Lost in Pathos

Words as fast as bullets

Waiting to share thoughts

Extinguished upon release

Language propels

I’m pursuing

Circles lost in pathos

Unwritten silence

Released in the recesses of my mind

Standards remote till now

My process repeats itself

I begin and end in a circle

You woke me as if the need was met 

 the dream complete

You woke me as if you were there

Extinguished upon release

Walking forward 

Your smile embraced me

The morning bells greeted me

 I’m shaking for my

Circles searching for time

A Senior in the 1960’s

Imagine in the 60’s teenagers got kicked out in high school for long hair and smoking. Perhaps there was nothing more to worry about yet. Rules were not something I worried about, just my crooked buck teeth, a frail stature and pale skin, while being one of the tallest girls in my school I had no breasts that were visible. Kids can be cruel in the preteen years, yet in high school they stopped cajoling me about my flat chest. I do remember they said pointing at my chest “there's a fungus amongst us”. I carried it with me, however in my Pollyanna spirit fueled my need to be different.  Somehow in my crazed hormonal state it did stimulate a growth spurt, I grew 3 inches between the age of 16 and 18. Knowing my motives collecting themselves in my body was an excuse to complain in order to figure out any of what was going on. Internally spinning having an 18 year old body I was seeing what others thought in order to form my own opinions.

My mother was far too concerned with her own appearance to support me with mine. Being 18 years older in my senior year, not emotionally. I chose to be eccentric because I could not fit in with what the latest trends were so I was going to be an extension of my love for the complete Isle of Britain. I wanted to be different and I was deaf in my external and internal circumstances. Still I went into the bathroom and talked to whoever was there to see if I was pale or if my hair looked alright.

Ironing my hair and slapping a green sticky gel on my bangs somehow tamed my curly hair. Yes, another complaint was that my hair was far too wild and curly. If it rained, up flip the bangs regardless of the gel. I can still feel the slime on my fingers somehow. 

The department store was my savior for an escape and then there was Bill the long haired boy who came from the other school after doing something bad. He took an interest in me. I was shy and as I look back on the adventures of he and I it was at an early stage and perhaps for a long time his manipulation was easily brought forward. I followed him around like an obedient puppy. I carried his books because he broke his leg and we got out of class early. He also was a musician and I got to  go to the teenage nightclub he played at. Don’t really know how I got to go out at night given my mothers sternness, I did tenacity on my part  and her exhaustion and perhaps was menopausal having me at 40. Poor women. Then there were my visits to the radio station.

A Senior Year

I sit with an overstrained posture waiting to relax. No time has been allotted to my craving through papers to find notes and journals with poetry forming my self expression.  How can I ever  get a memoir written? 

I want to continue about high school, I had a part time job at the fanciest department store in Rochester, NY: B Forman. I was placed at a front counter where Jewelry was. Such fun and I got to watch various women take the steps down into the store in their elegance. The counter housed mostly costume jewelry, I was part time during the school year, summer seemed for me filled, yet I still worked.   I was always going to summer school to raise my grades from a D to a C. I shake my head as I think about it and my ultimate schooling experience which went on and on at least for 13 years or more. College was almost all of what most of my peers talked about and with D’s I was not going to be allowed to be college material.

 In High School art was my calling and the fact my mother read all my school books that didn’t help me. She told me what they were about and I was going to agree, my personal interests were elsewhere. Why not? She worked and I worked skating by and skating in the summer programs and learning how to skate as a sport. This was again not going to help me build academic discipline. 

I found out later my mother had told people that she had gotten through High School. In truth it was third grade.  My mother was so self absorbed, a poor woman who had to just worry about providing for us. I began building other skills in learning and as I walked to school with a girl from England, whose father had taken a sabbatical to come to the US to teach. He took a great interest in me getting educated and learning about who his daughter was walking to school with. A funny little man who was a Chemist. My concern at the time was she was from England where the Beatles were and Rock and Roll, while dancing my way through my teens. 

I was continuing my own form of education. While I worked I took an interest in the fact that my favorite Radio station was in the same building where my department store was and I decided to adopt the station. I walked into the reception area with a box of doughnuts to be delivered for the DJ’s.

Before meeting my new English friend I had walked to school with a girl who carried a violin. Ah my musical instrument was my life and how was it going to express itself.  Just after the Christmas Holiday a new boy came to our school and he had long hair and was a musician. He was kicked out of school because of his long hair. Imagine? 

