Doing nothing is the hardest task of all

[Byron]

I have been working on this piece for about twelve months. I wanted to explore the landscape we all find ourselves in, when we fully realise that there are times when we have to allow situations and events to happen. We have an internal battle going on within our heart, mind and soul, wherein we feel compelled to take some sort of action. Some years ago I worked with a man who had been engaged to a girl for some time. They were very happy and enjoyed making plans for their life together. However, the girl was told by specialists that she was going blind and nothing could be done to prevent it happening. Her fiance dropped her like a ton of bricks because he didn't want to be lumbered with a blind woman for the rest of his life. It broke her heart. I've often thought about this episode and felt it would do me some good to get my feelings out in the open in a way which explored the emotions rather than the personalities.
Parents have to go through this turmoil when their child leaves home for the first time. For example, when their teenage son or daughter leaves school and goes on to study at university or college, in a town which is hundreds of miles away. Similarly, we all have to place our trust in others and unfortunately there are times when the best course of action is to do nothing.
Doing nothing is the hardest task of all. So I've juggled the characters around a bit but kept as close as I can to the truth of the pain which the girl went through. This is a piece about the suffering of a man who suddenly awakens to the fact that although he has kept to the truth, he is in fact blind. His heart still beats, and his love does not diminish, because the love that he has, is selfless and without guile. This is anybody’s story.

Doing nothing is the hardest task of all.

The light smashed into his eyes without pity
Pain seared through the back of his head
And gripped the rear of his skull with red-hot claws
His body went rigid as he tried to hide his head inside his neck.
“A waste of effort.”

His shoulders rose with instant reflexes
To surround his head and he knew it was a waste
He wasn’t in control
His autonomic responses were in charge
And they were bloody useless

While his lids squashed his eyes tight shut
They were still burning
From the bursting shell
That had penetrated deep inside his brain

All he could do
And he knew it
Was to sit tight and wait
Like a kick in the balls
“Hang on till the pain goes”

It washed through him
With waves of boiling water
His mind could feel the power of its rush

Who had turned this light on?
You did, you poor, blind fool
You fumbled in the dark
And discovered the switch
Which turned light into blackness
And life into misery

Abject misery is a term you have heard
Abject misery is a phrase you have read
Abject misery is a state of mind
With which no physical pain can compare
It pervades all existence
It expands

Whatever you were
Whoever you are
You no longer function
Within normality
Simple acts of remembrance
Slough from your mind

Riding the tides of life
Is no longer your allotted state
Treading water
Doesn’t come close
To being without your arms and legs
With which you carried your life
Since first you flowered.

Your limbs appear limp
Their past strengths and delights are not needed
They are made redundant
And you
You fool
Are an old, blind dog
Aware of the space all around you
But which has filled with verbiage

The trust that gave life
Was a gossamer veil that holds little?
You receive no note
Nor call nor command
A command can be sweeter
Than a void of new suffering
Yes, even a command

Or a kick in the heart
That means you are noticed
To serve and surrender
And lovingly take the scraps
of thought thrown at you
Would be easier on you
by comparison.

So now you begin

To taste the first flush of your drowning
Blindlessly seeing
Your eyes and your heart
Have been skewered
By the multiple pricks
Of a lion
While you slept

Oh, how many would fall
At this point?
But you are greater than this
Sleep on it
If you can?

Now is the time
To do nothing
Now is the time
To love.

So I wait and hold on and am peaceful
For the mind of the captive is free
To meander through thoughts of deep anguish
And allow the spirit to see
A heart that no one knows better
Which no other lover can free
To float as light as a feather
And as fine as the bubbles we see
On the wings of a faraway dragon
Who knows naught if any of thee
He soars over colours and senses
He swoops and he hangs on the breeze
Yet the Sun outshines his defences
It’s at night that he squirms where he please
Chameleons pale in his presence
And he’ll cut you off at the knees
Your meat he will soil in your presence
In response to your unspoken pleas
Fear not for my heart, which is heavy,
For it is soaring much higher than he

Your soul has been given so cheaply
Self-respect you’d attained has now gone
In your eyes and your heart you are nothing
Of that which arrived in the Sun
But the one who you left in the mourning
Still lingers to hold you as one
Are you blind to the point of adorning
Your dreams of false love with aplomb?
For a fool and her legs are soon parted
By sweet poisonous words, one by one

Can you look at those eyes in the mirror?
Were they yours even when you were young?
Are they yours now you’ve betrayed your birthing?
Are they blind from the site of a tongue?
The promise on leaving your mother
In a hospital bed long ago
Your praises they sang to each other
A full life and to stay ever young
You entered this world as all nature
But the nurture you’ve chosen is wrong

Pleasures that pass in an instant
Flash wildly across you and he
Selfish sparks that are not for another
A crescendo of passion for thee?
In mourning they’re now in oblivion
Bright lights on a ship lost at sea
Do you really believe he’s your lover?
Looking away while he stands for a pee?
Warts and all, were a part of your being
As I caressed you and set yourself free
You are mine for as long as you own me
You are mine when I’m left all alone
You were mined by a snake with a prick-axe
Do I mind if he took you while prone?
Get behind me you emerald devil
My love was not given to roam
Like some cheap magic spell that could level
And raze to the ground any home
My love has no value within me
But it worships your soul in this poem.

