Stained Glass

[Nazz]

I know you are religious and I am too. I could never begin to thank and condemn every corner of the cosmos responsible for such a voyage. Sometimes I need truth like a man whose hair is on fire seeks a pond and sometimes I never get outside a window stained with rain.

At least I have sleep. I had a dream last night where I found myself near south central LA and the Rodney King riots in time-space, and the people who gave me refuge had a certain beautiful defiance of inevitability. Dream photographs of that old bungalow came up, the visuals were so clear. Just to look outside meant a sense of dread sometimes, in the oil stains, the bent street sign, the listless cypress and birch. We wanted to ride out the storm. Time seemed to shift when I ventured out. When I made it back to the bungalow it was abandoned, falling apart. I woke.

Travel light, maybe. Embrace unexpected direction, wonder why it was unexpected. I barely manage one toothbrush on the road and the news keeps on fucking like rabbits, producing streams of newsrabbits exponentially. Some of them have wide jaws but you really can't tell them apart, excited by boredom. At least the children seem to have some sort of handle on logic.

I prefer a conversational style. Mom is dying of cancer and I talk to her. I hold her hand. I give her my love, what else is left to give? I can't put into words sudden sorrow. Sometimes I need to be away from it for a while to save sanity, at least for another night, and I wonder what else is out there. I have no story, at least for now.

[justwalt]

I guess life picks away at us, as the vultures pick at their breakfast on the roadside. What is left behind is only memory, seemed just a patchwork of entries, filed in the folder titled, dreams. Be assured that change has no other choice, as it deposits another dull coin in the spare penny tray, at the store of our convenience.

walt

[Arcadia]

what else is left to give? sometimes internally you can´t avoid keep thinking that beyond rethoric and also beyond love... to convive with love ones´s -ing of cancer was extenuating, rough and a kind of alterate state of consciusness most of the time (at least for me). But it was also sweet and an still in process healing and deep learning.

and exponential rabbits! they reminded me a tale from Cortázar´s Bestiario.

text hard to read, nazz... it made me revisited some places. Gracias for sharing, brave writing!!!!!!!

[saw]

thanx for the courageous flow, the consciousness meets the dream, an interesting journey for the reader....I was expecting of course, given the title, the colored glass of churches, but cam to learn the glass was stained not with color, but rain....which is a great lead-in into the rest of the poem.....thanx for sharing !

[mtmynd]

fine piece you've crafted here, nazz, and it sounds as if it 'just flowed'...

it got me thinking about honest writing and how that demands reflection and/or the inclusion of our emotional pain...

[SmileGRL]

nazz, i read this and it showed me humanness and love.

here are two thoughts...one, sometimes we gotta put down the baggage of the world to deal with our personal baggage. and two, the time that you have with your mother right now is a gift. i'm not saying don't feel the burden or the weight of it and i'm not saying don't take a break from it when you need to, because it is a heavy thing. just...it's a gift.

and your gift of writing shone through the sadness in this piece. thank you for sharing this with us.

[Nazz]

Thank you all. I'm struggling now, no doubt. These days are hard. But I suppose it's better to feel pain than to not feel, not care. Keep going, I guess. Keep love.

I worked in a glass shop for a while. It struck me, the truth of glass, how similar a window is to a mirror. The one constant I have lately is pain. It's not my pain. Of course it's my pain. It's just one of those things. I really marvel at my dreams They are so vivid sometimes, the places I'm thrown, the places I see in such detail when I had no idea I'd be visiting. Sometimes I can't even identify where I am, but I'm unmistakably there. I remember the grim reality of life in that bungalow. I saw it, I lived it. It was palpable. I remember the people walking by. It's like that, sometimes.

[justwalt]

Hey nazz, I didn't comment about you and your mom's situation
before, but I feel like I'm right there withe you, in dealing with my
mom's situation. My thoughts and feelings are with you, and your
mom too...It's difficult to express these feelings at times, and I know
it can by equally difficult to even accept sympathy, especially from a
computer screen, but I'd like to just share our common knowing that
we have together, for any tiny amount of comfort it may bring.

Right now, my mom has a huge tumor inside her skull next to her
ear. Last year they used gamma rays, (gamma knife), to kill it, but
they cannot remove it. the few years before diagnosis, she complained of a slow loss of hearing and a slight loss of balance... the doctors chalked it up to old age and did nothing. Now the hearing is gone on that side and she falls quite often, sometimes hurting herself, sometimes not. But she is loosing cognitive functions on a daily basis now, mostly loss of short term memory. Luckily, the two of us are very close at heart. She is accepting her death with no less than an honest smile. We are both as ready as can be, but I still cannot say how I will be when she goes. I know what I want to
feel like, and how I want to send her off, but time will tell. Moms are
always the best of family members, and always the hardest to see
go. And the most I can do is share the love we have, and then hold
it close for the rest of my life.

Peace is scarce at these times, so I grab any that I can find. I am
hoping that you both have the opportunity to find much more.

walt

[hester_prynne]

Nazz the abandoned bungalow is such an incredible image here.
The lighter you travel, the heavier the partings. Conversation is good, walking her to the end of her road even better.
Your road will go on, and you can go back anytime to see her.
Not to an empty bungalow that's falling down, but to this beautiful oasis where she left you with her love, where she took yours with her.
Life is as cruel as it is beautiful.
My heart and hand go out to you....
You are an incredible writer Nazz.
H