I listen for you.
But I am no good at hearing.
For you, my God speak quietly; a whisper.
Hints of your love
blow in the grasses,
the bird’s song,
the wind wafting in the trees,
in children’s laughter.
I listen for you.
Help me to hear.
Category: Poems {Going Quietly Sane}
{A Cautionary Tale of Sobriety}
When I first began this blog in 2008, it was (in many ways) a place to process my alcoholism and recent sobriety. I felt very alone and thought, why the hell not? One of the first things I wrote was a poem (of sorts) titled It’s Lonely Here on The Wagon.
That poem chronicled the lonely place of being an alcoholic and a Christian who had lost her faith.
At that time, I knew that I had to stop hanging out with my “drinking friends” and even had one tell me she couldn’t help me with my sobriety. She had enough problems of her own.
I know she didn’t mean to reject me, but that’s what it felt like.
And I began to tell myself that my friends with whom I had sat around late at night smoking and laughing with, drinking to a buzz, then way past a buzz, didn’t like me anymore and that I was unlikable. I told myself that the only reason they hung out with me was because I’d drink with them. I convinced myself that they didn’t like me, sober Melody. To be quite honest I don’t even have answers to speculation like that, but I know this.
In the light of day I was a manipulative bitch sometimes. I was petty. I could be petulant. I constantly needed affirmation that they liked me. I even did things to prove to them that I was “cool.” If it sounds like the emotional needs of a high school aged kid, it’s because that is what it was.
I was emotionally stunted and didn’t know how to be a good friend. In fact, sometimes I don’t think I really know how to be one now. Perhaps I’m a little better at boundaries.
I tell myself that I’ve come a long way from those days of drunken insecurity, but something hit me just this week.
I pretty much live my life expecting pain.
I expect rejection and so I keep people at arm’s length. I assume others won’t like me and so I stay aloof thus proving I’m unlikeable. I assume that I am uninteresting, so I don’t engage in conversation. I believe that I’m incapable of deep intimacy and so I stay standoffish, even remote. This is what I do. Now that I see it, perhaps I can begin to change. Why assume people are going to hurt you by rejecting you?
Today I have to go to a school picnic and see a few of those same friends that I pulled away from four years ago. My head and heart are telling me that they rejected me, but I know it isn’t true. I’m feeling afraid. Later I have to go to a graduation and see more of those old friends. I’m sick to my stomach, afraid. My shyness, aloofness, insecurities are flaring and for just a moment I think that it would be easier if I could just have a drink.
Yes, four years in July I’ve been sober and those thoughts return just like that. Even though I know it’s a lie, the weight of social, emotional, and historic pressures are great.
I won’t drink. But I want to and that is a cautionary tale for me.
MELODY
This is a part of a series titled: A Different Kind of Real, where I just write what’s on my heart without a lot of self editing or worrying about what you’ll think.
Some of the things I have written about my alcoholism:
I am not Ashamed
The Slow Crawl Of Healing
What Can I Say About Two Years of Sobriety?
Choose Joy
For Everything There is A Season.
Eulogy to Life.
Letting Go. Thoughts on Being An Alcoholic
ReThink Everything
My First AA Meeting
My Crooked Heart
It’s Lonely Here on the Wagon
The Place of Nowhere
A New Way to be Human
Eulogy to Life
Winter Comes
Splintered Truth
This Epic Grief
No Dignity
I Need a Filling
Addict
Step On A Crack {A poem about Living}
She drank coffee
at 4:29 in the afternoon but knew it won’t do the job on a soul that’s stopped dead.
And no amount of caffeine
is going to wake it.
It happened a long time ago, so far back in time
she can’t see
it, certainly can’t remember when a little girl of puddles and jumping, cartwheels
and skinned knees stopped dreaming. Mistrust
became more real to her than hope. Forever
uncertain, she lost
Wonder.
Step on a crack, break your Mamma’s back. Did she do that?