The Intermission

Words challenged because of the stimulation of a thoughtful need that I’m known for what I can’t let go of. I quake because of weakness for food or physical need or both. Rushing to quickly not being able or able to be mindful of fear. Will I miss this trick if that is what it is; a trick and acknowledgement of my capabilities. Can I even form where I move into being a brave and exciting adult? Alone now with some lacking for excitement or a real beginning of truth expressed. My story will continue.

Gods Dream for me!

God’s Dream of Beauty and Grace!

The rooms were walled with glass windows from floor to ceiling, greenery framed women surrounding me with a love and warmth I have often longed for. I was floating in the image of memories at Arnold Park in Rochester, a small street with an island separating lanes where pillared gates at the entrance to a street of opulent homes beckoned me and one home being the Zen Center.  A shallow rectangular pool welcomed me as I slid into my reminiscences of women and memories finding love; where a dance began as a slow mantra at the Zen Center was a world where I had interlooped borrowing their garden and pool near my friend’s home.

Arnold Park had become my sanctuary of wishes for my life with my friend. He always wrapped me in words and beauty I had only begun to experience. I reemerged from the pool and a naked man whose slim elegant structure embraced me. He told me I would always be loved as I pressed my naked body to his and I knew without the act of sexual desire overtaking us his words were my truth.

Another Layer of Bonnie

Clarity finds words spreading in circles, stretching across the canvas of my life. I am the artist and poet as I open to be heard writing another story where life has taken me. I release without expectations; only hope! Yet now I am being defined by my memories, Bonnie passed in January,2021, after a long and painful 2020. The Pandemic had gripped  us all. She wasn’t taken by the virus yet, a battle still Kidney disease. I was knowing how my grief had stretched across my whole life. Her life found a new layer of who I was, never really knowing how deep it was going to find me. My tears were as if she had reached inside and said goodbye. I didn’t want to be held only feeling her power within my loss as my husband asked.  I know now that when we continue to grieve the many feelings of our losses appear.  I am grieving for myself, Still I must.

I thought about our many experiences, sitting at her home on the front porch. Bonnie and I sat on that porch instead of in her mothers garden. We would sit looking out at the world of her neighborhood, waiting for the family across the street to come out and play. Playing was what we were about, experimenting into our world, sneaking across the street to a woman's back yard to climb a giant tree. Bonnie would always climb higher. That was where we tried our first cigarette. I choked and that was it for me. Not yet wanting to scale the branches of life before us. I don’t know if Bonnie took up smoking I did not.  

We were sisters, without blood, as our childhood was meshed together, I spent a lot of time at her home. She had a family; mother, father and two brothers. My mother and I spent many a family dinner there. She ate everything, I picked and gagged on green beans. As our progression of life moved further into her life of boys and life. I was immobilized yet I continued to learn from Bonnie.  As we entered our teen years we sat in the bathroom exploring our bodies, separately. Hiding there, sitting on the floor, we looked and giggled.  This was a time when it was all considered that anything below our waist and above were private parts. As preteens we were going to break the rules. Oh there were so many of them.

I look back and at some point Bonnie’s adventures were stopped as she was sent to live with an Aunt. I don’t remember why yet I would venture to say her fun was being tamed by her parents.  I don’t know for sure I just feel her warmth as part of me and the truth that I was on my own late adventures and I couldn’t keep up. The years brought us together here and there and I stayed with her once. I was taking a workshop and complaining as I often still can do, she looked at me and said Donna did you think of the word, “WORK” shop. Now I wish I could have learned from her more.

Sisters in time

Sisters in time

Little bites of time, stopping in reflection

Once so easy our flow began

Never questioning the size or edge

Dancing through forms found

In truth a point lingers in love

What grace it was to have you

We grew old together 

Moments away appreciated or not

Little bites of life some big, some small

Uniting over food we continued.  

