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Home | About | Donate/Volunteer | Contact | Jobs|  Early
Schizophrenia Screening Test |
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UP AFTER MIDNIGHT
Headache a blue sizzle before sleep,
I wake in the dark with pain
announcing it will last all night.
I get up. What else can I do?
Autumn has hit the kitchen.
Dishes cover the counter like fallen leaves.
Cupboards are abandoned burrows,
empty as yawns. I have been spring cleaning
in the wrong season, fall as good a time
as any to do a clean sweep, spring
not always meaning April either, spring tides
occurring at full and new moons
all the year round. But the mere thought
of a bright white full moon upon a black sky
is more contrast than I can stand and I close
my eyes against my imagination.
In that darkness without the opal of moonlight
I am safe from all but pain. It is then the moon
grabs hold of my brain, tightens
and slowly begins to pull.
HERE
Cain and Abel,
Jacob and Esau--
God gave only one blessing
and it wasn’t one to share.
When we were born, twins,
we learned to share everything
except incubator and cribs,
and we tried to share those,
scaled our bars,
wound up on the floor,
too hard to climb back in.
Now sharing is second nature
having been first
for so long. With strangers
as with friends
I have shared money,
clothes, books, my car (I
shared schizophrenia
by writing about it)
but with no one
have I shared my body
or moved with him
in the mysteries of human love
but once
and that was not with love
just curiosity
and ultimately pain...
We are given different blessings.
Mine is to write.
The days turn like pages.
Life scribbles and scribbles.
Come in, come in!
Let me pour you a poem.
______________________________________
Paula will sympathize with this one: I just wrote a whole huge blog entry, five or six paragraphs long and was about to finish it and post it, when I accidentally hit the wrong key and pfft! Where'd it go?! Couldn't find it anywhere. It had vanished into thin air, or cyberspace or worse, into nothing at all. And I'm just too tired to retype or rethink it. So I apologize guys, but this is it for today's entry. I will try to write it all again for tomorrow. B( No, I'd better not leave it at that. BD Better? TTFN
Posted by pamwagg at November 28, 2006 09:26 PM
Dear Pam.
I love the first four lines of "Here" and hope someday you'll expand on it in terms of you and Lynnie. "God gave only one blessing / and it wasn't one to share". Did God bless Lynnie and not you, but no, by the end of your poem you're saying that "We are given different blessings. / Mine is to write." But a poem about the disparities between you and your twin would be enlightening and possibly dramatic and maybe even cathartic. Just a thought. And I think there's another poem in you about having had no lover. So I guess I see "Here" as a composite of several poems.
Posted by: Kate K. at November 29, 2006 05:11 PM
Oh, Pam, my poor darling,
I am so sorry that you had to experience the horror of "the lost letter". Isn't the searing disappointment at having finally finished a piece of writing into which you had invested so much time and effort and then seeing it disappear in front of your very eyes one of the unique and exquisitely painful manifestions formerly unknown to man until the advent of the "computer age"? I know that sentence was like nails on a chalkboard to you, but what can I say?(You are in the background yelling, "In the name of all that's holy, surely you cannot possible say another word in that same sentence!" Relax, my pet. I'll change the subject. I do so love these poems, like their author, ever so intricate in their seeming simplicity. I would also like to thank you from deep within for your self image boosting comment concerning the fact that you believe my words have value. I have felt so valueless in every respect for so long, your words are proof that indeed, "There is a balm in Gilead that heals the sin sick soul".
Your are still on a roll, Lovingly,Almost Pesky
Posted by: Paula Kirkpatrick at November 29, 2006 03:35 PM