Poetry: #56 That Night I (The Search For 4)
And my thoughts after revisiting the words
That Night I
Hail do I see clearly in my mind the thoughts of others overwhelming my delicate balance and pride. Lo there do I find my heartened concepts driven out and broken down when forced by an external hand of this world. To show for this incomparable act I have not a single soul to trust. Alone has a meaning both literal and truthful. While the presence of another is impossible in the chaotic mess we call life, it is possible to feel as alone as the last decaying leaf left in the tree while the cool breeze tries to steal away its final breath. Hear me now as I plead with the gods of moral indecency, convinced that the solitude is a makeshift screen that will move away once the future has come to pass. Hear the sounds of trepidation as I reach for higher thoughts, see how the body crumples beneath the strain. My strength has waned, yet my thoughts remain untamed. The glance up at the clock with the time ticking by, the endless stream of past times floats across my mind in even the least desperate of times. Unwelcome they stroll through as if they were high rollers in a casino with plenty of dough to lose. Who’s watching them? When do they fall beneath the pressure of their own two feet? At what point will the unrelenting scenes cease to play endlessly over and over again. The night spent curled in the arms of my own body weeping sorrow from my bones. The night I spent time with two cousins only to be dismissed after an early bird breakfast and a disenchanted howl at precision of age and time. The night I looked out the window sill haunts me as it was my weakest point as I stared at the reply via text when I had called to stay alive. The night I pulled out and away and disconnected from who was beside me as I knew it was the last time. The night I slept with another so cold and callus to see if I was right only to find my suspicion too much to bear. The night I closed in tight to her and let the alcohol take my pain away only to be stung by the words barely sung. The nights alone I spent with the thoughts drifting in and out of focus... They feel as though they never left...
What are your thoughts on this poem?
My Thoughts & Takeaway
If you’ve never seen the movie The 13th warrior, I highly recommend it. It is about a Middle Eastern man that travels to what memory can best describe as the Vikings as ambassador. He is sent along with warriors to answer a plea for help. What terrorized the people that asked for help? Monsters: human-like animals that came and went with no trace besides their path of destruction. It is the impending doom of the warriors that leads to the Viking Prayer and my first introduction to it as a child. I occasionally think about this movie, and the prayer, and the courage it must have taken to stand up against such monsters.
This poem is one of those times. This is a poem with three movements. The first movement is a reapplication and rewriting of the Viking Prayer. It was a mantra, at least for a brief time, that helped me let go of what I wanted and look further within, to accept that I could not remain in control if I wanted to get a good poem out.
The second movement pulls out the thoughts I had weighing on my mind. These are the thoughts that only silence and thinking can bring forth. Poetry can be a therapy, can be a way of working through things, and it can also voice that which eats away at you so that you can move on from it. It is always best to air the thoughts you have because they can consume every ounce of energy you have without you realizing it. I did not like what I saw in my life, in society, in the world; and I wrote about it in this movement.
The third and final movement was the coming to terms with all the thoughts that applied to me, all the baggage and stones that weighed me down from my past. It was the airing of what I thought I had no control over, stuff I thought was not my fault and stuff that I thought would never be resolved. Poison is what it was, and I let it stay in my body for years at the point of writing this poem. The prayer mantra became a mantra of “The Night I” and I could not stop. Even today, speaking the words brings tears to my eyes. They are naked, honest, words.
The courage to speak what is on our minds is hard to come by. The courage to be honest about what is on our minds and why those things lurk there, that is a whole other level entirely. It is the difference ratio between the courage of a superhero and the average citizen. This is a poem that I look back on with pride, because it showed that I had courage to stand up to my past even if I was not ready to fully face it and make it history instead of burdens. Was there ever a moment in your life where you can say the same? Have you remained true to it?
I hear another poem is coming every Saturday!