Reds In a Black Mask by Jo Dancingtree (top 10 novels .txt) 📕

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I wonder who I would have been,
if I had not been me.
Would I be less clumsy,
all knees and elbows flailing at the world,
my tongue a snare to trip me to the ground?
But maybe I would laugh at dopes like me,
the Wednesday children, born to play the fool
for others' laughter and our own despair.

If I was born to shame, the child unwanted,
at least I hold them tenderly to heart:
the other clowns,
who run with me the gauntlet of disgrace.


Futility

I could stand on a balcony stark naked
screaming to earth and sky, and be invisible,
or at the most,
“Get down,” they’d scoff,
“You self-indulgent fool!”


Undercurrents

I stand here laughing,
hoping the tears have not reached my eyes, hoping
you will not see beneath the smile
or hear me scream.
The woman who ran the bookstore
died last week. Dear God,
you could’ve had me instead.
But I still have a chapter or two to go,
to finish my story of someone else’s healing.


Low on the Totem Pole

Blame finds its way downhill like dirty water
to soak whatever's nearest to the ground.
It rains down on my head and slimes my hair,
shame dripping in my ears,
quiet and deadly, filling my eyes with salt
and etching on my face
an acid rain of tears.


Canyonlands

I think there's more wound than solid to me,
and people say I'm strong! I must be hard as diamonds,
so thin a shell to hold the emptiness.

Pour something in,
a filling of gold or silver – where's the dentist
to fill the gaping cavity in my soul?

Come Holy Spirit – quick - and fill me up,
before I fly apart from the void within.


57 down

So easily knocked so low! It only takes
another birthday passing unremarked.
I'll buy myself a gift
more costly than any you'd have given me,
exactly what I like.
But I can't buy the thing I really want:
to know I'm loved.


Twosome

Do you feel it too?
Like children lost and wandering, we two,
lost and afraid, bewildered at our plight
and holding hands for courage in the night.

But if you told me how you really see me,
could be I wouldn't really want to hear.
You don't guess how bad
I long to turn my face against the wall.


January Inside

Snow come down and cover me, bring your burning frost
and freeze my shame.
I'll try not to shiver, yielding to the cold.
Numbness take me
till a block of ice encase me
never to feel again.


Lurching Through Mordor

You don't exactly walk here,
more like you stumble,
catching your foot on some rough chunk of lava
coughed from the Mountain twenty years ago,
and stagger up all dizzy from the fumes
only to take a header in a pit.

It's getting up that matters,
however many times you have to do it.
Get up, go on, no matter if you seem
to measure your length through Mordor
on the ground.


Relative Time

It's been a long day.
In the shiny morning, light
from the window set the glittering dustmotes
dancing like angels in the quiet room,
and pain came sharp and passed.
At noon-time grief arrived,
a guest who settled in to spend some time.
Now sun is westering, and in the evening cool
I ponder how long a day is. Do we work past dusk,
Into the dark by flickering lights of hope?
I'm tired, Lord. It seems too long a day.


Ah, Ruthie (with tears)

Little adopted mother,
Irish as shamrocks, laughing,
your jokes a wee bit vulgar, but never cruel.
You leapfrogged over the years that yawned between us
to be my confidante, to be my friend.
I leaned on the hope you gave me, the hardest winter,
the darkest night I ever knew.
But when the spring had come,
you punched me in the face and slammed the door.


Re-born Again

Grit my teeth and bear it, bear the pain,
like bearing a daughter in my blood and sweat.
It does no good to wail,
so grab the handles, push her into life.

Who am I birthing here on sorrow's table?
Child of peace that follows on the storm,
child with eyes of pity for a world
too wracked and whacked to suffer all alone,
child of a gentle heart.
A child of God is what I'm birthing here.


Strong Enough

There are so many here:
Mordor is more crowded than I knew.
Samwise is leading Frodo; he won't leave him –
there are too many here who walk alone,
strung out and wounded, fallen in the dust,
with none to help.

