Figuring Out Life While Aging
Caught between my mirror
and blackouts, my mother and hope
twisting around to glare into
headlights and greasy black highways
behind me …
I don’t want to be here, but
to stand entwined, taking Communion
as if I were holy
as if I could hide from the whale’s lesson
as if I could pray
Walking to the coffeeshop,
with my glasses off,
I stumble and fall.
Falling asleep with my glasses on,
I dream of empty coffins,
and watches.
Reading emailed obituaries
sent by old acquaintances
I hit “Delete”
before I’m finished.
My Trickster Silver Shoes
I saw a picture, and I searched
And found, on sale,
My silver trickster shoes.
Beautiful on, my silver shoes,
But when I walked, they slipped and rubbed,
My painful silver shoes.
I took them off and gave them to
A friend with sturdier feet,
My poor-fitting silver shoes.
One early morning in my closet
I saw again the silver shoes,
My absent silver shoes.
A dream, a phantasm,
A joke, a delusion,
My trickster silver shoes.
Things Change
The name I used to murmur in delight
Now I sob over in the night.
Things change.
The woman I used to find so annoying
Now I watch, envious and admiring
Things change.
The work I loved and did so well
I’ve left behind; I lost the joy.
Things change.
The fear I carried so long and deep
I look at now and no longer weep.
Things change.
a tangle of bare, black branches
against a cloud-curdled sky:
bleak joy.
I have a horror
hangover:
a surfeit of tv dribbles
repeating;
the images and words
addictive
and numbing.
I must look away,
change the channel,
I switch to a story of plotted
murder where the killer
is named and blamed
and hunted and destroyed – and
it’s over!
When I can’t resist glancing again,
the crowds are still
raging in the streets.
A version of this was previously published on another of my blogs – http://joanvinallcox.ca/trump-mania/
I watched all the American election debates and coverage and I am nauseated. The 2nd debate, especially, sparked all kinds of reactions in me. Watching Trump make his (what I knew intellectually were baseless) accusations with his emotional tone so strong, I felt the sick fear that people would buy what he said, just because of the way he said it. I saw him pacing around and looming over Hillary when she was speaking, and recognized two things:
The normality of this kind of male behaviour, and
Why I thought it was normal; I’d seen it and experienced in the workplace for most of my adult life.
I felt sick with fear because I’d recognized Trump’s nastiness and misogyny from my first few media glimpses of him. I’d recognized his body language and the subtext in his words. I felt sick with fear as I watched apparently respectable people continue to support him, apparently blind to who he was. I felt sick with fear as I saw powerful men (and some women) support him. I felt sick with fear when I heard the bus tape because I’d known men with power who spoke about women in a similar way, and they weren’t penalized. I honestly couldn’t tell, during the debate, whether the man I’d despised, since even before the presidential race, was getting away with it, whether the earnest and smart, hard-working woman was going to continue being faulted because, they claimed, she was bad and her own party saw her as bland.
Perhaps it’s a good thing that the American presidential race lasts so long. Perhaps the length has given people the chance to look beyond the boasting and see the dark reality. I hope so. Goodness knows, lots of stories have surfaced about how Trump has stiffed contractors and even the caterer for his third marriage. The whole taxes thing that he’s now trying to spin into business acumen. The racial and religious baiting. The encouragement of violence – what did he mean when he said Hillary’s Secret Service guards should give up their guns?
Perhaps the long drawn out campaign has opened many eyes. I hope and pray! But I am astonished and fearful because so many are blindly supporting his appalling behaviour.
Grey skies
bare branches
cold enough
to keep us indoors.
Fluorescent blue light
cluttered space
silence sitting
dully waiting.
The autumnal riot of colours begins
to fade and thin, while losses blossom.
The ghosts of neighbours open the doors
of demolished houses.
I move into winter with opening eyes
watching the leaves reveal the tree
that will die and be born again –
forming and fading and forming again.
Inspired, partially, by Trump
Bullies are blind to
differences;
they see the tenderhearted
as targets, used
to relieve their sense of angry fear,
to release their fearful anger –
used as their addictive catharsis.
Bullies are blind,
in their spewing of bile,
to the bruises they inflict,
constantly telling themselves stories
to create and increase excuses
for stoking their blind angers.
Bullies are blind to
how they are led;
they swallow concocted poisons
about others they fear would replace them,
about others they hope to destroy –
attacking these targeted others.
Bullies are blinded and fearful.
Learning Living 