Ghosts of You

Stalking my dreams, again I find you there, my fighting to wake and escape from unwanted memories. Why don’t you grieve, hurt or suffer? Why must I lug your trunk of tricks and misery everywhere I go? I feel sick when I come across your photograph smiling and surrounded by good people who don’t know your dirty and deeper secrets. I wonder if you know your own plays, remember the truth of who you are. No one is guaranteed a good life and that alone makes me doubt often any holiness, or sacred recipes exist for us plain ole daily folk. We get sick, die too young or are burdened with poverty, mental illnesses and responsibilities. We don’t run. Step by step we inch toward death with unfulfilled wishes that seem frivolous and only for the one’s that break the rules, sprint from their trunk overflowing with the messes they create, leaving behind their trash for the good doer’s to deal with. In my dream I beg to anyone, an entity of love and life to bar you from my sleep. I know that your dreams are not full of the pain you left others with. You dream of walks along the water, delicious cuisine, fancy clothes and being adored. You do not dream of the children you abandoned or your family that is simple and have stopped wanting more. I will never be “paid back”, you will get the golden egg and my heart will still stray sometimes to unwanted thoughts of you. Tiny bits of pain slip into my illusions, completely disagreeing with my longing for peace each night. Dear Holier, hopefully stronger Spirits fill my night with those who love me and lock the trunk so not even a thief’s expertise can reveal more tonight. Dreams please be kind.

Easter Tremors; Tombs, Pain and Resurrection. Photo by Magnus Polla

And to the Earth we return. In fragments, imperfect beings who lived imperfect lives. All the efforts we bestowed upon the tangible, the acquired, are left to burn or salvage greedily or if lucky, sentimentally. Maybe we were loved and mattered. Maybe we watched safely from our hearths the unlucky fights of those who battled with disease, war, hunger; we watched those who didn’t dodge harm’s way because they were born into it. Did the image of Jesus jump out and lift them to the heavens just before the final breath, did they feel saved and hopeful in their death?

In my chronic pain I relive, resurrect, replay, re-die and retry every single moment to find meaning in this shattered shell of a body. Before my physical pain I struggled with emotional trauma and the realisation that I was factually facing what was a subconscious willingness to remain a victim of my traumas, that is, my sexual and physical abuse. I denied the abuse and bowed to it and ran away from myself, my memories until I flatlined. I, on this very Good Friday am proud to free myself from the shackles of my BaDDaD’s behaviours, the “Bible Belt” of submission invoked by my southern mother and the men who were to love me who used me. To the family that was to love me who judged me I will step back and have a look at what you give to me now from your heart. I am a beautiful, reborn and rare baby black lamb. I Invite you to sacrifice my old self with me; raise me up on the cross of your guilt, of your shame and let me lie under the stone, entombed, in waiting and let me rise again and far above your pettiness and lies. Tonight I am letting go of you.

Born to Fly

From birth we bloom into small pieces of our influencers; be they biological, guardians or our adoptive family, they mold us and reinforce our beliefs. They can be good or bad and some down right insane. Lm comes from a broken one, a narcissist, sociopath, alcoholic, fraud. At some point in time we have a chance to release ourselves from the bondage of all negativity, hurt and wrong, after wrong, after wrong. I am not responsible for my father’s failures, dishonesty and lack of stability within himself. He had chances to show by his actions that he did give a shit. To do better. To live on a good path. He couldn’t do it. It was not impossible; it was a lot of hard work and his blue eyed white freckled privledged ass got him in and out of places, spaces, around rules, regulations, and he was a damn good con artist. But hard work he was too good for. He portrayed himself as the educated, worldly, white collar type. All starched and pretty when he really was just like thousands and thousands of others who’ve hailed from the “projects” of larger USA cities. He was a product of the government’s way of helping out people, of all creeds, races and dreams to bunker down and guess what to do with the rest of their lives. He would escape because he could lie himself into a better world. I watch all these fraudulent Netflix true stories and keep expecting him to be found and investigated. How the hell has he gotten away with his ugliness? There are many black men and women who have struggled legitimately to rise above their strife. Not everyone is leaning on a junkyard dog selling smack to babies. I was lifted from this strange and perilous lifestyle by my mother. She worked her ass off and honestly fought to the top. My father screwed around with his polluted version of his reality for years, yet still believes he is better than the rest. His current wife, the enabler and also younger than me he has used and abused; let’s agree it is their story to tell. I can only say that if you have one door slightly opening for you to “UP Your Self “, broaden your life and be better than those who have wronged you go for it. Hanging back because it feels comfortable or an anihilation of your duty to family togetherness is what the weak choose. They don’t run when their own sibling bleeds. As the Black Sheep I, Lm, am free because the one who was to teach me right from wrong left me with a puzzle with lots of pieces missing. ROCK puts these pieces back together and intel comes in slowly but surely of more lies upon lies that bury BaDDaD’s front. Behind those cold blue eyes are mounds of unearthed relics. The feeling he continues to project upon new people in his life makes them feel like royalty. They don’t see the grinding of his teeth, the tensing of his jaw when he is deciding his next move. But Lm does. He is 79 years old and can’t bare to to reveal his reality within. If he did, he’d be alone. That won’t happen because one thing that this white, nice looking well dressed man has that women of any color, men who are not white and those who have based their lives on trust, faith, love, TRUTH and honor is he will succeed in keeping his lifestyle through selfishness and living on lies. He will survive because he is a master of his craft. He recreates his name and his madly perceived world repeatedly. Does he or any bad man ever truly pay? Is their any truth to karma, any paybacks or divine intervention? I don’t know anymore. I just know a bad thing when I see it coming because I learned what a bad thing was growing up and running far away from my trauma and triggers was all I knew, until ROCK pulled me to my feet. I still pray just in case there is a higher deity who will show me that my own suffering has not been in vain. ROCK wants BaDDaD to pay for his violations of the heart, the lies, the life he has led. Lm has no belief in retribution. Lm just wants to be heard because she is good. She was always good and yet has days in which her mental anguish is so forceful she must go back down the stairwell and wait for some light again.

ROCK

The stone is silent, not mute. It was buried deep within my being, awaiting it’s truth to be heard and seen. I am ROCK solid. The one some cast away at sea or try to hide. I carry Truth. Truth that is gritty makes some turn away. Are you strong enough to stay?