Night Call

I want to show you where it’s dark, but have no fear

The silence you gift me with after what I’ve engaged in for you speaks volumes. You can advance with your quaint memories, yet not remain agog at what those things truly mean.
The situations you had us in, dark and rampant with suffering.

It’s as though I’m having a conversation with God. Only He knows all of this, and cannot give me the answers I want.

To just accept what is wrong, and know that in the end it will be better than what we had, if only if only if only.

Don’t come to me with your mute ignorance, denial and lack of appreciation for what you were a part of. You had a role to play, and there are things we will all be accountable for.

I am grateful I am grateful I am grateful. Yes I am. Somehow I’ll accept this.

“The things I’d have to invest beyond what I already have to protect myself from your bullshit is more than I can bear.” She thought.
“You haven’t cost me enough as it is, no, I’ll have to continue being cost emotion, time and money.”
Each word banging against her grimly set lips and mind and heart.
It’s as though the only way to survive is to let you linger exactly where you are, and do nothing.

I cannot stand how you still control us.

You pride yourself as some sort of hero and gentleman, the only gentlemanly thing you could do now is to take a walk into the forest and never return.

I want to say that if you don’t set us free, I will lose my mind and I will ignite in rage and sear my way to you in a pulse of action, and then you will be silent, and still. And things will burn and crumble, but at least, this will be over.

If this is what they meant by Ragnarokr, then let it come, and fall around us like embering ash.

This process

So arduous and healing leaves vicious scars.

I thought I’d forgiven you, and yet as days pass and I feel you haven’t given what you owe, I feel things like dislike, and disgust, and even hate blossom.
As I come to accept who you actually truly are, and can calculate what you’ve cost us, while your life, whatever there is of it, with your offender status seems to be so much nicer than I feel you should have.

And I am responsible for your freedom. And your complete lack of gratitude with respect to the love I had for you is what fuels me.

I don’t wish harm on people, I know better than that, but the way that I feel about you, somedays I’d rather you were in some other place where you could not lie to people. If you can’t tell the truth, and own what you did, then you shouldn’t be allowed to lie and pretend that what you did didn’t happen.

And I realize how wrong that is. That I shouldn’t feel this way at all. I should simply be greatful for the struggles you gave me, and that I have my freedom. It’s been so long and I’ve wasted so much time lamenting what you did and the loss and cost, instead of being able to breathe all this oxygen and love and light.

Bickled Peets

I think I’m doing what I want, without even realizing it. There’s undoubtedly been a fluctuation of hesitation as I’ve progressed, but as I fear and worry less, I find I can look back with less avoidance, and more acknowledgement. Something happened, it was, it was most likely necessary to move to the next square on the board and one day I’ll be able to confidently drop “most likely” from my vocabulary and admit wholly that it was indeed.

A dog I’ve had since the late 90s, through my entire military career and then some, had cancer. I’d had to leave her with the man largely responsible for some of my shittier, more self absorbed material, because she was too big to comfortably fit in my vehicle as I fled all of that sadness, and darkness, and destruction. I had no good place to keep her, and believed that leaving her in his care gave him one good thing to try to do right. And he did, as best he could.

But when there are biological things going wrong inside of you, it’s never a sure thing that your best will end in smiles and stars. It is enough to wonder that she lived as long as she did.

They took her in for surgery to remove a growth that she’d had, that ruptured. They took her out, a cancer free spirit/energy source to return to the foundations from which she came. She did not survive. Her journey up; ticket punched.

What made me most unhappy and bitter was not that she was gone, nor even that she was so out of my reach, with no reasonable way to return to her to say goodbye. It was that last summer I had gone back for other reasons, but one of which was to have a satisfactory visit with her, knowing her time was limited by the poison inside her anyway and it resulted in an incredibly short, stressful, visit due to unnecessary drama and posturing.

Yet one more thing I’ll struggle to forgive that woman for.

everyday is like sunday

lines drawn shots fired
who made you the hitman hired
years pass by how can i miss
the things with the most poisonous kiss
i knew it then i know it now
i don’t need you need me somehow

 

Been running repeatedly into a wall of disfunction. It’s simple data not where it needs to be giving the appropriate commands, but because there are some that do not do not do not understand this even a smidge, we receive a fuckjoke of a workload from returned equipment because they don’t get that if it’s not part of a simple double check on their part, it’s bigger than a bad box.

