Old Man in the Corner

In the dark corner of the bar 

an old man crumpled in his seat

can barely lift his glass

—each pint gets heavier

each day takes more to numb the pain.

He has given up trying to understand the source

of his grief, the reason for his expulsion

from a place, like joy, peace, or belonging.

He knows like blood coursing through his veins 
he was robbed.

Of what? His manliness? His hope?

His tribe. He has lost his tribe.

He has lost his job. And someone

has to pay.

Yes he knows about NAFTA

and the jobs that went to India

and the slick talkers in suits

cutting him loose from the plant

and he knows like the knife

in his stomach that they can’t

be hurt, can’t be touched

by anything he does.

And he can’t tell his buddies

they have cut off his balls.

So when he screams

get rid of all the others,

he means those who are not like him

and throughout his years

of becoming a man

he has become the foreigner

to his own heart.

(Infinite Power, Janet Vickers. Ekstasis 2016)

National Poetry Month III

Treasure Your Grief

Not like a piece of jewellery kept in a box

but a scar across your face

a house plant blooming where sun

glares through a window.

Go back to that time—

the sunny afternoon in the park

you didn’t question

your feelings sweeping you out

from childhood to another’s body

so close it enters like a possession

a desire that doesn’t name itself

cut by fear

this is how women are destroyed

and you run away

shut down the portal to pleasure

as you will do again and again.

Go back to the image you hold onto

the someday promised, this or this

the girl who gives because she feels

the movie star everyone wants but can’t have

the radiant flesh, the brilliant idea

all yours if you play your cards

right not wrong. Right not left. Right not alone,

starving or battered.

New dove, shapely, winged and wise, goddess poised

on the edge of a mountain in the clouds

ready to jump or fly to eternal glory

shattered by all the missteps, mistakes and failings

the undeniable proof of your unremarkable humanity

your place in the anonymous family

and all the ways you have been let down or built up

washing the cloth of invincibility.

You’ll dream of long corridors searching for a baby

taken at birth to find she was never yours

and in the mirror no tragic victim looks back at you

no Cinderella or Joan of Arc.

Grief is not loss but inheritance, your fire,

your form. Grief is the callback to play yourself

with your sweat, your fear, challenged by desire

to answer the breaking Earth as though she were a heart

or some other organ, her blood rushing through

your own veins. As though you were yourself

a mind created to save her and after all these years

you learn the only thing you can be sure about

are the many opportunities you threw away.

There are no happy endings.

There is struggle. There is gratitude.

And there is silence.

(Infinite Power, Janet Vickers, Ekstasis 2016)

National Poetry Month

Apology

Power is an obsession in the Fourth Estate.
What does it mean anyway in terms of your life?
In how we talk to each other?

What will it save you from?
The military, government, knowledge, love?
Each decade tells us what we think we need
is out of date.

Are we prisoners laying bricks for new prisons
trapped by words with limited definitions?
Shall we throw up our hands and say
that’s life isn’t it?

Even if we agree the problem is not our nature
but the way language keeps us from feeling and so
we declare war.

Against what? Hegemony?

Seems no matter what we choose
the rules of engagement have found a way
to win forever and we could endure oppression if it was fair ...

The word will not leave us or set us free.

We are thin sticks holding the ocean’s waves
in our small hands and our large conceit.
Strike out at anything, small or large,
and we strike against our willingness to surrender
to the infinite power we can’t control.

But what if I dared invent new words
like ‘thought-birds’ and ‘quest-frack’
and my multiple selves took care of the ‘I’ in the common ‘we’.

Eventually the hyphen might disappear and I might say:

compassion, empathy, analysis, or nurture 

and return the power to my heart.

Am I ready for such a radical departure?

(from Infinite Power, Ekstasis 2016)

For more information on National Poetry Month click here