Happy New Year

I wish everyone a happy, healthy, prosperous new year. 2015. How'd that happen? 2014 was a wildly busy year with both blessings and more unfortunate goings on but, looking back, I will remember the beautiful wedding of my niece and her husband, Michelle and Michael and the birth of my great-great-nephew, Greyson, my nephew's oldest daughter's baby! I also moved to my lovely little bungalow last June. 2015 promises help for my health and and loads and loads of forward moving events for the family. I hope, with improved health, to get back to writing and painting. I'm loving the little drawings I've been doing but I do miss painting... and I have a commission waiting to be done (I promise to get to it, Susan B!). I also hope to get more into depth on the subject of chronic pain and how to deal with it, well, my experiences of dealing with it. It's been a long -- 41 years -- road so I think I have a few stories to tell.

But for now, back to the falling poem, there are, after all, 22 parts; if I don't continue I'll never reach the end. So, here we are, half-way through "The Fall":

EIGHT: The Second Step of Pain

Like an evil double
pain astounds me,
surrounds and engulfs me
and casts me toward stone.
I am granite and lava;
at once cold and aflame,
my core boils with ice.
Blue is the skin at my shoulder,
blue are my lips...
hewn from lapis,
my heart struggles to beat.
Opal are my eyes,
Mother,
changing, unreadable;
in water I separate into
triplets --
a double to double
my pain.
Above me, the keystone,
the burden of proof;
beside me rest rubies
and diamonds,
emeralds to replace
my disillusioned eyes.

NINE: The Battle Begins

From the high ground
cannons sound,
fro the valley
the clash of steel;
battles lost on the
killing ground of
these antiseptic corridors.
The scent of iodine
and paper gowns
rattles the pale green walls;
chrome-wheeled tables
glint florescently,
blinding me as I wait.
From the high ground
a stalemate:
no prisoners, no surrender.
In the valley,
one refugee lies
defeated at the foot of this
institutionalized mountain.

TEN: Another rejection

Time holds its breath
while the dumb rumbles
our anticipation:
how many songs have
repeated this worn theme?
Music jolts my too-still
limbs as I limp from
mirror to mirror,
finding only my
twisted twin staring back
in horror;
stone is encroaching --
I am half-gone gray.

ELEVEN: Fighting Back

Do you think me demented --
some warped child of an
isolated mind trapped
within a net of my own design?
Truly --
do you find me shaken,
twisted from my frame by
mere desire for your doting?
Better I should find my name
but dust,
blown to some lost corner
of your Hell;
better I should remain frozen in
silent fury.
Your faulty judgements
land poison on my tongue,
lay my mind exposed
to parch in the sun
Your folly is my pain,
your error, my death.