Flying across moments life fell

Shadows I knew were there

I know you etched me in memories 

Playing cutouts with our dreams 

You knocked again I saw your face

Recalling the image of the retake in time

Older now my vanity challenged

We began a dream that intersected 

Crisscrossing in a truth I never knew

You were a dream, my sister in time

Again, and again and again 

A parable of youth

Hiding in High School

  School became secondary and being at home watching television was what I managed. I would write my excuses and my mother would sign them. She was so tired from what she had to provide. If the school knew, they overlooked it or my mother went to bat for the poor widow’s daughter. Then the 11th grade teachers found me out. A 30 year old friend of my older brother, would come and be a teacher's aid, as he studied to be a teacher and he was good friends with me. I began to be motivated. I couldn’t stay home with Dick Clark and Father’s Knows Best having them become a role model at home watching for hours. I could do this anymore. I missed on an average of one day a week. Maurice Chevalier was my biggest life coach and his movies were my after school fun. I loved musicals and watched as many as I could of his. He was French and I would sing and try to copy his French accent. I still remember one or two songs and to this day I can speak a mean pretend French that I've been told sounds very real. I hung out after school and I can see myself sitting on his desk. I wanted to impress and get his attention. 

My hiding was about to become impossible. I had taken an IQ test. I had no idea what that meant. They had told me at the Principal's office; I was not working up to my potential. Imagine they told me I wasn’t what I wanted to think or told. This was when I was told I was smart. My dramatic self found a moment of “I’m Smart''? My forehead and eyes squeezed as if to say; What! Or perhaps the hormones had finally reached my brain. My mother had told me; She had kept me under her thumbs until I was smart enough to get out from under them. My poor mother knew she was losing her daughter to the world of boys and fashion and fun. I think I even tried extra on that test because my brother's friend was a strong male, who gave me attention. This is what I think happened because I longed for the father I never had. I actually paid attention on the test and wasn’t gazing out the window or talking, passing notes, scribbling on notebooks. This was the beginning, I was not going to be quiet and pick at myself. I was going to have style like the Mod girls in England. My mother couldn't afford the current fashion so I dressed quirky and made my clothes in what was the Mary Quant style of fashion. I bought patterns and on my skip days I began sewing and still watching TV. I wanted to learn yet I was easily distracted by dramatic shows of fashion. Could I ever catch up? Could I ever overcome my negative voice that held me back for so long?

High School Unfinished

School became secondary and being at home watching television was what I managed. I would write my excuses and my mother would sign them. If the school knew, they overlooked it or my mother went to bat for the poor widow’s daughter. Then the 11th grade teachers found me out. A 30 year old friend of my older brother, would come and be a teacher's aid, as he studied to be a teacher. and he was good friend's with my brother. I began to be motivated, I wanted atttention.

Or perhaps the hormones had finally reached my brain.

The Sideshow Begins

My life is a series of split second sideshows, choices in how I react or respond happens from a moment. I assess what was said or what I am doing and then change appears. Feeling uncomfortable tells me I must learn something to find a sense of peace. I don’t blow away my thoughts with distractions till I am wrapped in calm. This is a journey in pulling back and not rushing, pushing for the answers. It will come. I try not to let anyone rush my journey to my heart's desire. 

Unless I look back and find an old feeling, I’ve had before, I recognize clarity  has to be worked on and appreciated till I can take action. Creating another event I want to linger in to continue whatever theatre I know. Telling me another layer in the movie of my mind.

Echoing thoughts ruminate and remind me of where knowledge learns and continually redefines. “This is as good as it gets” points to an aged body. I refuse to abide by this comment. Another spilt second sideshow begins!

A Digression

Ah! If I truly understood my thoughts on my writing about my past in a memoir, I don’t think it was my intention, but my mothers needs linger. Often their imprint is motivating me.  I may have gotten past her needs for me to be a symbol of femininity, shaped as a television icon. However, it left its continual feelings of striving for what was not possible! A teenage angst does have the possibility for motivating growth! In my case of collecting stories, there is a continual battle with the demons of dissatisfaction. My writing now finds how I am satisfied with what I do and write and my process of self doubt. By no means am I wanting to feel sorry for myself! However adolescence found adulthood late! Very late.  I have had fun because of that! 

Today I am grappling with how easy it has become to continually postpone writing while carrying a need to make excuses for how having to have an outline for a life not written. Only lived in my head and not on paper, giving it form. Now it is time to show up for myself and define what is history and how I am not the; ”Class Complainer” as I was voted in High School. 

