I have had many enemies
They were all
Me.
I’ve been working trauma-informed recovery for forty years…
This poem, this poem is very old…
It’s from a little chapbook I made called Preverbal Songs
Pysche chose the title decades before I understood my own preverbal trauma.
My mission, if I have one, is to waken people to the richness of healing
that comes when we slow down time enough to listen to our dreams
to collect the broken and disparate pieces that live inside us
that we had to shelve to get through school, work, love and life.
Eventually they are surely coming for us
We may as well sit on the metaphorical curb of our childhood home
and listen.
Here’s a poem I wrote 35 years ago.
Looking for the Enemy
To the right there is nothing
really
A row of trees
some houses
Mostly white with black shutters
Nothing unusual
A cat; an old blind dog
The dying cicadas scattered over my mother’s car
Down the street more of the same
A toy truck on the sidewalk
To the left is nothing
Everyone has crossed and gone to school
To the left, to the left
more houses, no cat
A wish to disappear many years ago
I turn right
I sit on the curb
I have no voice
In the morning
the sun streams over my twin beds
The walls are yellow
I did not pick out the color
There is breakfast
Bacon frying. Eggs.
The Washington Post.
My sister
whose cheekbones are wider than mine
In the late afternoon
Sesame Street, repeating 10th grade algebra
potato chips for little vegetarians
a different boyfriend every time my father turns around
At night;
at night I go downstairs
to the left is Mom, reading books
She is no longer perfect on Saturday nights
Down three stairs is the den
behind a door Dad watches the tv
in his underwear
I once asked him about sex, I said
I Don’t Understand
He said Go Ask Your Mother
I have no voice.
I wish.
To the north, toward New York
is a small state park
filled with acorns
no treehouse of mine; and
a marijuana garden tended by my sister’s boyfriend
whose name is Richard
Three blocks east, toward the ocean
is the high school
when the wind blows in the summer
you can hear the marching band at practice
Down the hill is the ravine nobody wanted to cross
but did, going to the pool
There were snakes
abandoned rubber dolls
Meg is there
she drinks beer with GI’s
some days she sits alone
and wonders at her misshapen legs
I wish it would snow
I wish it would snow
It would be so quiet
even in our house
(not deathly quiet
but like snow)
Always late at night
there was this silence
It would wake me up
I was the only thing moving in the universe
Just to breathe was so big
I could hardly do it
The sun begins another day and I’m back
No one expected me
No one can hardly believe it’s me
They say: Good To See You Back Again.