Memory XXXII

It’s not always so treacherous on the way down
But why does it hurt so now?
Fists of pain and hurt and cruelty?
It’s there again, but it’s not, oh it’s not.
Regret is for the old: the young must go on and on and on
beyond the firboughs and the cold and the soul-stripping.
Beware it! This is no time for regret!
No time for lost loves.
No time for fauning and mooning and drooling over that past time.
That mould time when wet mould crept all about
and many-fingered spiders crawled everywhere.

{into: a spider:
my very own sleeping shirt on my very own chest:
and I stood weeping, sobbing, screechinginmyhead
a quivering wriggling nightmare spider in my beshirted hand
those many-legs sending drips of terror crawling
up up up my arm and piercing that beating carbuncle
that red-pumping terror:
I was too too too to crush it
and I was alone so alone all alone
and you were asleep while the terror
scraped the walls out of my mind}

These darknesses don’t go away;
these shadows don’t crawl back beneath their rocks.
I’ve played dice with them before now,
stared into their grim sighs,
while tiddlywinks and razortrout and stud.
But they win.
I will not play chess with them.

***

Thankfully, I don’t think regret is for the old either. Also, this poem gets at the origin story of my arachnophobia–now dulled. Twice, I’ve woken up with a spider crawling inside of my shirt. One time, it was particularly traumatizing. Somehow, I’m not as freaked out by spiders anymore. I wouldn’t say we’re chums, though.

And that’s the last of my Memory poems. It’s been interesting going back and rereading them. I was pretty unhappy, generally, and I’m grateful that, as tough as things are sometimes, I’m mostly pretty happy and satisfied with my life. Go figure. :) Mostly, I think, it comes down to me not tormenting myself as much.

Try to be kind to yourselves, friends.