I don’t know if I should be afraid or laugh my ass off. Please tell me that I haven’t found a plane of intelligence so up that I am uncomfortable now. If I am getting it right, then something definitely has to be wrong somewhere, because I’m not a genius. I’m no special sauce. I do what I do and if I happen to get things right sometimes, that’s great for me, I’ve escaped the flame of adjudication another day.

There is so much talent out there that dwarfs me, I love to read about it and learn. 

I love to read about it and learn.

Learn learn learn. It’s just so unfortunate that the time to learn will end before I’ve explored all parameters. And others before me I know died craving more learning.

I’m grateful for this time here, I look forward to more later. 

Pulling your disguise up

Nobody knows it but me when I slip

Don’t come to my door without invitation. I hate when you do that. If I am emotionally/mentally or physically unprepared, I don’t want the opportunity to feel guilty about it because you were inconsiderate. I realize you have obligations, but I have them too and for you to not take them into account sours me.

The weather is begging to be tumultuous and because of the dreams I’ve had since I was young, it terrifies me. Especially that where I am at now mirrors the images in my dreams. The mountains snare the speed of wind and rain and we are in an unusually protected location, but it can still flood without remorse and bring trees and parts of houses down in a destructive little tantrum.

More awaits me. 

Please return safe.

Immutable

These extremities of emotion are what will be the death of me. I am most likely to self destruct in a random flare out than a long and deliberate effort to transmute energy to static.

Feeling like I can be ok on my own and tasting the lie amidst the foliage, from beach to a stark snow.

Something displeases me and I want to sever it from myself, to punish my own skin and soul. 

What is this reckless heartache and why does it rear its head when things are exactly as they should be. 

This isn’t the concern of things dissolving into madness and misery again, or if it is, it is so powerful and dreadful I am the reflection of all joy stumbling into emptiness.

Pleading for otherness is shameful and futile. Why can this happen? Behind my silent mouth is the outrage bewildered at the injury.

Muo Yad?

Things rapidly exhale and the sunrise will with it bring a ripple of firey cleansing and shattery roar.
The earth will literally melt away beneath us.
The word hastening keeps being used as if to ward us, but they don’t realize it is too late for anyone else to catch a ride on the bus out.

Trajectories fly overhead, piercing sleep and breath and we scatter as if there were a hole deep enough to protect us from what comes. What happens, what’s happened all along, is what is unfolding well beyond our reach.

Any of our healthier hopes and efforts are just dainty lies, waiting to be blown apart like flaming leaves.

It’s coming to me, as I’ve seen before. An awful storm, and the centrifuge is the key. The question and answer. It’s a circle. Everything is and always was. All of these things have happened before, and what I don’t know is if it will or won’t happen again.

IF eventually there was going to be a time when he stopped spinning the top, and moved on to another game.

Did we get it right this time? Did I remember enough in time? We’ll see, because like the Gunslinger finding his way to the tower only to be sucked through again and start over, memory wiped, but this time with the horn of Eld, as he should have had the first fucking thousand times before, I don’t know if I’ve remembered the horn, and can progress.

Even if not, it’s been an amazing journey.

WIth no disrespect intended, I hope that someone takes her place

I grieve quietly the passing of Maya Angelou. A poet who has known some of the same suffering I’ve known, and many that I haven’t and will never know, because I had the luxury of being born white.
I’ve thought myself a tolerant and forgiving person, but my experiences with these words pale compared to what she has done in her lifetime.

I’ve been afraid to read some of her text because I know where the words stem from. She corrals the ugliness and turns it into something far more beautiful than I’ve managed. Especially now, when years after my experiences I still have these ugly hateful outbursts and loathing for the persons responsible. I long to not wish them harm, and most of the time I don’t, but then sometimes it’s as though I’ve gone on an untraceable vacation and am nowhere to be found while the skittering shadow left in charge of my space takes its toll and spews vile things.

Wishing harm on some stupid mute girl who’s no less a victim than I, but I am frustrated by her pride and unwillingness to see the value in my words. The truth in them. 

How much could I have learned, had I listened to the voice that spoke to me before mine…Somehow I knew then that you were speaking the truth but I thought myself above that. Protected. I thought myself better than those before me because somehow I’d achieved something they hadn’t managed.

