Poet Tree

My writing group wanted to dedicate one of our sessions to writing a poem. I have grown to love poetry, but I resist writing it. Reading lyrical words that help me feel is a magic I am not comfortable attempting. I worry that it will be a window through which others might see the silly knick-knacks or darker stuff that exists in me.

The exercise is tempting, though. I do love to mix up words and put them in unusual places. But more as an inventor than an artist, a welder, not a painter. But maybe THE biggest reason to try writing a poem “write” now is because I could tell myself the secrets I don’t want to hear.

The group’s request also got me thinking about a poem I once heard. I was in my late thirties, about the time my affection for poems was ratcheting up. I was starting to reach that spot where intuition, feeling, and mystery were meshing. Like when you are a teenager and the music wasn’t just heard but flowed through you, added pieces to you, changed you.

When you read the poem below, you can imagine yourself anywhere, from a large academic hall to an intimate poetry slam den.

Hello, Hello, signifies a circle, a kind, a way of according

The way of the bump.

Do you use them all the time? Then you would know when one gets old.

I’m not trying to be the one. The source of the power, just as good as

my leg and I could let him stay there.

It would be good for him and her

And all that lives.

Now imagine this poem was spoken by my patient Poet, during a treatment team meeting. Something about his face and language made me write the words down.

Hello (Poet sits on a chair in front of his treatment team.)

Hello signifies a circle (he traces the rectangular table in front of him with his right pointer finger. Some of us have scooted our chairs away from the table and thus formed a circle of sorts.)

a kind, a way of according (he bends over and fingers his knee and kneecap, rubbing out an unseen pain)

The way of the bump. (He lifts his hand to his thigh and kneads a spot there.)

Do you use them all the time? (He asks us, and we assume he is referring to his knees.)

Then you would know when one gets old. (He tries to stand but wobbles and sits back down.)

I’m not trying to be the one. The source of the power, just as good as (he puts his hand on his thigh)

my leg and I (He tries to stand again but can only lift his bottom six inches off the seat. A staff member tries to help him, until he changes his mind about getting up and sits back down.)

could let him stay there. (She helps him safely land back in his chair.)

It would be good for him and her (smiles at the staff member)

And all that lives.

Poet was sharing the mysteries of mental illness and the challenges of aging in a manner that only he could. What I heard, with my third ear, was an acceptance of the harshness of life and a forgiveness of it as well. With his lyrical heart, he rhymed his daily narrative, and he did it without chicanery. I suspect that his brain, assaulted and fertilized by his peculiar life, kept choosing this path as a solution, a way through the labyrinth of joy and junk. I speak in English, and he spoke in lived metaphor.

I believe his monologue was a poem, even though he might not have meant it as such. A pensive Michelangelo tracing in the sand might not have been trying to make art, but it would still be art.

Of late, I have been so nauseated and worried by ‘things’ that I have lost the urge to write. But because of my writing group’s request and through revisiting Poet, it has inspired me to at least try to write a poem.

Guillotines float between my cells

and between our bodies.

An impending doom that did, that might, and that will not happen,

is perhaps the most miserable part.

Life is a piece of paper filled with rules written by someone else

with our blood.

Is there something of love (that indefinable thing we all recognize but don’t know)

that can help transform, Me? Can it carry me faster than the speed of light, faster than the speed of hate?

I want to stick a straw into the misery and suck the ocean dry. But won’t we still have need for more

Room?

All I have left are my shadows. But even they are too winded to dance at night,

on my wall. But I tend to them, cause when they are gone, will that be the end of it.

Or maybe there is still time for flesh, time to find a magnetic scalpel that can cut into us and pull out the bullet that causes the bleeding others use to write upside-down rules.

But even then, without willing hands, the suture lies untied. I don’t know

what

to say or to whom. It is too much

at once. It is not enough. There is no surrogate here. Father denial doesn’t work.

If you think this is a bit macabre and forced, I am with you on that. But it is better than the one I was going to write. “Have you heard of Glow Ball War, Ming?” Anyhow, me being me, I want to tell you the story behind the story, or in this case, the tale of the tail. I desperately want to give you a peek at the soil the words grew from. But I won’t. I shouldn’t. That isn’t what a poet does.

Well, maybe I can say a tiny bit, one terrible truth. A human’s instinctual need to be connected and interdependent cannot be unplugged, mutilated, or denied. Even trying to burn it away won’t work. A body with a heart that pretends to need no one will have terrible growing pains in its bones.

But I digress. Here is the point that Poet knew all along: there is no way to fail at poetry. That is kind of amazing. Also, a poem can actually help unstick the impossible. And that is even more amazing. As a physician, I can safely recommend joining the Poet tree.