When mamma’s don’t dream children are left
to the Monsters — imagined enemies
everywhere. This little girl got scared, petrified and turned to
Stone, too afraid to live. Now she’s the Mamma she’s got to get up,
Dance in the rain, again! See
this is real, the bad dreams are gone.
Find courage.
Live.
Only [and Every Day] Empty
Only
[and every day]
empty.
I wake starved for more of you. Then
the day prevails, trouble
gathers about my feet, pulls on my leg, swirling
fury.
Life is loud and you God
are a quiet wind, but a whisper. I must earnestly and expectantly listen,
for you.
If only I would.
Start again.
Only and every
day
empty, keening for you.
{A Good Mother}
What does it mean
to be a good mother?
Limits, but it’s also that tender balance of sweet
unconditional grace,
even total acceptance and then, the hard core follow through
that is so tough for me to do.
Rules, limits, follow through. You can’t let them
totally fail,
but falling down every once in a while, just a little
is a part of life. Skinned knees
no matter how much it hurts to watch must be okay, even good.
You will wipe the blood dripping, clean the gravel from their wounds,
place a band aid on their broken heart. Consequences are important.
But how to offer, even allow that
and also confirm, that no matter what
you are holding a safety net.
You want your kids to jump high, even fly
but then there’s the risk. They may fall, or even fail
or they may fly away.
That’s what it means
to be a good mother – to know the end of the story
is written before you
began with that first suck of life’s breast milk you offered, tender and sweet.
That one day they will go and that’s the aim you always knew,
to set them free.
My Grown Up Days
The jubilee that I thought this life would be,
is more often drudgery, a never-ending ache, stinging salty tears,
an albatross, when I had imagined my grown up days to be a dance.
Clinging to the Cross, I trace its rough textures, acutely
knowing what is there.
For I know my own failings to my core,
my dim
faith, my inner weaknesses, flaws and faults,
dearth
of wisdom, a crooked unforgiving heart, my lack
of love more frequent than not.
This life is bittersweet.
This infinitely
fearful heart is not sensing
glory
and I ask, when does the splendor begin?
And then I hear the Holy One’s whisper:
I AM the Peace you seek.
Keep clinging.
MOTHER [a poem about a parent aging]
Something shifted in the cosmos today as I became a giver, her One.
The one who thinks like a pastor, fondly listening inside to her heart which is lonely.
The one who touches like a nurse, open to the clues, simple hints about pain.
The one who creates food to share, serving the body and soul.
Daughter became caregiver to Mother.
And altered who I am.
Only, she isn’t frail, broken down or helpless — not just yet but it’s coming. Even so she asks and I answer, and I tag along. In case something is missed, she says.
Even so she still bails me out and listens as my heart bursts open, pooling over the edges of my day. The “middle school” years, I am tender, raw with anguish.
Oh yes, she is still Mother, but today something in the cosmos shifted, and I became a Giver.
I became her One.
MHH
Other Poems.
- In the Space of Days I Grew Up
- What Kind of a Mother Is She?
- Going Quietly Sane (A Collection of my poetry, more than 100+)
A Good Day Is (a poem)
A good day is
one where I don’t remember
[dad yelling]
and everything I never finished
just
to make
him mad.
A good day is
one where I don’t remember
everything that I
lost,
gave up,
was too afraid to try.
or simply
fell
down
doing.
A good day is
accepting Plan B is the plan.
Forgetting the things that need forgetting.
Remembering too.
A good day is.
——————————————————————
Thanks for a great week ya’ll. I’m trying something new, no technology on the weekend. (We’ll see how I do.)
Peace,
Melody
Stopping Time (a poem about friendship)
With some friends,
you take down the words, moments
are scribbled onto your heart.
For their life
is a book of wisdom.
Leaning
forward, keening
for a moment of clarity
and goodness, even
as if you are sitting together in a holy place.
Sacred space
is created
in the meeting of spirits, souls
mystically blended,
time stops
with some friends.
My Duct Taped Heart (a poem)
I’m awake early, even before my alarm.
Lieing in bed listening
to the rolling thunder, wondering to myself.
