The day your father died
the day the towers burned
the day she found out she had a tumor
I was doing something irrelevant
caught on auto pilot
like the time the door bell rang and
the pizza man handed over a bag
how did you think a small bag could contain a large box?
you said as you ran after him shouting
you gave us the wrong order!
but he sped away on his little red bike
because he too was on auto pilot
and we dreamers who
find reality too hard
yet strive to know
we are often and regrettably lost
choosing puzzles over clarification
wandering the halls of the VA
in search of meaning
watching ruinous faces lose their facades
and close down
like unwound clocks tired
of ticking
when you had your first seizure
in the toilets and everyone began
to scream
I recalled my cousin seizing in the field
full of pollen and dragon flies
and held your head firm like a babe
baptized in a steam
in that moment I was not
a child of pretend and play
but an adult seeing the heart monitors of the world
bleeping to wake
the sleeper in me
who does not pretend to know
the journey in you
when I lift my head from
distraction and sound
clear my mind and look around
then in the reflecting glass of true response
I can be as much as possible
the owner of my walk
thinking not of purchase and power
but the small mercies
we often over look
hijacked amygdala 
Reblogged this on TheFeatheredSleep.
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Living in our own little world might feel safe, but the real world is everybody else’s world, and we have to learn to walk in it too. Beautifully put 🙂
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Thank you SO MUCH Jane. You put it very well, that’s how it feels, living in our little world and yet, the real world is everybody else’s world.
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It does my head in sometimes wondering how other people see particular things, or how they feel when they see them. We can’t BE everybody, but I suppose we have to learn how to enter into their bubble and empathize with it.
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its is an odd tightrope I walk– sometimes completely lost in the world of my head, watching others through thick glass and then other times I am so overwhelming connected to the stimuli of this wider world that I feel like I will jump out of my skin
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I’ve always believed its better to live in our own world as oppose to this reality world we live in. However, managing ourselves in this world its a difficult challenge one that requires us to learn like the humans they are.
Genius is…and I mean that from my heart to you. 🙂 I love this very much and my favorite poem of the day. 🙂
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Love this. Very well written.
I live on autopilot because it is quiet here.
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Candice, I am out of words. So please forgive me.
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Candice, you are such a gift. I love this poem. It’s a good reminder to stop and breathe. You are a phenom.
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Such a vivid description of living in a daze
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Ha! And then I probably go right back to doing it! Such as we are! (unless there is a pony, then all bets are off, no daze, just wonderment). In fact … speaking of ponies and horses. Yesterday driving past Starbucks I saw a girl casually taking her horse for a walk. Now THAT was a sight to behold in these tarmac streets! Of course I thought of you
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Lovely. Thanks, Candice
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“wandering the halls of the VA
in search of meaning”
Man, I can really relate to this as a Vietnam veteran with PTSD. I see so many guys in need of help. They seem to be on auto pilot hoping things will improve from something they get from outside when the peace they are yearning for simply comes from within . . .
Michael J, Philadelphia
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Dear Michael, thank you so much. I have been going to the VA for the first time in my life with a friend who had a brain tumor. It has taught me literally more than anything I have learned in the 14 years I have lived in America. I feel everyone should go to the VA and just talk to the people there. It is the REAL America both positive and negative. I’m very sorry you have PTSD but I am also not surprised. I wish you health as I know that really is the singular thing we all need and often are denied. Thank you for appreciating my effort, I do not claim to understand all but I have compassion and care for those I see who are not given a voice.
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Excellent poem. My favorite lines below:
watching ruinous faces lose their facades
and close down
like unwound clocks tired
of ticking
Remind me of the Jews in the ghetto who were worn down by ever-growing confinements until they were closed in beyond escape. This is also reminiscent of the “Kulaks” and intelligentisia in Soviet Russia after everything was stripped away and jobless they were forced to wander, homeless.
This poem reminds me personally of a lot of things that have happened to me, when you are on auto pilot and suddenly there is a crisis.
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EXACTLY! Do you know why I love you so? And I mean it when I say love? Because of responses like this. Once you made me laugh very hard when you said you did not understand poetry, because that is SO FAR from the truth as to be impossible. You my dear, you understand far more than you ever will credit, and moreover you ARE poetry in your perception of life. As such that’s why you can relate and why you query and you think – in a world that makes thinking and query utterly vanquishable. It’s the Jew in you. It’s the Jew in me. And now we have a seventies song 😉 I do agree on a serious note, I felt it when 9/11 hit, I felt it with many times when you are humming along and WHAM! It is truly the worst feeling. I wanted to put a name to it, to describe it, to shake it out so it did not have that power over us.
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Odd 9/11 stories, when I saw the smoke gushing from the towers my first impulse was to get on a bus and go down town to the Towers. I felt like…I had to do something. it was irrational obviously I couldn’t have helped but I had an urge– a call to action. (But as I was afraid of my British boss instead I turned and went up to our 6th floor on Madison Avenue.) Later on when I was walking the many miles home, with a wave of people massed around me (no busses or subways) I walked through Central Park and saw someone jogging, I guess completely unaware of events that had transpired… it was an awful sickening incongruity. You feel things terribly. I would not be surprised if you were some sort of reincarnated soul from the Warsaw ghetto, some resistance fighter. I understand they lasted around four weeks before the Nazis cowardly fire bombed them from above.
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really really lovely.
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Thank you so much B you know how much a comment from you means. I will write you asap in response to your email – thank you for it and you xo
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