A Trilogy;"Please Forgive my Trespass..III"

A Poets Advice (by ee cuumings)


"A real human is somebody who feels and who expresses his or her feelings. This may sound easy. It isn't.

A lot of people think or believe or know what they feel---but that's thinking or believing or knowing: not feeling. And being real is feeling---not just knowing or believing or thinking.

Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but it's very difficult to learn to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know , you're a lot of other people: but the moment you feel you're nobody -but-yourself

To be nobody -but-yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human can fight; and never stop fighting."





I woke this morning with my usual exuberance and zeal, catapulting from bed with gymnast facility. Purpose and Prednisone torqued with instant abundance, kinetic now with anticipation and efficacy that dismisses sleep; a mere inconvenience of necessity. It feels as though Prometheus himself had handed me the fire of enlightenment in my dreams, elucidating inquiry, now incandescent with resolution, ablaze with certainty; stay out of my way! Caffeine and unpredictability brew urgency and exasperation. And soon innocuous conversation eclipse the promise of contentment that sunrise usually brings me. Suddenly the proximity of my invective and derisive stridency turns aggressive and devolves into animus, becoming malicious and entertaining, cat-like in execution; my prey overwhelmed by intensity and volume.


Once again my humility goes unrestrained. Its indiscretion belongs in the wilderness, howling in the wind with out an audience to placate it. My defiance goes unrewarded there,as it should, unable to wield conceit and acrimonious scorn. I'm always expecting satisfaction for my misguided hubris. Oh! the pathos of ego.What halcyon do I aspire? Is this a Ruse? This adolescents prank, whose sophomoric impulsiveness surges toxicity, its turmoil vexes my sensibilities and threatens my preservation. Reflux with convulsive force, undifferentiated like the corresponding cancer that has taken residency in me. How do I ventilate this caustic accellerant I persecute myself with and everyone else, vilifying the world because of it.


Unfamiliar depression looms somewhere out on a horizon that doesn't beckon the sun, the tide doesn't swell there, only accountability and I fear, dreaded consequence awaits. Is that where I vanquish this discontent? Barter compromise and offer gratitude, where none is to expected? Expectations, always aspiring preeminence and soars so close to its desire, spewing illumination, thrust centrifugally, like magnetic attraction to solar gravity and light. Like Daedalus my newly crafted wings of ascendancy become incinerated in a swirling updraft of my own infatuation and eventually in my descent, dripping melted expectation that burns with frustration. I grow tired of this illusory flight plan.


Sweaty futility leaves me dehydrated, my wings are heavier and burdensome now. I surrender to depression's darkness. It grabs at my ankles with the vengeance of that dreaded consequence, unforeseen, perhaps not. Its unfamiliarity tingles electric on the bottoms of my feet, sharp needles where I no longer feel the ground beneath them. Just air, stagnant with my own breath, crackling with foreboding.


The pressure in my head amplifies indistinct murmuring that intensifies, shouting entreaties for forgiveness. Guilt reveals itself from the cacophony, a shrill voice poised with glowering satisfaction that shatters in my head, erupting with shards of kaleidoscopic glass, freeze-framed in inanimate old bargaining chips worthless now with overuse. I wince at my own memories, indistinguishable now, veiled in diaphanous confusion of past and present. The future no longer exists, I fear. This feeling reverberates with concussive frequency, helpless in hypnotic submission, slack-jawed and limp; impaled with the shrapnel of despair. It crystallizes into sadness and regret shredding what's left of my tenuous confidence and fledgling resolve, only newly commissioned, not yet battle tested for this.


Solitude tastes bitter and metallic. My consciousness slips deeper,I long for sleep and the promise of morning seems so far away now. My ascendancy that was mine gasps under the weight of my own mass, choking in viscera and phlegm. Panic conspires opportunistically with the Chimera who totes fear and the instruments to exact my acquiescence. How much more must I surrender? I've relinquished flesh and bone, my blood eviscerated, and my marrow doesn't belong to me entirely. Haven't I earned it yet? I traded my my dignity for it, must I give up my soul as well?


Free falling I flail about reflexively, a wounded carcinomorphic creature;still incomplete, defensively prostrate, no longer predatory for truth but whimpering for absolution to avoid depressions appointment, attendant by doubt, discharged in darkness, all its abstraction undercover. For all intents and purposes, I've been discarded with barely my instincts intact exsanguinated by apathy.


I look into your eyes always nearby,watching. Vigilance disguises the wreckage your tortured with. The enigma of denial so difficult to verify with the illusion of improvement, that often blood work and pretense belie. Our endurance slips away slowly, not conditioned to scrimmage this struggle indefinitely. The assault too wearisome and bewildering ." How much longer must I be assigned this awful trust?"(...till death do us part) Death by attrition? Even my force of will, stubborn and headstrong as it is isn't strong enough without the buttress of support she braces my determination with. "How can you not know that?" My impatience is only jaded intractability, fearful of losing my supremacy and relevance. Suddenly an old man too soon, effectively useless, with too much time to resent this violation wrought on me, so cruelly inflicted; who do I blame for that? In disenchantment I sip the poison of hope, beguiled by it's seductive possibilities. But whom, may you ask, grants this reconciliation? Isn't a positive attitude enough?


I bludgeon away at delusion when I can, it's tantalizing allure tastes bittersweet though and disappointment isn't that nourishing. I had not intended for the narrative of my experience to be so self-indulgent; full of white noise and disillusionment. But it's hard to be on someones' to do list, harder still to be reminded that I still need to be.


I yearn once again for the insecurity of spontaneity, the blissful callow of my youth and it's incumbent ignorance. Answers that alluded me then, still do. Questions remain as they will with lives not yet lived. I should find contentment in that and rejoice in the adventures still to be had. Unfortunately, all my insight is corrupted by a half century of dispatch and practical stubbornness. Coping skills honed by a lifetime of crisis, myriad experience, and bad luck. Chiseled from my own intransigence and deluded invincibility. Finely burnished with the perspective of time and the wisdom of character, pieced together haphazardly to construct a foundation of principles that with steely grip I clutch to so protectively still. But to live with something is to become oblivious to it. I'm learning to resist that temptation only now. Upheaval will do that. One at a time, I'm abandoning those propensities defined to a large extent by default.


There is no exclusivity to this purpose for anyone. No single path to follow. There is no mandate, but oblivion is yours that relegates themselves to apathy. Evolution is in your grasp. It is not mine alone.


I am but a glimpse into possibility. A representative from cancer's netherworld and the purgatory of self-examination; a soldier of the ghosts of survivors past. Armed with the practical skills that will secure my transformation, gleaned from science, reason, and introspection; not surrender, as it must. I aspire for truth, faith and the certainty in the opportunities that my evolution has brought about. Not passively to be sure (ask my wife!), but with passion and persistence that will not dissipate or wane as long as I have breath. Hey! I'm fighting cancer, what have you done lately? So please.... forgive my trespass.


Nel,

forgive my tortuous mania and frenzied exuberance, my selfish zeal that trespass on your increasing burden.

And while I accelerate towards some as of yet undisclosed destination, slamming into everything and everyone along the way, I look to you for steady resolve, for guidance I'm unable to give myself.

Everyday I bask in your peace and kindness. You give to me of yourself so completely, so inwaveringly . I could do more if you would only ask!

You are my light afterall. I'm drawn to it as inevitably as a moth to flame. So be still my gentle heart, if for only a little while. I will be strong again to sweep you off your feet, away from this madness that besets us both, with all the love and adulation that I possess.

Always at your side, I believe we will be in a better place for it, in the end, because of you!

With all my love...forever and ever.