observations

Some voices are like light rain, a gentle murmur, soothing; some like hail.

Can it be different? Of course it can; but to know this only on the logical plane is rather worthless.

My brain is turning in on itself, like a black hole such that even sight no longer sees. Or I should say, no longer sees out. Instead there is a looking within and the image is of a dark unknown forest, lost, searching, cold, alone, a place where the sun provides no warmth and the path only leads deeper into the darkness.

To lose the ability to differentiate between right and wrong is terrifying. I now understand the need for prison as never before.

There are days when all I want is this pain beaten from me; mainly by whip upon my bare back; as if this pain inside me could be banished or killed or run from my body; a battle of wills; either it goes or I do; I'd be satisfied with either result.

And on these days, I see myself sitting at the racetrack, alone, everyone has gone home; just sitting in the stands, soaking in the flow of life that goes on, my memory fading as the day. Everything moves on.

The KKB series of poems was written in this spirit. All twenty-one poems focus on the singular motion of a sword falling upon shield. During the writing, each morning I would steep in this sight, the sound, of holding that shield, of the shield splintering, of mud, of knee, the sound of a horse turning, coming again, sword raised.

Find your joy she said. That is when I knew she didn't know the path I was on. Nothing wrong with the advice--I had reached the same conclusion ten years before--even wrote it on a index card like some great discovery. But this path is different. The way out is not through joy. It is not in the putting together but in the breaking apart. I feel it in my rigid back. The need to be broken, to shatter the stress, pick up the pieces, put them in a pot of boiling water, and refill the mold with something new.

This is how it feels. This need to confront the pain, not run from it into joy or happiness as one might play with some friends but not others. Those other friends don't just go away. I feel some vague sin that must be atoned or some debt that must be paid in the coin of suffering. This is not a place where logic is welcome, wanted, or needed.

This morning there is a stillness, the kind you feel under medication, only I'm not under any medication. Bad news comes at me and passes through me as if just words. I know it is not just words, (interrupted)