My story will need it’s writing before I can see it’s growth and direction. There will be no excuses for complaints or explanations. So I have held and wrapped my stories well in piles unread, unwritten, unfulfilled. I am showing up and deciding to wear my life like a loose garment yet still writing to move forward. All described and told as a story of my life and fun and pain to get to another layer of myself.

Perplexed

Perplexed!

I didn’t say the things I’ve said with any planned motive of manipulation. I only do what I do to hear myself talk and learn. Sometimes there is a concrete thought that wants expression. I start with a topic I need to address and want fixed and out pops words so deep that even the deepest of people are stunned. I am also in an eye popping; depth searching for my truth.  I take myself to a far off corner of some universal moment of my own. What faulty reasoning is there for me, in this time to be here wishing I was somewhere else? This is not a logical way to exist and want to change. I’m perplexed in my body that won’t breathe without a struggle that clogs my ability just to flow and surrender.  What is it that has made me change and grow? All remains to be seen.

I want to be my cheery self, yet without an argument these are not times I find I can be light hearted. I am looking to heal all that has not been fully expressed. “We are only as sick as our secrets”  This is where I will express as in the truth of who I am. I will write!

Sixth Grade

 The only time I can ever remember getting in trouble was in grammar school in sixth grade. At that time I thought school was the place to express myself.  At home, my mother was either grieving for my father or too exhausted from working to support me and herself. I was to be tough in a little girl's body, with no explanations for my own grief or feelings. 

My  father was a cheerful man who was excited to see me when he came home.  His cheer before passing cemented my need to look continually for  fun or make it.  He offered me a need to make cheer for myself. School was to become my playground.

 Neither school nor my mother could control my creative energy. Artistic expression was not fostered then, while excellence in reading and writing and math were what was expected. I refused to be tempered, talking  incessantly or staring out the window watching rain leave trails on the dirt left on the windows. This was all so much more interesting to me than listening to the teacher. Whatever I did wrong, the teacher would tell me to stand up and face the blackboard until I learned not to disturb the class. Each day I would walk into class and she would ask, “Well will you not talk today?” I would say I didn’t know.

Each day my creative, resilient spirit would be ignited. I would go home and scan a giant pictorial dictionary for answers. I found drawings of hands forming shapes with letters below them. Sign language would become my new form of communicating and engaging with my classmates as I faced the blackboard, my hands making signs.  The teacher could not see what I was doing with my hands behind my back making the shapes of letters. In my self taught sign language. I  now only remember the letter Q. 

By 7th grade, I began to shut down and did not get into more trouble that was visible in school.

Is this a Dream

I’m walking in a night’s energy

Calm sweet repose begins and ends

Completeness as I listen

It has been too long

What holds me back

A touch forbids forward motion

Imagination is not enough

Trees that touch the sky

I open my eyes to you.

Each step walks with weight

As your shoulders sag

Like trees branches

Each bends to touch my hand

These are worlds I do not know

Touches I’ve never had

Are you waiting for me

Or am I waiting for you

Why do I waste my time

Living in a Dream

Perhaps it is not a dream 

Are we really teachable?

Jimmie

Jimmie Margaret Gilliam

Today I found you were gone 

I remember your determination; our voice

Together I have become wrapped in spirits

I want my own poetry messed with spirit 

I want a smile, and a hug in a brief hello

Why have my words become trapped? 

Who will remember me?

Today, when I found you were gone

A sweet expression in its Southern whisper 

I learned to be accepted and free

Tears lodged beneath my surface 

I have tasted life’s banquet 

Now your food has been taken off my shelf

Looked at but never tasted again.

Stories

You are somewhere feeling me

In your skin of existence

There is no consciousness

The needle sends the puncture of desire.

I sit and know this truth

 Building within each puncture

      Piercings of connection are mined alone. 

The evening came with a poem and a song.

Notions point me to reason.

Words shift to reality and my feast begins

Have heart and wealth in expression

Love steps into my collection of word and thought

Intricate reasons lost and found.

A legacy begins in rewriting our stories

Singing praises of growth.

Talk to me of your passions

Let me know and be told

Be the tender story of a friend.

