This morning I'd like to welcome back Alex Conrad, my former student and the most recent winner of The Song Is...'s local poetry prize. This morning his theme is self-scrutiny. Gilbert Stuart may not be blue eyed, but I thought that his self-portrait complemented Alex's poem.
By Alex Conrad
I wake in a dream-like state.
I float above my slumbering body
And observe it,
Almost as if I were watching a movie.
Calm.
That is what I see at this point in
time.
Regardless of what had happened prior to
this mirage.
Unaware of what is to come.
I drift further away as my form stirs
into cognition.
I watch myself go through the daily
regimen.
On the exterior, everything is cool and
calculated.
But that’s not what I witness
internally.
Within the vessel there lies a beating
heart.
It is a wonder how it is still in one
piece,
After having been torn to pieces by
wolves on their nightly prowl
Or after having been shattered like a
window that was hazy to begin with.
That heart has seen things in a short
amount of time
That it really is a wonder how it’s
maintained its shape.
The bottle holding it is clearly
shattered and mended with empty promises.
Running away from that sight
Next stop are the arms.
Covered in a road map to God knows what.
I can almost taste the sanguinary
excrement dripping through the tunnels within.
How many times does someone have to
remind themselves that they matter?
Apparently every day for some.
But even then, that is hard to do if you
don’t believe it.
Look in those eyes.
Steely Athenic blue.
What they have seen could be a book in
and of itself.
The pain within is usually covered by
the façade of complacency.
How many times have they been filled
to the brim with a briny secretion
just to be stopped by the shaking
finger?
It seems like forever ago that that was
not a necessity.
Masculinity tells me that I should
Bottle up my emotions and feelings
And hide them away on the back shelf,
covered in dust.
But at some point even those shelves
need to be cleared.
Sitting at the front door to my mind
Is a pile of luggage.
Battered, beaten, bruised
black-brown-blue.
Not wanted.
Piling on the masks
Broken as they are,
But the sinews of my heart tie them down
To the shards of the cage that encloses
my positivity and hope.
Ha. Hope, How happy histories hover.
Hopeful that they will once return.
Love never dies
But hope does.
Zoom out and back again in on the arms.
How often have they held someone dear
close
Yet to be ripped away?
How many times does it take to get the
heart of the chosen?
Love buzzes around my visage,
Like a flea looking to land
But with nothing to land on.
How fleeting forced smiles on knowing
that change will come.
Contract the lens and focus
On the body that returns to the bed,
Where it lays back down upon a mountain
of olives.
The very mount that brought the saint to
tears of embarrassment.
The eyes close and I am redrawn into it.
How much can one learn by just brushing
the surface
As a feather duster only catches a bit
of the dirt left there by old wounds.
My
Window
By
Alex Conrad
Wondering
when the sun
Would
decide to enter my dark room.
I
sit all day
Wondering
why the sky
Was
so dark and grey.
The
dog sits on the bed,
Staring
at me,
Playing
with me,
My
mind,
My
spirit,
My
soul.
Slick
tendrils of sadness reach into the enclosure
And
pull at my heartstrings.
Life
waves at me as it goes by.
I
sit all day
Wondering
when the sky would open up to me
And
welcome me amongst the angels.
Or
if the earth would swallow me up
And
I’d join the fallen,
Where
they lap up the living
As
they dwindle away
To
night.
Live
life to the fullest,
They
tell me.
Is
life ever full?
Can
life be what we want it to be?
Because
I’ve been proven
A
number of times
That
no matter how hard we try,
There
is no God there to help us along the way,
Il
est mort.
No
one wants to help,
They
say they do,
But
then they walk away.
My
precipitous past pain is used against me.
I
lose opportunities to practice what I love.
I
sit all day
At
the window of my soul.
Wondering
if the light of day would ever reach in
And
run off the windowsill
And
into the room
And
flow into across the floor
And
into my open, outreached hands
With
which I draw the light into my heart:
My
broken, shriveled, mangled, and mistreated heart.
Light
would break across my face.
Joy
would jump in my eyes.
Laughter
would lighten my throat.
But
not today.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As my husband is playing one of his classical CDs, I feel like I should post some classical music as well to go with Alex's poems.
Let's start with some Chopin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E6b3swbnWg
As Bill Cushing's response to Mussorgsky started me thinking of the Russian composers, I thought I'd post a nocturne by Borodin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTtyBJTstVk
Of course, there is Tchaikovsky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E05ltqcIVNo
I'll finish with a nocturne by Shostakovitch, which Hilary Hahn performs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqNuKGkY7L8
Reflects well on his prof. . .
ReplyDelete