They say our traumas get encoded in our DNA,
and travel through the generations,
How much of our destiny
is granddad’s addiction, or
grandma’s depression?
Daddy’s tortured in the war,
the screams of his dreams
choke his children’s children,
how is this so?
We see reverberations
of nature, but seek solace in nurture.
Can education and positive choices
eradicate the history?
Wash clean old wounds?
Slowly nurture the nature of the DNA
to create a new playbook?
It may.
This is not a test.
One chance.
One.
It all counts.
This is it.
Go.
Small pieces of hope
held tightly,
nurtured gratefully,
smashed out of my hands,
fall,
fall,
fall.
This is forgiveness.
Left alone, forgotten, until you
became a dessicated husk.
Discovered, remorse poured on you,
and you rested, recovering,
absorbing all you needed to heal.
One year.
Regret poured onto you.
Two years.
Faith surrounded you.
Three years
You offered a single bloom to give us hope.
Another year.
Patience. Trust.
This is what time and forgiveness bring:
full flowering!
Ah, the anticipation of your full celebration
makes me dizzy.
.
.
![20181104_103441[1]](https://shawnbird.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/20181104_1034411.jpg?w=368&h=207)
.
True story. Took my Christmas Cactus outside to enjoy some summer sun (2014?). Forgot it there. Come fall, it was a wizened shell. It’s taken years to recover, but it HAS! What a metaphor for tragedy in our lives and the patience we need with our recovery.
Three
gathered around a table,
finding worlds
in words.
Three
gathered in a moment,
plotting destinies,
with pens.
Three
gathered in contemplation,
changing everything
with imagination.
The band around the head
compresses.
Waves,
lost ideas,
press in,
squish out.
Opportunities extruded
and left behind.
.
.
(Expect more than a few concussion related poems this month)
Each act ahead comes
from what’s behind.
We are all walking wounded
trailing bandages
that tangle us,
tie us,
trip us
into our future.
Wear a blind fold:
we cannot look into a mirror to see the pain
etched across our faces.
See the bandages?
Trip over them
leaving the bar.
Scream yourself hoarse,
stamp your feet.
Shout “I’m fine, fine, FINE!” *
Ah. Methinks,
The lady doth protest too much.*
.
.
(*Allusions: In Louise Penny’s wonderful Inspector Gamache books, Ruth Zardo has written a book of poetry where FINE is an acroynym for F*cked up, Insecure, Neurotic, Egotistical. I’d say that applies here, too. “Methinks the lady doth protest too much” is from the play within a play in Shakespeare’s Hamlet).
She’s eighty-nine
and now she tells the story of rape,
of giving up a panopoly of dreams
for the baby boy.
(Shot gun wedding)
Love and happiness can’t be forced,
like sex.
Society forced her silence,
condemned divorce,
when she refused abuse,
and sought in the ashes of her dreams
for a phoenix.
Bitter choices,
dream fragments,
cobbled into a life,
grumbled about now.
Dream stealing beast,
a boy who wouldn’t hear no,
seven decades of curses
don’t erase the bitterness
of loss.
.
.
(true story)
Squirrel boss curses
clumsy workers as chestnuts
clatter past branches.
Class assignment:
Find an example of
alliteration
assonance
onomatopoeia
personification
Find 2 examples of consonance.
Go! 🙂
Warrior,
stands, raised hand
answer every question
to bring justice to a depraved land.
Warrior stands
warning of the beast eager to devour.
tells how it mauled,
and it whines, growls, evades
responsibility.
The beast does not know it is a beast,
but the warrior knows.
The warrior warns.
As the beast prowls and pretends
to be a kitten, a puppy, an innocent thing.
The warrior knows.
The warriors know.
Are you listening?
Or will you open doors and invite it
to devour you?
Shawn L. Bird 