[Kush]

Byron,
May I suggest that your poetry may often be in need of some editing ? I am no poet so I don't know if my suggestion/criticism is really valid but personally I do tend to lose the thread and my interest about a quarter of the way down.

[lizzytysh]

My suggestion is that you keep going, Kush....the trip is well worthwhile. Not all poems [particularly lengthy ones] will keep the reader rapt, but reading back over them is anticipated and the norm. Not everything is so immediately and easily accessible. At the same time I say that, I know this is something you already know ~ so this comes under the gentle-reminder category.

~Lizzytysh

[babz]

Hello Byron,
I hear two poems happening.
One ends at Verse 16 (if I counted correctly) with "to love".

The second begins "So I wait ..."
The formal rhyme scheme makes it read like a song to me.
I think I was even humming Take This Waltz while I read it.

I'm curious if you have any sense of this disjunction between the two parts.

Beautiful pieces.

Barbara

[Kush]

Not everything that is voluminous and hard to understand is necessarily worth the effort. This also comes under the gentle reminder category.

p.s. the above is not directed at Byron's effort but is well worth keeping in mind. Moreover when you publish something in a literary magazine, I'd guess in most cases space is limited. Not to generalize but brevity and clarity is not a bad thing although literary vision may sometimes dictate matters otherwise.

[lizzytysh]

How did we get from a somewhat lengthy [I've seen much longer ones published] poem regarding working through personal issues to publishing in a literary magazine? Unless I missed something, that's a quantum leap from where I sit.

[Byron]

Babz, thank you. You are correct. There are two pieces to this poem.
I'm trying to present the emotions that we all go through when a personal, cataclysmic event hits us between the eyes. I may best be able to describe the jump in feelings and emotions and responses, by asking someone to imagine what it was like, for thousands of mothers in America, who had sons serving in the armed forces in Europe and the Pacific during the Second World War.
Each day of their lives at that time, those mothers worried about their sons. The mothers went through hours and days of anguish. And then, one morning, they get a knock on their front door! "Your son is dead" All of their previous feelings and emotions now belonged to a state of mind which they would never experience again. Those emotions had been terrible enough, but now, what hit them in their hearts was a beast of a completely different colour. Blacker, deeper, and all pervading.
The time-line of those mothers' lives had been snapped. Their view of their lives could never be tempered with the same grouping of feelings again. Hence, the change of the mind-set and the pace, of the poem's narrator, as he is hit in the heart. This is also why I've deliberately used 'mourning' instead of 'morning,' because what had gone before in the narrator's life, was now seemingly dead. Also, the 'site' of a tongue is not what we see, but the part within us which is struck by any harsh, lying, and deceitful words. Those words may not be immediately apparent to the recipient. They go off like a time-bomb when the truth becomes clear.
Those American mothers never stopped loving their sons and never would. It was a pure, unconditional love, which asked nothing in return. Their love caused their pain, but it was that same love which held them together. It held the mothers by way of support. It also held the mothers and their sons together even though death seperated them.
We must remember that mothers have been losing sons like this for thousands of years. I've used this analogy because it may assist in the reading of my piece.
Thank you for your kind and considered comments. Best regards. Byron.

[lizzytysh]

Dear Byron,

I am struck dumb by the profoundness of your thinking and perception. Thinkers with your sensitivities are what our world and our lives so desperately need. Your analogies continue to dig further and deeper into the depths of the human heart. Seldom have I seen anywhere so much heart and understanding. I love your humanity. The feelings that I get, when I read what you write, relate to nourishment and soul. You go into the muck and mire, drag and hoist the rusted treasures, care/fully and reverently cleanse for recognizability, and then sort them for display ~ that done, you offer them, with all their sensibilities ~ for the choice of anyone who chooses ~ as an unconditional gift. Somewhere in England stands a rare, human treasure. His name is Byron. It is my privilege to meet you here. I look forward to meeting you and your wife in New York.

Sincerely,
Elizabeth

[lizzytysh]

Hi Babz,

I also found Byron's poem to be very songlike, and found myself reading it with a similar cadence ~ and it may very well have been Take This Waltz, as you've suggested. I didn't notice what you've pointed regarding two pieces in one. Thanks.

~Elizabeth

[babz]

Thanks for the clarification, Byron. It's just that I felt the violent impact in the unrhymed section as more immediate and personal... and the sense of resignation in the rhyme section more distant. Perhaps that was exactly what you intended.

I would still love to see you rework the first sixteen verses into a matching rhymed piece. but you're the boss!

Best regards,
Barbara

You definitely need to have Elizabeth's comments on your dust jacket when you publish! Beautiful commentary, Liz.

[lizzytysh]

Dear Babz,

Thank you for your unanticipated and surprizing compliment....as you already know, my commentary, in general, comes under a good deal of [shall we say] "scrutiny" .

~Elizabeth

[babz]

Liz,
De rien!

Don't you just love the word "scrutiny" ?

Of course, I happen to love "screwy" as well.

I was not aware of the companion words though:
scrutable, scrutator, and scrutineer.

Keep on scrutinizing, Elizabeth!
A searching study can only expand our knowledge.

Barb