this epic grief

this Epic Grief

September 13, 2009

Minutes tick.  Limbs twitch.  Covers are tangled & awry.  I think I am almost under, when I realize that I have been awake for hours.

It is too late.  Sleep eludes me.

In the darkness I lay back again.  And again.  And  again.

My mind full of  shadows; ripples of awareness & memory.  Weariness.  Need. Needing anything besides my irrational, wild, anxious thoughts. Have I always felt so lonely?  Have I always had this epic grief?

It seems as if I was born lonely, afraid, ashamed. distrusting.  My heart in pieces.   One of my strongest childhood memories.

But hold on.  Pain must have a beginning.

Was it there before I was?  There in the hearts of my mother and father?

Was it as real to them? The waking dream.  The dreamless sleep.  A quiet pulse, ever present.

Did they pass this madness on to me, through blood and tears of a generational grief?

I am sleepless and crazy with sadness that in times past I would have gladly drowned with alcohol, or any other intoxicant.

But dry, I am left with this epic grief.

Days and years. Years and days of working at sobriety.

Because dry, without the work, I am simply left amongst my dreams.

Left

with this epic grief.

Writing poetry helps me feel something to its extreme.  To go as far as the madness allows and still remain sane.  And then — somehow — come back to a place of semi-sanity.  It helps me to write.  And I hope that it helps someone else as well.  I think that is why I share though some would say “A cry for help.” Ha, ha.  That is so.