Posted on by Glenn Mower

An ode to sleeplessness and pain.

Your

suicide
dial
reports
soars
digging deep
into
petal sharp
flex
of
inverted
pride.
scoring
soft
flesh
you say
drains
thought
poppies thought
too
sickly weak
to
salve
numb
fumbling
regrets
of
past
pressed
days.

still.

fidgetting
with courage
you
continue
to name
marauding
nights
touched
distantly
in said
blood clots.
you
scratch
to grip
to
gulp too

tap
tap
tap.

fingering
your sayings
tap, tap
moves we
to call and response
Water
Sister?
No, not that
and pushing
down
preciously
down upon
your plastic teat

you

trickle
sweet saltings of sweat you
imbibe wounds until
they hatch
in overwhelming
whelps of weep-ful-ness
while
in otherness
aches and strains
invite us both
to once again
card-board chew through
battle fallow fields
to warp the walk
from
ego stress.

till
till
tilling
un-
countable
fillings of
past soiled
future
sores
intimate
groans
and
sleepless ness
distanced
becomings
re-erect themselves
in this now
upon
hoarding pillars both
bile and blue
spent and
deformed
with these new
warming
spirits despaired
and passed
between us
in momentary
fragmented
truth

rest awhile

my broken flower

yes

you

my fullness of
stiff regret
breathe and stretch and
profess
movements to soften
further
varicose spills of
forty per-cent
night-time
armistice

you of this
new hope-ful-ness
wishing to
ward off
immersed
confusions of chemical lash
burning yearnings that
crisp the crust, that
deadens dawning grief
in low familiar
yawning dusk
flow slow from
those darkening swills
that translucent soak
so melting here the
salted cubes this
fleshed disbelief
may dis-

appearing again ‘for Christ’s sake,’ you say

‘surely,’

you pause to re-orientate to re-find your currently wearing face within this worn out journal stock:

‘surely, this time, I’ll re-find relief and solid ground within this rolling reef, this ice bound rock.’

and

watching
as you regather
as your precious life
leaves in my lap such

absurdly poetic

stuttering words

of

thanks

I wonder at your strength

I ponder over your wisdom-filled beauty 

Shall we see
shall share again these un-
speakable, most legible most
tenderful privileges of groundings
grown deep within
these suffering joys, these
witnessings of transforming pain.

‘Whoever is willing to serenely bear the trial of being displeasing to herself, that person is a pleasant shelter…It is enough to recognise one’s nothingness and to abandon oneself, like a child…‘

St. Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897), aka: ‘The Little Flower.’

(Quoted from Richard Rohr: Eager to Love p.111 & 114).

 

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Emerging within this new day

And so, a different approach to curating this moment by moment life. I write in a soft blur that comes while emerging from an ear ringing, heart pumping early morning meditation.

I have been staying at my parents rented flat over the past weekend. This is a pause before the 200 mile journey back to my own home town, a time to spend reflecting on the experience of writing this blog over the past few months. A time to digest the emotional impact if these past three days.

I would love to taste, to express a more inclusive spontaneous and free-flowing life. Something somehow, more precious, right now.

Maybe this blog can help with my aim of opening my heart to whatever  flowers and withers within my vista.

November and December saw me meet an exhaustion of body spirit and mind that  although well masked, drove grey tiredness into the very centre of my bones. I have not written here during this time.

Sitting here on this first day of 2018, with the starlings and woodpigeon calling from the exposed rafters in  the adjacent, half finished buildings, with my parents asleep and relaxed in their bedroom, with the boats rocking gently in the grey-green marina directly outside this second floor flat window, I can sense a peacefulness tinged with the fizz of apprehension and the unknown.

Will they be able to stay here? Will they be separated by dint of ill health and old age creeping upon them at different rates? Will I be able to live up to my mums expectation of being able to sort out the social work assessment and  unravel the financial implications of increasing care needs?

It seems that my dear step dad will, probably, need residential or nursing care quite soon. Yesterday he could walk and hold a knife and fork and was content to spend hours   sleeping lopsidedly in his old leather chair. The day before he was fighting the wonderful, humble and gentle carer as she tried to wash him and change his pad, he was unable to work out how to unlock his knee joints to sit down and had developed a yellowish-blue tinge that seem ominously, unspokenly sad.

And now, with the scorched grass on the distant mud flats beginning to recover from last nights wind driven bonfire, with the plastic corks and purple glitter, with the party hats and burnt out firework casings absorbing the damp still pavements and walkways, I gaze out beyond these floor-to-ceiling triple glazed upvc windows and wonder what this year has in store.

 

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Daily Ablutions

 

Reading Shuntaro and Dickinson

says to me its time to go

put down the scrawling pen

and see the sun and daisies breathe

in Freedom’s oxygen.

 

Brimful water steams

my lowering smiling self

displacing bodies to my breath

in throat and heart and  warming chest

to rest such mistiness

in rhythms from above.

 

 

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Meeting my un-metered form

 

 

Mists hide your contours within my tired mind.

Big fists smoothed into soft crossed painter’s palms,  tenderised by formaldehyde and time long gone from indistinctly grey days of soul stoop carcassing, plumbing fingers in the frozenness of Barrett Homes, to solder on with septic chores for family woe that ripped your flesh down to the bone.

Pathetically, I edge away from the now and from late of you.

From the laying still, still laying there, a body sunk within the folds of your first and last light grey suit, avoiding the strangest taste and semblance upon half remembrance of lips too prominent and skin too old to.

Diagonally, upon one knee I squint upon the maleness of my ancestry.

On crow’s feet and disbelief I try to catch a breath, to reach beyond this, dis-ease-full-ness, to casket grip my way towards something even, as yet, cannot and will not be connected even unevenly to heaps of bones and sombre slips of workmanship within this cold un-metered room.

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Loss

Loss

 

and when it comes

we are alone

plunged

together in a tight squeeze

of the heavy heart

and with eyes like

saucers

I watch rain drops

fill and spill

a little a lot

and often

reddening the damp of our cotton soft skin

while witnessing

the rebuild

of partial worlds

on the unknown plains

of my family

familiar.