Dick Clark Dance Party

By eleventh grade my body had been manipulated with hormones and artificial food substitutes to construct a body filled to some pharmaceutical  mean. What was a 17 year old female body to look like on the average. Never did I know that the medical community was going to judge me by an average, I would never match. It was also the 60’s and the Beatles were beginning to Rock the world with music unlike before. Screaming girls and The Dick Clark Bandstand, learning all the variations of dances. I would begin my practice. The rock groups would be a great distraction and interruption of how I proceeded. I wish it could be said; there were no interruptions. My mother’s standards began to slip. She was ill equipped to deal with a tenacious teenager and her strictness was wearing down. I was 17 and she was 57. How could she be a match? She certainly tried.

School became secondary and being at home watching television was what I managed. I would write my excuses and she would sign them. If the school knew they overlooked it or my mother went to bat for the poor widow’s daughter. 

Then the 11th grade teachers found me out. A friend of my older brother, then 30 would come and be a teacher's aid, as he studied to be a teacher. This was to be his practice and he was good friend's with my brother. I began to be motivated.

I was called into the Principal's office. Surely I had been found out for taking my weekly escape as a skip to my dance practice. Dick Clark, and whatever I could find on TV. They told me in the office I had taken IQ test and I was smarter than I responded in my schooling. Was this the influence of my brother's friend, who I wanted to impress: Or were the hormones finally reaching my brain cells. Still dissatisfied with something I didn’t understand. I would go to the girls bathroom and pinch my cheeks, before I went to hang out after school with my brother's friend. It was my warped take on pretend rouge. Another male influence in a new search.

Stuck

                 The colors of clouds on a sunny day.     

They float before me to wrap me in words.

I’m floating across the sky in tender forms.

Talking softly I am held by memory.

Does remembrance offer wellness?

 My fire dances across the sky. 

                                   Tattooing itself with each touch.

Caring me to these life letters.

I’m seized in love songs.

The colors of clouds on a sunny day excite my motion.

I am embraced with visions of arms that support and comfort.

I am once again well!

I am not sick, I am stuck!

 

I wish to find my moments in time, caring for myself. I am not in need of care, I wait for love and smiling at who I am. How is it I feel so stuck, continually waiting, out of reach, in a universal wish for what I don’t have. I know it exists somewhere as I wait. Truth lies somewhere. I was trained in areas where struggle found itself constant, now as I am recreated. The excitement leads me into a new life where I don’t need to complain, only accept.

Blinded by your light

Blinded

 If I were blind, I wouldn’t see

I would want to touch your face

Making my mouth’s eyes behold

Your textures within each contour

Tastings heats my lips and I burn

Yet I can observe and grasp

With vision so bright I’m raised

Without taste my lips are cold.

Lacking my brilliance once again

Blinded by your light

Brace yourself

Longing to connect

Not a moment of warmth

Compassion in fleeting moments

Holding to interest that didn’t belong

Escaping to labels for excuses

When will I own who I am

When will I speak my truth

I remember sitting on a couch at someone's home with a bunch of my classmates. All of us were teenage girls, waiting for an historical moment on Ed Sullivan. The Beatles were to make their first appearance in the United States. Was I holding my breath hyperventilating? I don’t know just seeing myself tightly squeezed waiting. We didn’t fully understand the gravity of what was about to happen. I don’t have a clue or how we found out, or who was there. This was February before my 18th Birthday in July. My hormones had just made an appearance. Doctors had no idea why I was delayed. I was bone thin from a battle with my mother about eating. The doctors put me on a diet to gain weight. I was to drink a chalky white drink: Metrical.  A food replacement became a food addition for me, adding them to my, not so regular meals.

Before the Beatles, I was a teenage girl without hormones or breasts. I became an experiment in perfection. For a teenage girl this was my inconsistent beginnings to womanhood. They gave me one of the earliest birth control pills to regulate me. They were very strong and my stomach was always upset with nausea. Didn’t they know I was not to be regulated.  I don’t even know if my mother knew they were birth control pills. I had been under another form of mother’s tutelage. My shoulders were to be held back for they were slumped. Promptly I was to walk the length of our house with books balanced on my head and with my tenacious personality I only had half measures of perfection and the books would fall. In the spirit of my mother against wanting me to be perfect in her eyes, I continually failed All this her lack of perfection she felt was to be fixed and portrayed in me. She gave me a shoulder brace. It was to pull my shoulders back.

I wanted a bra and instead I got a brace. While I didn’t need a bra I had gone and bought one. I had money of my own from various working endeavors. I always joke I was the first girl to get a bra and the last to need one. I got a bra when I was 14, then it was replaced with a brace.