Poetry2ponder's Blog

“I am done” by Trevor Witt

I want to bash my skull against
The wall of this industrial beat,
This club is great, but I am drunk
And trying, trying, trying really hard
To sober up, to not embarrass myself
Again, again, I am old now.
You may not think so, but I am
Old enough to know better,
I have made enough mistakes
To learn my lessons, several times.

I am done.

“I am a lightning bolt” by Trevor Witt

I am a lightning bolt,
A flash of electricity,
A current traveling from
The cloudy heavens to earth,
Firing photons across the sky,
Aiming to balance an electric field.

I am a temporary being,
Gone in a split second,
Exerting enormous energy,
Just so I can be seen.

I am a force of nature,
Untamed, relentless,
Intangible, dangerous

You cannot hold me.

“I pour my heart into a wooden chalice” by Trevor Witt

I pour my heart into a wooden chalice,
A cup for all to savor a refreshing sip,

The flow of my soul down the gullet,
Is not enough to ease the pain of the zeitgeist,

I am trapped in tar, as my fellow dinosaurs die,
I am wrapped up in my ego, as I complain and wonder why.

Why me? Why am I suffering so?
I am a broken record, a stubborn crow.

But even the crow learns to build a nest and to grow,
And even the moody, old cat catches himself a rat.

I sit here sunken, with wings that feel like weights,
But I am not so unlucky that they have been clipped by fate.

I will learn to soar again,
I will crawl and fly and slither,
I will roar again.

I will learn to howl at the moon,
And I will bellow and growl,
And I will cackle and chuckle and smirk,
Like a giddy, mischievous fowl.

I will whisper the sounds of the owl,
And relish the meows of the kitten,
I will return to my animal instincts,
As the rawness of life has me smitten.

Like a zombie, bit by the infected,
I have a hunger that cannot be deflected,
I am alive, I am alive, I am alive,

And I am ready to be self-respected.

“Working (in my room)” by Trevor Witt

Upstairs in my room,
Working on my computer,
While the parents watch TV,
Is this what I want?
To face a daily grind?

What else is there?
What is the Grand Plan for me?
The future is what you make it.
And I am building it brick by brick.
While I struggle, I succeed.

In each hour of service,
There are sixty minutes of love.

In each year of dreaming,
There are 365 days of work.

If you want the tree to grow,
Take care of the seed and sapling.

“Stray Bullet” by Trevor Witt

A stray bullet hit her in the head,
The stray, wild, untamed, lonely bullet,
Hit her, struck, damaged, attacked, injured,
The stray bullet did not kill, murder, or obliterate,
Yet her sense of normalcy, of the humdrum, quotidian boredom,
Was forever shattered, like the neural connections for …

She can function, but she, does, not, like before, she is
Slow walk-ing, slow driv-ing, slow speak-ing,
Sometimes with a stut-stut-stutter,

Delayed signals from the brain
Leave deep wounds in her psyche,
As she learns to do … again.

The stray bullet did not save a life.
It did not stop a criminal.
It did not break a clay pigeon.
It did not kill the “enemy”.
It did not drive out the invader.
It did not hit the intended target.

Obviously,
The solution
is . . .

Smarter bullets.

“The sunlight (a rainbow of feelings)” by Trevor Witt

Each day, a rainbow of feelings —
A spectrum of light, from the invisible
To the red hot, to the cool blue,
Including infrared longing,
And ultraviolet despair,
Gamma ray fury,
And radio wave calm —

A rainbow of feelings, every day,
Appears — after the storm,
The torrential downpour of empathy,
The deluge of frustration,
The tempest of revulsion,
And the rushing, overflowing rivers of joy,
— And I see the sunlight for what it is,

The burnt skin, turned red with blisters,
The roses and lavender blooming,
The drought faced by the desert dwellers,
The sweet juice of an orange as you bite,
The thirst of the boy, as the heat radiates off the asphalt,
And the melting snow on the mountaintop.

The sunlight is me

and

The sunlight is you.

“A punch in the balls” by Trevor Witt

A punch in the balls,
Like a football to the crotch,
It was crippling, the pain,
Brought me to my knees,
In prayer, I tried to accept it,

When she told me I would
Never be a dad with her,
And I could not understand,
Tried to ignore my anguish,
I loved her, loved her and wanted
To expand our universe of love,
But love’s labors were not meant to be,
There would be no contractions,

Except for our relationship,
Which crumbled under the waves
Of uncertainty and resentment.
And knowing that love could not
Replace my desire for new starlight eyes,
I let the erosion wash us away.
I was hurt, devastated,
And the earthquake of her departure
Shook my soul to its core.

But I remained a volcano, spewing lava,
Seeking to build new lands,
Through the hot and cold.
Steadfast in my desire, we burned like Pompeii.

(I see so much awe in the tropical jungles,
In the waterfalls in national forests,
In the curious behavior of Blue Jays and squirrels,
In discovery of new earths, distant worlds,

But time would not expand our universe,
As the big bang grew more distant,
So did she, and we reached our last,
The last verse, as we went to bury love’s hearse.)

“An Imperfect Prayer for Israel and Palestine” by Trevor Witt

Deir Yassin, the Nakba, Land Day, Sabra and Shatila,
The Ibrahimi Mosque in al-Khalil,
Gaza, Gaza, Gaza,
Jenin and Nablus,
Huwara, Huwara, Huwara

Massacres and pogroms,
Collective punishment, collective death,
The collective destruction of our memories,
In the context of war (in the context of colonialism (in the context of refugee resettlement (in the context of return from the Diaspora (in the context of fleeing persecution))))

Murders,
Innocent people killed, injured,
Wounded bodies, battered psyches,
Bones and muscle and nerves broken,
By snipers bullets, by tank shells, by shrapnel and grenades,
By landmines, by mortars, and by missiles from fighter jets.
By phosphorus shells, by an embargo, by the walls of a prison,
By the blockade of community, the trap of a closed border,
By medical neglect and indefinite detention.

Enslavement and forced labor,
Desecration of holy places and exile,
The resistance of Moses, the Maccabees, Masada, and Bar Kokhba,
Laws against intermarriage, barred from many professions,
Accused of blood libel, blamed for The Plague,
Tortured into giving up their customs during the Inquisition,
Pogroms in the Pale of Settlement, Hebron 1929, Kristallnacht, Auschwitz,
The Farhud, the exodus from Iraq and Iran,
The Suez Crisis or The Tripartite Aggression,
The Six Day War or the The War of 1967,
The Yom Kippur War or the Ramadan War,
Suicide bombings – on a crowded bus, in a Sbarro.

Hebron – Baruch Goldstein,
The Cave of the Patriarchs,
The Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre,
The families torn apart by grief,
Clothes ripped in mourning,
Cries of “G-d is great”,
“There is no G-d but G-d”,
And “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our G-d”
“G-d is One”.

There is no repairing the despair,
There is only carrying love, despite its weight,
The Parents Circle-Bereaved Families Forum
Translates often to the Heavy Families,
It is too much. I cannot carry them,
And it is not for me to do.

But I do draw tears from their sorrow,
And I drink salty water from their pain,
I wish, I hope, I pray for the day,
When we can put this struggle to rest,
When we can treat each other well,
When we can truly say, “Never again”.