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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 9 of 9. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by malthus on August 29, 2004, at 0:14:25
At night when you are wrapped up
in gauzy wings of sleep
and your rows of eyelashes
resemble ebony arcs,
through listening to the beats
of your restless heart
and reclining your sleepy
head on my breast,
could you give, my love,
as much as I possess
light, air
and thought!When your eyes nail themselves
to an invisible object
and your lips are lit
from the reflection of a smile,
through reading on your forehead
a quiet thought
that passes like a cloud
at sea towards the wide mirror,
could you give, my love,
as much as I desire
fame, gold,
glory, genius!When your tongue is silent
and your breath is hurried
and your cheeks burn
and your black
eyes are half-closed,
through seeing between your eyelashes
shining with watery fire
the feverish spark that flows out
from a volcano of longings,
could you give, my love
as much as I hope for,
faith, spirit
earth, sky.
Posted by malthus on August 29, 2004, at 0:19:28
In reply to poem..., posted by malthus on August 29, 2004, at 0:14:25
At night when you are wrapped up
in gauzy wings of sleep
and your rows of eyelashes
resemble ebony arcs,
through listening to the beats
of your restless heart
and reclining your sleepy
head on my breast,
could you give, my love,
as much as I possess
light, air
and thought!When your eyes nail themselves
to an invisible object
and your lips are lit
from the reflection of a smile,
through reading on your forehead
a quiet thought
that passes like a cloud
at sea towards the wide mirror,
could you give, my love,
as much as I desire
fame, gold,
glory, genius!When your tongue is silent
and your breath is hurried
and your cheeks burn
and your black
eyes are half-closed,
through seeing between your eyelashes
shining with watery fire
the feverish spark that flows out
from a volcano of longings,
could you give, my love
as much as I hope for,
faith, spirit
earth, sky.
Posted by Atticus on August 29, 2004, at 8:38:15
In reply to Re: poem...Contradiction, posted by malthus on August 29, 2004, at 0:19:28
Hi Serious Puppy,
This poem just blows me away. Your use of language, your use of imagery, is just gorgeous, just delicious to the ear. It's just packed with little gems like "watery fire," one following so fast on the heels of another that it's honestly breathtaking. It's not just ear candy, though; it contains your usual complement of keen observations about just how complex love really is. Your writing -- to me -- seems to just have taken a quantum leap over the last couple of poems. I'm really quite charmed. Don't you dare stop writing now! Don't even think about. The guitar may be silent, but your internal music is coming through more and more clearly and captivatingly. :) Atticus, who wishes he had written this
Posted by malthus on August 29, 2004, at 12:54:52
In reply to Re: poem...Contradiction » malthus, posted by Atticus on August 29, 2004, at 8:38:15
Hi Atticus:
Thank you for the compliment as well as the exegisis of "Contradiction". I love your poetry and it is high praise coming from you!
Writing poetry that rhymes doesn't seem, for me anyway, to allow me to express myself as well; free verse comes more easily. In analyzing your poetry I find frequent metaphors, personification, and hyperbole; aspects of poetry I'm familiar with and reading yours has fired up my imagination, including memories that I have dodged for a long time.
I also wanted to mention that when I asked if you were being too hard on yourself in my previous post, I hope I didn't trivialize what you went through or are still going through.
I find that communicating via a computer doesn't always convey the delicacy that one may wish to in person.malthus
Posted by Atticus on August 29, 2004, at 16:02:18
In reply to Re: poem...Contradiction » Atticus, posted by malthus on August 29, 2004, at 12:54:52
No offense taken at all, Malthus; it didn't even occur to me. I have to admit, there is a side of me that says, in my darkest hours, "If she really loved me as much as she said she did, she wouldn't have bailed when the mental and emotional going got rough." It's a bit like the conversation you described with Sean in his car; I was defective, so she was moving on. But I know that's a gross oversimplification of things. I don't know how well I would have handled the situation had our positions been reversed. I always had the sense that leaving me was a very difficult decision for her, but that she felt she was reliving the worst parts of her childhood -- when she was trapped in a relationship with a another mentally unstable person, her mom. I think "Cocoa Pebbles Madness" does give a sense of Alyssa's terrible, almost crippling insecurity at times. She was, under all her bravado, an incredibly delicate person, and ultimately unable to face day after day of my self-destructive behavior during my "Tyrannosaurus Meds" period, when I was mixing Xanax and Jack Daniels like they were going out of style due to my own frustration and sense of powerlessness to control what was happening to my mind. If she had stuck it out, she would have experienced six more years of a downward spiral culminating in a suicide attempt. Not much to look forward to for her. I do miss having her in my life, every day, but I don't know if she could have made it through the even darker times that lay ahead with her own sanity intact. It's all so difficult to figure out; relationships can be so wonderful, yet they're always so complex and messy at the same time. Nothing is ever clear cut. At any rate, writing this poem and thinking about the qualities that made me love her so much in the first place has turned out to be a good first step in suturing together my perception of my life -- a life that I have long considered split into Alyssa and post-Alyssa periods. :) Atticus
Posted by daisym on August 29, 2004, at 16:35:45
In reply to Re: poem...Contradiction » malthus, posted by Atticus on August 29, 2004, at 16:02:18
Atticus,
You've obviously done a lot of thinking about her position and her need to protect herself. It is interesting for me to read, being "in it" at the moment. My husband has two chronic illnesses that bring him frequently to the brink of death and have changed him from a funny, sweet guy to a bitter, angry person. The meds (steroids) certainly add to this. I'm the easy target. As much as I understand the "whys" it gets hard to live with. Yet, I can't help but remind myself that I made a promise. And this is the "for worst" part. And there ARE glimmers of the man I love still.
