I wanted to say thank you to everyone who commented on my last post. Your words helped me more than you know.
I've hopped back on the recovery bandwagon and am feeling much better because of it.
I'll post more later, after i go out to dinner & hopefully write my religion essay but i wanted to share this poem that i wrote with all of you.
I had to write a poem based on Allen Ginsberg's Howl for Carl Solomon for my english class.
If you haven't read it, Howl is a great poem. Ginsberg writes about the suffering he experienced and it speaks to the "outcasts" of American society (those who are more focused on love and meaning in life, rather than material "success") and he does it beautifully. We had to write a poem "to someone who understands" (you). I wrote to to a dear friend of mine who i met in treatment. I changed the name for the sake of her privacy, but i thought you all might appreciate it.
Whisper
For Sarah Halper
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by hunger,
Fakeness, lonesome, searching for something beautiful.
Abandoned and unloved, they paint their mouths shut with silence.
Whispery silhouettes run down the sidewalks of insanity,
And stop to glare at grotesque fun-house mirror projections
Of fat and tired limbs,
Glistening with the sweat of hate.
Shells of women who sit on concrete
Smoking endless cigarettes, burning up their lungs
As payback for continuing to swallow air
Organs stubbornly gripping to life
Even when a fragile heart patters like early rain
It beats at the wrong
Moments.
They damn their stupid hearts
For beating at all.
They drink whole pots of coffee
Black liquor, free of sins.
Poured into sad paper cups
During early hours of black mornings
When the rest of the population
Finds solace in quiet minds, minds that
Have not forgotten how to rest, to dream.
Sleepless with self-loathing and malnutrition
They grip fire-hot mugs
Blue-boned fingers, numb and cold
Sipping freedom liquid.
Girls who spend all the seconds
Of melancholy
Photographing mental x-rays
Of beauty beyond their grasp.
Who look at dirt and see holiness,
God and redemption incarnate, sad skeletons.
Twenty thirty and forty-somethings
Trapped in the pain of adolescence
Who never found their way out
Of uncertainty and un-belonging.
Stuck in a sea of mental agony
Riding waves of want
Trampled by harsh, un-caring waters
Hitting the ocean floor over and over again
Choking on salt, gasping for breath
They flail their arms in vain
And No-one sees them drowning.
They hunger for love and affection
Skip lunch, dine on crackers and wine.
Or gorge themselves on cakes of saints,
Stuff themselves to the gills with counterfeit care.
The rumble of their bellies, the pangs in bed at night
Fails to make loneliness seem less Encompassing.
Sarah, I’m with you at midnight
When the crack of light dawns on your kitchen floor
And all before you, you see breads and soups and chocolate
The beginnings and end of your love.
I’m with you in Colorado,
When you play houseguest as your Norwegian father
A connoisseur of disaster
Offers you the finest cheeses,
Not knowing that all you wanted was a second glance.
I’m with you when you read my words
And your mind insists they don’t apply to you
That nobody knows you, that you are not one of us.
I’m with you in Los Angeles
Where hippies disguise themselves as buddahs
And bow down to vegan, soul-less gods,
Chanting the words that will save you.
I’m with you in Santa Monica
Where you hide from yourself
And look to better women of the past
Who might teach you how not to need, not to be so much.
I’m with you inside heavy- closed doors,
When you cry salty tears,
Asking anyone to make you less.
I’m with you in Agoura Hills
Where hypocrisy and beauty made us sick to our stomachs
And we were terrified, tranquilized, frozen in time.
What is beauty? You will ask.
Beauty is the warmth of your cheek
As you embrace my shaking body.
Beauty is the flash of your teeth when you laugh.
It’s the crackle of the fire near my chilled feet.
Beauty eludes us, dear Sarah,
In our search for something unconditional.
It’s a receding horizon, a firefly we’ll never catch.
A glow we can only see in front of us
Never to be held, contained within a see-through jar.
If beauty is love
And love is food
Well then, we are screwed, you say.
I bite my tongue before I suggest
That perhaps, you should come for supper.
