Tag: death

Calling Home

Mom weighed next to nothing as she lay dying; the hospital bed displaying the decreasing

Pounds like a stopwatch ticking off seconds. I couldn’t take my eyes off the digital

Readout, like maybe if I concentrated hard enough the numbers would reverse themselves.

One twenty seven would read one seventy two and the cancer cells would be rubbed out like

Misspelled words on a fourth grade composition. Little pink eraser dregs lingering,

To be brushed away by pudgy fingers. The marks still visible, but inconsequential. A week 

After she died I dialed her number to relay a student’s amusing comment about 

The complexity of simple machines, but realized after the third ring that I’d lost her forever.

I could not concentrate enough or erase fast enough to bring her back, to hear her voice. 

Picking My Poison

I was completely out of coffee, so I picked up a canister of Folger’s breakfast blend at Target Wednesday afternoon. Upon opening the canister this morning I realized that the freshness seal had been breached. With only a bit of hesitation I measured out the life giving substance and dumped it into the coffee maker, added water, and voilà! 

Of course after taking my first drink I’ve become convinced that some evil doer introduced a toxic substance into my Folger’s and that soon I’ll be clutching at my throat and writhing on the cold tile floor in agony. But at least I’ll have had my coffee! And that’s the important thing here.

Should I perhaps add some Bailey’s Irish cream? Might mitigate the effects of any poison. Or hasten them. Seriously, if I die, you all now know the rest of the story.

Peace, and good coffee people.

Flowers on the Edge

A glimpse of crimson
vibrant ribbon wrapped bouquet
teeters on the edge


In lieu of flowers
donations were requested
yet few guests complied


overspilling sprays
dwarfed my meager offering
but the dead don’t care

All That Remains


He was alive once
Had friends, influenced people
Now just memories.

Dengue virus

Caught the odd virus
Strangled in his own vomit
Died in agony.



But that odd moment
Between life’s light and death’s throes
He found peace at last.

Calibration

Measuring the distance, accounting for wind direction and speed,
He set his cap for perfection, but consoled himself with need.
The targets seemed to waver, concentric circles in the sun,
His aim was true, calibrations right, as he exhaled and shot the gun.
Shocked silence followed sharp reports as bodies began to fall,
He could not reclaim the bullets, nor could the lives lost be recalled.
But the dream played out, his rights upheld to own a deadly weapon
While widows wept and clasped their children, bereft without exception.

Weavings

Drag me down to your level
Hold my face under water
Until I gasp for relief
A mockery of sin’s daughter.

Slow the drum’s beating
Thump, thump, and roll.
Shame hangs on the shingle
Silence fills the hole.

Ride on into a bad dream
Fail me not in the gloom
A nightmare’s path undecided
Woven into the loom.


Small One

Art by Julie Powell

“Small One”

words by Leslie Noyes

Precious is this tender life with which we’ve been entrusted.

Within every whispered sigh, every tender flutter lies the question:

Will sanctuary be offered through all the trials of time? 

My breath is yours. My heart has your name inscribed.

But, life is fleeting, How can such solemn promises be kept?

Hold fast. Cling with heart and hand, in sickness, in health.

And when we expire? What becomes of our love then?

Energy refuses mortal boundaries and so remains.

Keep me then; I am yours, you are mine, and our ends untimed.

Precious is this tender life with which we’ve been entrusted.

This poem is the latest in my collaboration with photographer, Julie Powell. Please visit Julie’s site for more of her beautiful work: https://juliepowell2014.wordpress.com/


Written in Meat Loaf

I’ve gradually been reducing my dosage of the anti-depressant, Effexor over the past year and just last week stopped taking it altogether. There have been a few shaky, brain shivery moments, and a couple of emotional outbursts, but knock on wood, I’m finally done with this mind controlling drug.