You talked about her reliving her childhood. It feels that way to me sometimes too. I take the (verbal) abuse and let it roll off and I hide what it is really like to live in this from almost everyone. I walked on egg shells throughout my childhood. I'm doing it again now. I never knew what would set my father off, I don't know with my husband now.
My therapist tells me I'm being retraumatized. But he knows how strongly I feel about keeping things as normal as possible for my kids and not running from this. It might take 5 years for it to be over, and who knows if I can stick it out? So I spend lots of my therapy time working on ways to thicken my skin and separate the past from the present.
I just wanted you to know what your post made me think about. In going back to some of your writing, it adds a layer of understanding I didn't have before.
Posted by Atticus on August 30, 2004, at 9:30:25
In reply to Re: poem...Contradiction, posted by daisym on August 29, 2004, at 16:35:45
Hi Daisy,
It's interesting that you've put your finger on precisely my central psychological dilemma related to the divorce. Part of me still thinks, "What about the 'for worse' part of our wedding vows? What about the 'in sickness and in health' part of the vows? Is it that you didn't really love me as much as you professed to all the time?" Mentally, post-divorce, there have been times when I've just gotten locked into a cycle, like someone pulling petals off a flower and saying, "She loved me. She loved me not. She loved me. She loved me not." ad infinitum. I guess I've ultimately come to the conclusion that she did love me (and may still, but just couldn't live with the person I'd become -- who was no longer the person she'd married -- any more). I really don't believe she was faking all those "I love you's" during the nine years we were together and the six years we were married. I feel like she was struggling to make things work right up to the point where she walked out, where her emotional gas tank just hit empty. I can't have her back, but I still have so many wonderful memories of the times I spent with her before the illness turned our lives upside down. For me, focusing on those and trying to reclaim them as part of myself -- rather than through the dark lens of what came later -- has proven to be very healing, if the experience of writing "Cocoa Pebbles Madness" is any indication. I never expected that plunging back into that moment would leave me feeling so sunny. In the past, thinking about it would have left me embittered that no more moments like it with her would ever follow. But I think the vehicle of poetry allows me to approach the frightening and the dreadful with much less fear. The meds and therapy have given this skill back to me, and Psycho-Babble Writing has given me a reason to pursue it. The confluence of all these factors is actually doing much more for me than my weekly sessions with my pdoc and therapist. Maybe I should just start each discussion from now on by handing my therapist a new poem and saying, "This is where I am tonight. Read it and let's go from there." :) Atticus
Posted by malthus on August 30, 2004, at 12:06:36
In reply to Re: poem...Contradiction » malthus, posted by Atticus on August 29, 2004, at 16:02:18
Thanks~~I'm relieved you weren't offended. I know exactly what you mean about the whole "If you loved me..." stance. I was in that mode for much of my relationship with Sean. When I started seeing Sean he had ended a bad marriage about 3 years before (I knew him before because he was a fellow attorney in a law firm with my step-father) so he was married then, but nothing ever happened between us. But I could feel a vibe coming from him then. Also his mother had died of cancer 2 years after his marriage ended and that really broke him up.
Anyway, I'll get to my point here, he was so afraid of commitment which I wanted, marriage really, but he just couldn't pull the trigger. He would say he was ready and then change his mind (this happened many times.) And from the beginning I was taking medication (second suicide attempt but before we were involved) and he knew that and wasn't very understanding about it. He is a white-knuckler when it comes to medications even though he gets pretty bad panic attacks.
Even after all the hurt he put me through (two-timing, etc.) it was very hard to bail out of the realtionship. A part off me said "Just continue seeing him even though he can't make a commitment" but that just wasn't possible. Then I really saw that nasty side after the third hospitalization. In a way I don't blame him because perhaps it is scary for a person to know another has made suicide attempts and s/he doesn't want to have to go through that. I only know that I still think about him every day; there are so many reminders from spending 10 years (albeit on and off) with him and there were happy times. I always get really depressed around Christmas because he was like a little child at Christmas, wanting to decorate the tree, listen to and sing carols, watch his extensive collection of Christmas videos, go to Midnight Mass and exchange LOTS of gifts together.
But the wounds from the relationship ending are still so fresh that it astounds me. I KNOW he has moved on and whenever I talk to him (me always calling him) he is so nonchalant. I wrote Non-Axial because there was just never an equilibrium between us.
sad-hearted malthus signing off...
Posted by Atticus on August 30, 2004, at 14:50:35
In reply to Re: poem...Contradiction » Atticus, posted by malthus on August 30, 2004, at 12:06:36
The wounds from my crumbled marriage with Alyssa stayed fresh an astonishly long time -- it could be five years later and it still felt like she'd left yesterday -- right up to the time of the suicide attempt that put me in the hospital this past spring. My poem "The Telephone Just Keeps on Screaming" details the elaborate little ritual I had built up around runs at commiting suicide, and since you read it you know that the centerpiece of the little sacrificial altar I'd always set up was our wedding portrait. I hope that someone caring and supportive and loving lies in both our futures. It's a difficult hope to sustain, but the alternative is just despair, and I've traveled through that bleak landscape for so long that I'm tired of it. It'll just end up leading me back to a shiny new box-cutter, and I don't want to put myself and my family through that again. Atticus
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