And for awhile we lied like that. We passed as a much improved series of events to those before. I was so happy and proud.

But then to realize the ugly truth that I was no different, I just managed to be more tolerant. More time passed, and he was given more privilege than anyone else could have given. For someone in his position, who indeed would be willing to give that up and be noble, except for noble men. And he wasn’t. He’s done and continues to do noble things. But noble men don’t rape their wives, and insist that such a thing isn’t possible. Noble men don’t hound their wives into the things that they want, and then turn their interest on their daughters, and then in the same night back to their wives.

Noble men can own up to their mistakes. And I long imagined you one of these, even without your actions, because the times you did things right had to be worth that. It had to speak of your ability to do valiant and noble things, right?

But in this time I’ve lamented your absence. Of missing how it felt to sleep next to you at night. Of wishing for that same sense of dishonest safety you’ve long provided. In this time I’ve come to learn this hard hard lesson you left me.

None of this made sense. How could I be so capable of sacrifice, and yet succumb to your poison? How could i endure harrassment and abuse from brothers and sisters in uniform and return home to let you continue doing the same and worse? 

How could I feel so righteously forgiving and yet spiral down into a fountain of hate and shame and vitriol against you, your mother, and your new victim? You and your mother, role players in our destruction, in the betrayal of me and your daughter. Her constant overt affection to our son, insisting it wasn’t favoritism when it so clearly was. Her refusal to honestly apologize to our daughter, forget me. She was definitely owed an apology and explanation for your mother’s willingness to choose you over her. Your victim, some idiot girl who didn’t know better, but had been seduced by your charisma just as I had been. Taking from me my place, my things, my dog. And though I expressed kindness, empathy and trust to her in the beginning, she soured it completely with her ignorance and willingness to bathe in your lies over any possible truth any other could offer.

Your abuse is magic. Lasting.

And here is this person who has experienced sour things, and yet spouts beautiful poetry, and hope, and understanding.

Someone I admire. And I will never meet her in this life. I will never hear her tell me the things I should hear. I hope that I can find her in the next life and thank her, for the ways that she inadvertently helped me stay alive.

I hope that there are thousands more of our daughters and sons who can express the things she expressed in their talented and creative ways so we choose to live even when it hurts. To help us believe in the light even when it feels so dark.

HR 8938 Cephei

While en route I saw brothers in thread corralling into a hotel I’m familiar with. I wanted to ask them what they were doing, because I am hungry to welcome home those who hated wandering and cursing the desert like I did, while our families were thousands of miles of sea and land apart.

I can’t tell you how much I enjoy my job, because it feels sacred. If you have work don’t talk about it, because all the things they instigate on the news lead me to believe that I am so incredibly fortunate to have this job. I am, but I wonder how many of my feelings in the situation are legit and how many are superficial because of the things I’ve heard or smelled or wondered.

It is sacred, because family is involved, and because I am involved. I can’t and shouldn’t talk about these things, like I never should have.  I earn what I need to, to survive, and this is what is important. To have the things I need, plus a small buffer to provide things that I would not otherwise be able to provide, even a buffer for pleasantries. It is sacred because the people in power seem to know exactly who to drill into, when, and how deep.

Rob me of this love

Raise your weapon, raise your weapon

A nephew of some family has passed, and it has resulted in some heavy grief because I knew him when he was a tan faced youth probably near a critical age of my son….knowing someone I knew when they were a child has gone hurts. Then it puts my my own into a perilous perspective. I know his father is hurting and his family that spent so much time with him is as well. How am I so fortunate to have the time I do? Why do I still have some of the things I do, despite a decided lack of appreciation and awareness of/for them?

I never wanted to be some of the things I’ve known. And I certainly don’t want to be the parent on the receiving end of a door knock or phone call that adjusts my perspective forever. I’ve known enough of the people who’s parents were. SPC W, I’d only joked with him the weekend before, and then he was gone. Forever wiped from our accountability roster. SPC S, whom I owe three dollars to. SGT M, who inprocessed me to the CSH. SPC O who I’d interacted with during their exeval.

If I could save everyone that haunts me good or bad, I would give up whatever treasure might be promised me to do so.