Two Angry Poems: Getting Real!

Two poems inspired initially by memories of my father, definitely an “angry man.” Other associations intruded, so that the voice is a composite of people and places, times and spaces. But both ultimately come down to this: can I be, see, and express my “true self?" Or, as I like to say, Can I be my fullest self without being full of myself? The first poem has recently been published by the national publication of Adult Children of Alcoholics. I bequeathed to them poetic rights. The second captures the challenge of when seeing is and is not believing! Enjoy! MG

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Another Last Angry Man: The Break Down & Out Challenge

Who needs a 12-step program

To spill my guts, to say I’m sick.

Hey, I am COOL with who I am...

Take notes; y’all need a better mask!

So what, I like that dopa hit

Maybe do a little porn

Sometimes get a bit too lit

Or, some crazy codependent shit

From late night to early morn.

 

What makes you such a choir boy?

Always know what's for the best.

To you, I crawl the hoi polloi

On bent knees like all the rest.

 

My world quietly exploded

At a much too tender age.

Don’t judge me if I’m loaded

Be wary of my rage!

 

My soul silently imploded

You said: “Oh, it’s just a stage.”

Then why did you morph blind bloody red?

Just one safe place: inside my head

That primal-shadow forest… alas, black smoke choked the maze.

 

What makes you think I’m so angry?

What sets you so far apart?

Look at me, my envy stare so hungry…

Hey, King Arthur, if you are so damn smart

Pull this rusty dagger from a stone-cold scarlet heart! **

 

Why am I so bitter?

A smoldering hard shell…

I’m a creature of the gutter

Your heaven is my hell!

 

C’mon, say it; say “I’m whining

Just feeling sorry for myself.”

Go fly with my broken wing

Sister don’t know a blessed thing

Keep the “good news” to yourself!

 

My world quietly exploded

At a much too tender age.

Don’t judge me if I’m loaded

You don’t want to know my rage!

 

My soul silently imploded

You said: “Oh, it’s time to turn the page.”

Sure, with a shut-down brain, on code red

Back then, the only hope: head twisting madly side to side 

In that trauma-numbing bed!

 

Maybe this step-talking gets me inside out my head

Ready for the breakaway... that's what higher voices said:

Burn down the shadow prison; firestorm the stage

Now a dying Phoenix etched on a blood-soaked page.

Then suddenly, most defiantly, rises from the dread:

A tortured past once embraced… an untouched canvas lies ahead!

 ** King Arthur…cold-stone scarlet heart!: “In Arthurian legends, Excalibur was King Arthur's magic sword. There are two accounts of how Arthur obtained Excalibur. According to one version, the sword had been plunged into a stone and remained firmly fixed there. It was said that whoever pulled the sword from the stone would be the next king of England. Some of the strongest men in the land attempted to pull the sword out, but none succeeded until the young Arthur pulled it out with ease. In the other story, Arthur received Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake, a mysterious figure who lived in an enchanted underwater realm.” (www.mythencyclopedia.com/Dr-Fi/Excalibur.html)

? ACA WSO 2018

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Please, Open Your Eyes!

Why are the eyes the source of rivulets

Wearing down those facial hills and hollows?

A lonely run from the restless mind to the raging/choking river mouth

Ever traveling north to south

And with you, alas, the psychic erosion that follows…

 

Maybe because you couldn’t see me

Maybe because I wouldn’t believe you couldn’t see me.

Why couldn’t I see you not able to see me?

Not what’s wrong with you but…

What’s wrong with me?

Why would a tender seed called you and me

Need you to see me, desperately?

But pain shadowed you from me

And my shameful shroud – “as if” invisibility.

 

Maybe because I still don’t know

If I can see me… if I can just be

Whether or not you can see me. Do you see?!

If I can’t see me, must your eyes

Trace me, place me, even erase me?

Now, who are you?  Who me?

Why choose a life of puppetry?

It’s so hard to cut the strings

When blinded by so many things.

Or, in a frightful fog, lost souls in Hamlet’s Cave:

Some in heated prayer to be grief ghost free

A lonely plant straining for the light; a mind that but waits for Nature’s spark

A toady mushroom poisoned by the familiar b.s. (be safe) dark

All know the purgatory of “to see or not to see.”

Is paraphrasing the 12-Step mantra ** the answer to codependency?

It’s none of my business what other people see (or don’t see) in me!

Yet asking for a seeing-eye guide, even temporarily

Feels like an emperor ego stripped, bare boned, now crawling with humility

To defy the iron-fisted pledge of family secrecy…

Sure, sure, (pounding on the table) but why can’t I see?

Is it because what I see is not possible

Or, because I refuse to become what I see?

In you…in me…how enmeshed two can be.

For if I can’t see me/be me… what does it matter if

I can’t see you or I can see you

Or, I can’t see you seeing me or not seeing me.

For if I can’t see me, truthfully

Without any strings attached

Then any believing is seeing, more likely deceiving

Now it’s easy “to almost be.”

But when seeing is believing, and still I will not see

There’s only one choice:

Close my eyes…and no longer be!

** 12-Step mantra: “It’s none of my business what other people think of me!”

?  Mark Gorkin 2018

Shrink Rap ? Productions

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Mark Gorkin, MSW, LICSW, "The Stress Doc" ?, a nationally acclaimed speaker, writer, and "Motivational Psychohumorist" ?, is a founding partner and Stress Resilience and Trauma Debriefing Consultant for the Nepali Diaspora Behavioral Health & Wellness Initiative. Current Leadership Coach/Training Consultant with IjonaSkills/US and for the international Embry-Riddle Aeronautics University at the Daytona, FL headquarters. A former Stress and Violence Prevention Consultant for the US Postal Service, he has led numerous Pre-Deployment Stress Resilience-Humor-Team Building Retreats for the US Army. Presently Mark does Cross Cultural Facilitation and Presentations for organizational/corporate clients of HR Consulting Firm PRM. The Doc is the author of Practice Safe Stress, The Four Faces of Anger, and Preserving Human Touch in a High-Tech World. Mark’s award-winning, USA Today Online "HotSite" – www.stressdoc.com – was called a "workplace resource" by National Public Radio (NPR). For more info, email: [email protected].