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I won’t do
what You
kindly suggest -
it is too much.
I want to curl
up in safety
in front of
the television.
The heater on,
an old couch.
Uncommitted.

My father
neglected
ignored
left me
when he was
alive.

Now he’s dead
it is bad.

For nineteen years
I saw old men -
psychoanalysts.
They made
it even worse.

I’ve been crippled -
this judgement
this awful judgement
and repentance.
I am stupid
an idiot, a fool
an insignificant speck
not good enough.

In the morning
I swallow four 250mg
lithium tablets.
And again at night.
They jam the pain
numb it
but do little
to the bursting
life within.
The beautiful
roar inside
this Adam.

It is from here
I scream
at my father
rebelling
cursing
seething.
It is from here
I love and cry
for myself.

And it is from here
and only here
I kick off my slippers
and go to work
for You.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cpX1ZjuaiA

******************************************************************************************************************************

Rest In Peace, Alice Miller (12 January 1923, Lwow, Poland – 14 April 2010, Saint-Rémy de Provence, France)

You showed me truth; so many others failed.

“Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood.”

The beautiful
roar inside
this Adam.

I loved that.

Thanks. I kinda love it, too, Cate.

The beautiful
roar inside
this Adam.

Yeh; that got me too.

Great line Boss.
Excellent poem.

Mat.

Boss, I have such an appreciation towards your poetry.

And in appreciation, I would like to add…

Father:
I was once like you are now, and I know that it's not easy,
To be calm when you've found something going on.
But take your time, think a lot,
Why, think of everything you've got.
For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.

Son:
And it is from here
and only here
I kick off my slippers
and go to work
for You,
that You
might hear
the beautiful
roar inside
this Adam,
because from the
moment I could talk,
I had longed
for You to listen…

Thank you Mat and Carm.

A child needs someone to allow them to see how
beautiful they are. Someone to back them.
Someone to support their fledgling love. To allow
them to be free and to ‘believe’ in them. To let
them know they ‘can’. And someone to just listen.

For this, I thank my mother.


On Children
Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Son:
And it is from here
and only here
I kick off my slippers
and go to work
for You,
that You
might hear
the beautiful
roar inside
this Adam,
because from the
moment I could talk,
I had longed
for You to listen…

Boss, just wanted to add something more to where I left off above…

POEM OF LISTENING

I came to the place of listening,
Where I heard a terrible thunder
And rumblings of great chaos.

Frightened, I wanted to leave
But a soft voice said, 'Please don't.'

For a long time after that
My ear could discern only sobs
Till finally, Silence came.

In some sort of vision
A mouth appeared in the darkness,
Crying, “I am the voice of the Heart! ”

From the mouth came forth
A drop of sparkling light
That was also a golden note.

The drop became a world
Which began to unfold a Story.

As I watched and listened, it led me
Down through history's chasm,
Back to the dawn of Creation.

I saw the first man, the first woman
Clothed in their naked love.
When they turned to show their faces,
I saw that each had my own face!
Reaching out their sinuous arms
They pulled me into themselves.
Then for eons, unreflecting,
I lived their pristine life.

Suddenly, even First Forms
And Faces were stripped away.

I flowed as the rhythmic bolero
Of life from the very beginning,
The Music of the Soul,

A procession of colorful garments
Woven, re-woven from fibers
Of ones that had just been discarded,
Millions of melodies' garments
Of tumult and peace alternating,
All possible permutations.

At last, I re-dressed in my own threads.
The Night of Tales was over.
I returned to myself as I had been —
But clean as a new Creation.

This thread is wonderful,some great poetry here,thank you both.

Thank you Kwills and thank you Carm - I wrote this from my Heart, from my Soul. I am always becoming that new Creation -

The following piece of writing is dedicated to the memory of my only little brother whose body was subject to some 20 years of pain; some 27 medical procedures including removal of malignant cysts, chemotherapies, radiation, spinal reconstruction, knee reconstruction and so on. He also missed his dad. It was from him I learned courage.

I love(d) my father. But for many years I have been angry with him, for many years hurt. I come from a large family; one girl, five boys. Two years before Dad left, my sister died. When he left I was ten; the second youngest. It was bloody hard on my mother and it was bloody hard on me. I had to compete for meat, for chicks, for love. Dad built his new life remarrying and becoming active in this city’s poetry scene. In 1986 my brother Michael suicided – he hadn’t spoken to Dad for three years. My home life was chaotic, it was tragic. In my mind, this is the nub - my father should have ‘been there’ for his family. It was he who could have rescued me, but he didn’t. When I did see him, often I could only win his ‘love’ by pleasing him intellectually – if I got A’s, if I wrote a good poem. But it was my heart that needed care, my mind was okay. I needed him at home sorting out the battles with my older brothers (Mick also didn’t talk to me for three years). I needed him there to talk about women, and bravery, and history. I needed his time. I just needed his time. Dad told me that his father hardly communicated with him. I knew his mother to be quite neurotic. My mind can encompass this but my heart is stubborn. In time I will accept things, even forgive, but for now I’m angry. When you divorce, it is not just your wife you are leaving; but also it is your kids. The divorce rate hovers somewhere around the 50% mark in Western societies. If your culture has nothing sacred, is not in accord with the numinous and has little relevant ritual; all hell breaks loose.

