Crabgrass Receives a Reply

Lecram06 · Post by **Lecram06** » Mon Mar 30, 2020 5:34 pm

Crabgrass Receives a Reply -in gratitude, Albert K.*

You have been invading me for some years now, creeping on your belly in the hours of the day, upright in the night— save for full-moon skies.

Once, you pooled my brain, pushed me to the right-- wordless, thoughtless-- you dumped me into being.

Once, you took the longest time, longer than your style. You clogged my heart. crashed it to a halt.

One night, you vice-gripped my right quadrant                                                           rotting me in my own juices.

Not surprising that these past these past few years, seeing me get all puffed-up, thinking myself once again so smart, you took to swimming in my lymph.

You slowed me down-- down to a lower gear. Gave me a taste of honest fear, demanded I surrender my wrinkled paper crown.

Like your friends with Latin names, you joined the ranks of my tor-mentors**, obeyed the call to smash my hardened form,

to throw me on the wheel, to shape me whole again.

But wait a minute, here. While you potter me anew I lose hold of my mind in this longest meantime of my life.
In fact, you crumble up my mind pilfer my rigid ways. You break my back and steal my step. You call yourself my friend?

You say your visit is to heal, to help me touch my soul, to hold the hand of pain, to suffer and forgive,

to love you with my beaten body, to worship you within?

Tonight, the moon half way, you fill me with sharp light, you let me taste with passion the presence of my body-pain.

But more than that, you ask me to stay still, to feel the joy in pain – the royal fountain road.

You slice my neck, and still you want me to believe that all this work of healing is not to stay alive.

Have you indeed lost your mind peddling me this crock?

Hear me, if you will. The paradox is that your illness is also your lost pearl – the finding of your Self.

You have been chosen to come back to SELF your first and lasting home. I’m here to sell you HOPE.

Let go of dead deceit. Your soul is born for truth. You lost sight of the narrow road. Illness is your map.

Descend the deeper darkness. Walk it willingly.

Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the saying carved in stone: Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit.

Invited or not invited, God will be present. So is it with your illness. Humbled, it will make you bold.

Easy for you to say— beyond the reach of time. I live here in small spaces, and soul-making is no game.

Unmask your hidden shame. and you shall be unburdened.
Is it your task to teach me how to yoke the necessary sufferings of the soul; that therein lies the healing of a rebelling, aging self;

that once I welcome everything—and all things that I am— I will have nothing more to fight against, not even searing pain?

*Kreinheder, A. (1991). Body and Soul: The Other Side of Illness. Toronto, Canada: Inner City Books.**Term created by Richard Schwartz, creator and founder of Internal Family Systems Therapy

Post by **indar** » Mon Mar 30, 2020 5:55 pm

Wow Marcel,

I assume this is from a personal experience/perspective. First off fabulous writing, interesting format that requires the reader solve the problem of how to progress though it which demands the writing to be slowly considered. The effect is the theme is revealed by degrees, as in "the light dawns". I will need to read a few more times but just now I think the revelation is limited. A subject hard to get out there all at once?

Post by **Tracy Mitchell** » Mon Mar 30, 2020 10:18 pm

Marcel
I am so glad you posted this poem. I have been wrestling with and cogitating on it for about a month now and my admiration continues to grow.

This is essentially a dialog between the Narrator and his disease. Through the poem the Narrator grows in understanding at the insistence of the inner voice -- the N is providing a roadmap for all who find themselves traveling the same road.

Stunningly good, M. This operates on several levels -- each one deeper in cognitive grasp of the essence of what life actually is, with everything else stripped away. There is the sense that the N has reached a destination.

Cheers.

T

ajduclos · Post by **ajduclos** » Tue Mar 31, 2020 5:30 am

I struggle for words, Marcel. I didn't know, didn't even conceive, that such a writing could exist.

I've read and reread it several times. Like Linda says, the style on the page forces the reader so slow down. I feel this is taking from all the books of wonderful poetry you have written about life, illness and facing the inevitable end, taking it in total and saying "no more around the edges, let's have it out, soul to self."

Such a powerful write, an exposé shared, graced by humility. Thank you.

Aj

Lecram06 · Post by **Lecram06** » Tue Mar 31, 2020 8:46 am

Thank you Indar, Tracy and aj. It took me so long to figure out how to post even after many tutorials. With things computer, I am still in the scriptorium fumbling with indigo ink and parchment hoping the brewer was successful with his last batch of mead. This poem was written in early March of last year in response to a poem a few days earlier . . . after the news. Here it is.

Crabgrass

on hard ground
those foreign seeds

lurking shade side
beyond the reeds

invade the field
impose their deeds

their destiny
abundant weeds

to steal the soil
to sate their needs

without concern
no thought to heed

the harvest hope of mead

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