Let me be Samwise, Lord, to someone here.
Sam's strong enough to help, for all he staggers,
and so am I.


Call and Response

She's a funny one –
outspoken, irreverent,
uninhibited. You never know
what's going to come out of her mouth.
Outrageous sometimes –
amusing, but you know –

Oh, yes, I know. I take
the inhibitions home
and howl them into my pillow in the dark.


Ergo Nihil

In this living proof
there is one given: whatever I do or say
is incorrect.
Why strain to demonstrate
a competence I never yet have shown
in life or love?
Shut the hopeless book, turn out the light,
for whether I give a curse or an embrace,
in this pitiless mathematics it's all the same.


Enough Yet?


Can I go home now, run away and hide?
I've been a fool for the fifty-millionth time.
That ought to be enough
to sink me below the floor to where there's peace.


Weather Eye

I keep a hopeful eye out
for death, like watching the sky for rain
in a long dry summer.
Cool rain, relief and hope,
soaking the hardpan, churning and frothing it up in velvet mud
to sink my toes in, soothing my burning feet.
A sleep with no awaking, the end of pain.


Abuser in Search of a Substance

I smoked three packs a day when I was young,
and drank a little, never enough
to do me any harm, or good, as the case might be.
I never tried the hard stuff: scared, I guess,
of doing hard time in or out of jail.

And now I'm old enough I should know better,
though better than what you notice they never say.
Old enough to know I won't outgrow it,
whatever "it" is.

I'm looking for something to help me
forget it's never going to be okay. I won't belong
or feel secure or trust my arrant tongue,
that digs me a hole to fall in twice a day.
I'll never feel at home or love a friend
I'm not afraid of losing.

I crave a fix to make me brave and normal,
but is there a drug
that's equal to the task?


Night Tremors

Dinner with friends, a nice convivial evening –
how did it bring me to this cobblestone mattress
with the sky escaping at light-speed into space?

I can't remember what I said
that changed your face and told me I had stumbled.
Casual conversations,
taken for granted by those by those with social grace,
hide pratfalls into hell.

For me there is no casual – every utterance
walks tightrope on disaster.


Scapegoat

There's always blame enough to go around.
You don't have to be stingy, there's enough
to baptize the smallest babe in the family curse.

To make it stop is harder, to dam the lie
that says it's always someone's fault
when everything goes sour.

Can we all concede that life is just inherently unfair?
Let's cast the blame on God –
He's got the only shoulders that can bear it.


Just Outside of Eden

Paradise on earth is relative:
it harbors snakes and scorpions
and other politicians.
You gamble with disaster
just stepping out in the cancer-causing rays
through shadows ripe with fear.
But mercy dwells here too, hugging the interstice
where hope and anguish meet.


Only a Touch Reclusive

If I could build, I'd have a little hovel
deep in the woods, like Baba Yaga's house,
on chicken legs that bowed to take me in,
and there I would be safe.
No one would see me; no one would come near;
I'd talk to myself, and never a word I said
would rise like a zombie at midnight to make me groan.
I'd drink my cup of loneliness unmixed
with self-contempt.


I'll Take the Depression, Thanks, and Skip the Booze

I take my pain how I find it.
A sturdy jolt of anguish comes with the territory
along with love and music,
the taste of chocolate, laughter,
frog-song and the flash of eagle's wings.

There will be agony. Knock it back straight,
for anything you add to kill the taste
will burn a path more stringent than the pain,
into your very core.


Like an Oyster

The daily pricking of small agonies
and some that aren't so small,
and flies in the ointment
and phantoms that stand at the end of my bed
and gloat, at three a.m.,
the nights I cannot sleep:

I raise against them all
the power of language (where is my thesaurus?)
binding words of truth and pain and hope
around the caltrops strewn in my path,
and turn them into poems.


Trade-off

The great thing about depression is,
you hurt so bad you're not afraid to die.

And when you start to heal,
you find out
what the fuss was all about.

Just like for someone normal,
death gets a little scary.
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Publication Date: 09-03-2009

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