck in her throat. Theresa looked into her mother's eyes and said nothing. The inwardly distraught but poised Mrs. Gettleman sought sympathy from Theresa with her eyes. Traits such as compassion and mercy, typical of any decent human being, were scarcely spiritual waters deep within the well of Renata's soul.
 
Theresa's awakened eyes saw fear in those of her mother. So unnatural, so untypical for the woman who plowed her way through every obstacle, challenge and person who stood their own shaky ground. With her right hand, warm and utterly feminine, she firmly grasped her mother's hand, still upon her shoulder, and silently declared that never more would they touch ...
 
Nor speak.
 
Miss Gettleman has left her childhood home for the last time, never to return. The shell of a woman, ghostly in pallor, stands motionless on an upstairs landing  and stares at the street below ...
 
Through a darkened pane....

Mother and Daughter

 

No more words were exchanged between mother and daughter, nor would there ever be.

 

Theresa, out of long unspoken necessity but presently for the purpose of survival, has put on a new and bold garment: wordless defiance, this in the face of the sudden erosion of Renata Gettleman's supreme confidence and now dissipating arrogance that the world was ever in her control, her tight grasp. That grasp is loosening, and she has no say in the matter. She has lost her prized possession ... her child. A perverse love, but love nonetheless.

 
The one person over whom Mother had absolute and unchallenged dominion was Daughter. Despite a brittle outward show of motherly affection and concern for her only child, Renata's normally cool demeanor was, to her consternation, warming up to this new creature. Theresa Marie was showing signs her mother's own robust nature. However, we are talking assertive, not aggressive. Both women knew what had happened so tragically, so unnecessarily mere days before. The younger woman, she who truly suffered the loss, knew, but only in her heart; the remotest possibilities of Renata's untoward behavior, neglect toward her husband, was facilely explained away.

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