New Publication, Old Poem, Holding at 2 Kilorats

Here's a new publication on the theme of parents, where I am lucky to be the featured poet: Quill and Parchment

To enter, the passwords are "september" and then "school."

My mood remains fragile, I am navigating melancholy with appropriate fearfulness, hoping the disease of depression will remain at bay, but just last night at a meeting of men where I know I am loved and accepted I felt like the complete outsider, and the long view of my life being worthless wants to creep into my mind and declare me an utter failure, but these depressive symptoms are recognizable and I intend to view them as a tourist views a city, not owning them for my self. I still have a sense of self, though tenuous, as in deep depression my self becomes an abstraction and I become depression incarnate: hopeless, helpless, worthless, angry, sad, fearful, incapable of love, pleasure, or human connection. I will see my shrink tomorrow and see if I should increase my adjunctive anti-depressant, Abilify, even more.

Some spider bit my ass repeatedly and Kathleen says the bumps make a smiley face. LOL!

Pray for me, or if that is too much, think of me with favor--as I so dread dropping into a drop-dead depression again. I was recovering steadily before the motorcycle accident; now I'm on shaky ground again.

Here's a revision of a villanelle I sketched during my depression, where the fog proves a prescient metaphor, I think, for the black dog:


Through Fog

Encapsuled in the intimacy of mist
Our visibility’s but fifty feet.
World within world we exist.

My markers vanish, the road dips and twists
As if its narrowing shoulders have to meet
And marry in an intimacy of mist.

I want to scream, I want to raise my fist
And curse the small circumference of our light.
World within world we exist.

This driving makes me itch. I should desist.
We follow dim tail lights like idiot sheep
Pastured in an intimacy of mist.

Back home we make a fire, share a kiss.
The fog’s outside, a monster in a sheet.
World within world we exist.

Head on your lap, relieved, I feel blessed.
Your belly's breathing makes my being complete.
Conjoined, one droplet in the intimate mist,
World within world we exist.


2 Kilorats and holding,

CE