You may be wondering what I am doing exhibiting this raw personal stuff. Let me tell you, sometimes you can alleviate pain by sharing. It is therapeutic. The injuries that parents inflict on children are far too often nullified because, let’s face it, adults hold the ‘power’. It is common practice that we ‘idealize’ our parents. I’m just trying to come to grips with all this and climb closer to reality.

In peace,
Adam

Dear Adam,

I have been following this thread and I wanted to say thankyou for sharing.
Some of the principles of what you have been saying really hit home to me.
I feel a deep respect for all that you have said I admire you for posting.

Thanks and be well
BestWishes

A
x

Boss, I have been turning your phrases over in my mind, having felt such an affinity with their genuine integrity. Thanks for giving all of us a glimpse of “the beautiful roar inside this Adam”.

Son:
All the times that I cried, keeping all the things I knew inside.
It’s hard, but it’s harder to ignore it…

As those seminal moments of ones childhood begin to transpire, ones mind wanders from those memories to things taking place in our lives at this very moment, to things left undone. Who we are changes over time. We grow and give shape to ourselves by each different life experience that is thrown at us. Sometimes those experiences take us into the unexpected, into junctures where we can easily lose our bearings and equilibrium. And the once easy flow of our day to day life is painfully interrupted, testing our souls in a myriad of ways. Dislocation for some becomes the only known rhythm to their daily existence. Circumstances, through unexpected, undesirable events of ones history, are often physically injurious towards certain geographies of the heart.

There are those who drag a heavy sorrow deep inside for many years, while tolerating all sorts of philisophical fissures along the way. Because of such baggage, some carry in them a secret core of fierceness and an unmatched quality of bold determination whose essence in the end can become that of strength, grace and beauty, if channeled correctly.

We must all try to win our words, our language, so the rich baritone voice that we were born with can shine through resolute and clear. Leonard Cohen leads us to those states of grace:

"The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be....

You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in..."

And as he engages and inspires, he leaves us at the end of our day with this…“One of us cannot be wrong.”

Sometimes a cataclysmic thing changes our life, in time, in a positive way, setting us on a course of daring and courageous decisions. And if we dare to dream, by daring, surely we will win. This new found courage helps push us to live our lives with greater meaning and commitment towards ourselves and those we love.

“…and they fell to their knees, picked up some earth...As G-d is our witness, we shall never go hungry again.”

I'm going to change track.

These two poems are to you, the woman I lived with for five years. I was never any good at loving you – I was preoccupied with other dreams. From the airport, I left for Israel in late November, 1992. You drove back to our rented home. I returned five months later in high spirits; but all bets were off – you’d been wounded enough. Like many break ups, there was much pain.

I was lost for a very long time, a very long time. Nowadays, I still miss you, but I am not overwhelmed. I laugh again. I hope you read this, Jackie.

Buster and Gizmo

I don’t care that you took:
The antique dining table
The television
The refrigerator
The vacuum cleaner
The washing machine
The CD player
The turntable
The video recorder
The flood light
The alarm clock
The toaster
The sandwich maker
The kettle
The sheets
The doona
The pillows
The towels
The crockery
The cutlery
The cork screw
The serviettes
The table cloth
The egg flipper
and the Monet print

And I don’t care that
you left me:
A broken down mower
A second hand bed
A few cups and plates
A few old pictures
A collection of books
A stolen typewriter
and some borrowed drawers

But I care that you took
the dog and the cat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9djQxwjgBps

************************************************************

Hope

Our love it lies still
eighteen years

Stalemated
comatose

Yet hungry like
a dog at
five o’clock
Open as
a picnic table
in summer
Sure as
a moon staying
its orbit
Wishful like
a teenager
at war’s end

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10h-z28BWZI

I have nothing more to say,
Adam

A very simple, but powerful poem. As much as we may argue and fight with them, we need our fathers.

But what if he doesn't need you?

Forgiving our Fathers
by dick lourie

maybe in a dream: he's in your power
you twist his arm but you're not sure it was
he that stole your money you feel calmer
and you decide to let him go free

or he's the one (as in a dream of mine)
I must pull from the water but I never
knew it or wouldn't have done it until
I saw the street-theater play so close up
I was moved to actions I'd never before taken

maybe for leaving us too often or
forever when we were little maybe
for scaring us with unexpected rage
or making us nervous because there seemed
never to be any rage there at all

for marrying or not marrying our mothers
for divorcing or not divorcing our mothers
and shall we forgive them for their excesses
of warmth or coldness shall we forgive them

for pushing or leaning for shutting doors
for speaking only through layers of cloth
or never speaking or never being silent

in our age or in theirs or in their deaths
saying it to them or not saying it -
if we forgive our fathers what is left.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QutfN2wb1wc

I believe forgiveness is the only freedom.