Vivid and unusually scripted dreams have accompanied every step down in dosage. Several nights ago I dreamt that I was in my hometown of Floydada, Texas, for a reunion of sorts. There were a good many people present with whom I’d attended school, as well as several family members. All of whom are now deceased. 

Maybe that should have creeped me out, but I found their collective presence comforting. They all appeared to be having a good time.

At some point a former physical education teacher approached me, and we visited for some time. I hadn’t particularly cared for her, nor did she like me much back in my junior high school days. Our dream conversation was convivial, though, until she took umbrage at something I said and assigned me the task of writing an essay. 

“No problem,” I smirked, “I write essays in my sleep.”

So I composed a quick essay on the prescribed topic of the Joys of Exercise and submitted it to her. She refused to accept it, saying she’d clearly demanded it be written in meat loaf, and that I wasn’t free to return home until I’d accomplished that feat.

Painstakingly I etched the attention-getting introduction and overarching thesis statement into an unbaked meatloaf, followed by three supporting paragraphs, and a resoundingly strong conclusion. Then the meatloaf was cooked to perfection.

My words disappeared in the cooking process, but Ms. P. E. Teacher was satisfied and I was allowed to leave.

Now, my amateur dream interpretation skills have led me to conclude that my subconscious was dwelling on the temporary nature of all things. Or maybe I was just in Effexor withdrawal. You be the judge.

Peace, people, but wait, there’s more!

There’s meat loaf, and then there’s Meat Loaf.

http://youtu.be/rezC6AvMgvc
 

A Little Life

This story was related to me yesterday. It broke my heart. I’ll do my best to retell it here just as the man told it to me.

I grew up in Miami (Florida). But keep in mind it was a very different place back then. My cousins and I had free reign. We’d get up early and grab our bikes, pedal to a row boat we’d stashed on the banks of a lake and then we’d fish all day.

Not like today, when kids are watched over constantly. I think the Adam Walsh case changed all of that, but this was back in 1959 or ’60, a long time before that. Anyway, we went everywhere. 

There was a walled neighborhood where the Blacks lived. It was walled off, separate from the other parts of the town, but sometimes my friends and I would play baseball in an area of sugar sand right behind the wall. And a lot of the kids from the black neighborhood would climb the wall and come join the game.

We had a grand time until, of course, one of the white moms would notice and call the cops to make the black kids go back to their own neighborhood. You see, it just wasn’t done, the mixing.

There was a lake behind the sugar sand, with a ring of homes around it. We loved to swim there, even though it was off limits. In the middle of the lake was a small island where ducks liked to nest. We called it Duck Egg Island.

We’d get the eggs and have duck egg fights, but to get to the lake we had to walk past the walled neighborhood where the Blacks lived and then cut through one of the yards of the homes around the lake. We did it all the time.

One day as we passed the wall a little black child sitting on top of it hollered at us. “Hey! Where y’all going?”

Someone told him we were headed to a swimming hole. Without a pause he jumped down off that wall and joined us. 

Now my friends and I were like fish. We swam every day. We never considered that a kid our age couldn’t swim. 

The lake was fairly shallow until you got about 10 yards out, then it dropped dramatically. When we got to Duck Egg Island someone noticed the black kid wasn’t with us.

We swam back and one of us, I don’t remember who, dove under, but he couldn’t get to the child. We all tried. Again and again. He was too deep.

Now, we should have gone for help right away, but we knew we weren’t supposed to be swimming in that lake. And we knew we weren’t supposed to be playing with black kids. Finally someone ran to a nearby house and an ambulance was called. But of course it was way too late. 

Not a day goes by that I don’t think about that kid. 

The storyteller bowed his head and cried at this admission. I cried, too. 

 

Keeping Count

I measured out the moments, one by one and piece by piece

Too many to count and too many to be dismissed.

Life slips by in those imperceptible increments,

And now I’ve lost the numbers so how will I know

When the sands have run out and I can no longer account

For the seconds left in the reckoning. It’s anyone’s guess.