I know a rain spout is loose,
it was duck taped on.
It worked for a season but even that
finally came loose and free.
I don’t know how to fix things.
I wonder about my father and why he never taught me
how? Now he’s gone.
I can’t ask him that and many other questions.
So I wonder,
Lieing in bed
listening to the thunder and knowing the rain pours down.
There are so many things I want to fix.
I was raised to think I can’t.
For now, I will lie here
and wonder.
What’s changing, so that I can be writing!
This is such a busy time for folks with kids. We are living the last month or so of school and for whatever reason my kids seem to teeter on the brink of things this year academically, spiritually, emotionally — this has been a challenging and demanding year. With summer looming, there will be any opportunities to stick our feet in the river and less time to write.
I am thinking about that tension.
I’m starting to work more seriously on writing projects. As I listened hard at the Festival of Faith & Writing and looked at my writing life and habits, I realize that I need to cut back on some things before I can ever dream of space to write every day. (I know I have a lot to tell you about that experience, the festival. We’ve been back a week and there’s been no time!)
Projects that I’m working on:
I am working on a book review of the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer for The Englewood Review of Books and hope to do more of those, both for Englewood and other publications.
I continue to write for Provoketive magazine: This included a review of the book Resignation of Eve by Jim Henderson, a piece titled The Accidental Stay-At-Home Mom and others, but by far the most popular essay was The Voice of the Feminine. That content is not repeated here on my blog so you will have to pop over to there to read it. I hope you will.
I am working on a short series of articles on “The F word and the Church.” (Yeah, that F word: feminist.)
I am really excited to hear that I will have some poem in a book about fear titled Not Afraid to be published around August, 2012 by Civitas Press. (This is the same press that published my essay on Depression in their book Not Alone which is available now. If you know someone who suffers from depression this book may help. I have been told by many people that it has been a good, honest resource. I also have many pieces on my blog about my personal trials with the black dog of depression. They are collected here. )
What I want to change:
One thing that I find to be soul crushing and destructive for me is Facebook. Being at-home with such great flexibility to my schedule I see that I allow many things to interfere with the “work” of writing and with spiritual growth. Facebook is such a time waster for me. I’m inherently curious, nosy kind of person and the fact that I can vicariously follow along other’s lives is bad for me. That’s where the soul crushing part comes in. It’s like high school insecurity all over again. So I’ve been tempted to quit completely.
But at the Festival of Faith & Writing I heard over and over that writers must have online presence and following. We have to nurture that and be able to “prove” our popularity to a publisher. But the flip side of that is that it is just not good for me!
If I don’t have time
to think,
to be,
to write and
to allow the Holy One to mold and move me (not really in that order.)
So I’m backing off of social media for a season — except here. I’m really going to try to do this moderately. When I got hooked on Farmville (of all things — proves I can get addicted to anything!) I had to quit cold turkey and I did. I don’t want to do that with Facebook because I don’t like being an all or nothing person. But I’m going to try to limit my time there. And set some writing goals for the next few months. I look forward to sharing those with you.
Another thing that I learned at the festival was that I need to hone the purpose of my blog. Mine has multiple messages and intents. I have been known to write about:
- family (dysfunctional and otherwise.)
- God and devotion, faith and (dis)belief
- women in the church, feminism as a Christian’s option
- various justice issues
- my alcoholism and addictions
- my church – Blackhawk Evangelical Church
- poetry on all these topics
- prose on all these topics
Is there anything in particular that you come here to read? Where do you see my passions and strengths converging in helpful ways? Would you add more of anything?
Grace & Peace. Melody
Resentments (a poem)
Sitting. Fingers frozen, tapping on my laptop with
birds really chirping!
A cacophony of praise to the Holy One.
The wonder of it.
Sun shining. Blessed,
I am conscious of my dirty heart. So often
resentful, feeling left out or uninvited
to the party.
(I’m starting to think Facebook isn’t good for my soul) and
He says to me:
Enough.
I want to be enough.
I Am.
Logic & Imagination 