The Harboring Of Fears Within... Poem by Frank James Ryan Jr...fjr

With quavering limbs and breath,
you gently lift the pine wood door
that carries the one who sleeps inside,
the one you kissed just yesterday,
the one who understood your strangeness,
the chaos and cobwebs in your tangled mind,
those delphian orbs and felled angels
that whisper into that empty space,
by Life's wood splintered cross.

And gone now, be the only one
who loved you, sheltered you
from life's cruel intentions,
a maternal love bearing-
no exceptions nor limits.

Who will care for me now, you question your self,
though your answer is lost in the question.
You really shouldn't have come here today,
'The service and burial too much to grasp,
said your friends, others call illusions.
You dream at night, and the voices are louder
'till the sky can be seen once again,
'till the demons over-rule the liquid in your vein.

I miss you, son, a distant voice murmurs
as you lay down your tarry in quiet confusion,
staring at the jagged cracked ceiling
from your strapped-down supine position,
studying...they look like varicose veins
that stretch across the top of the room,
old cracks
that suddenly remind you
of road-maps and boundaries,
memories and places
traveled in time-
for a moment in time
and again, you are somewhere else, far away.

Affixing on shadows,
you present queer expression
from distorted grey images
crossing your eyes,
harboring deep within your brain,
pricking your spine by its nerve-endings
like a seamstresses darning needle;

And the needle jogs a clarion flash
as you segway to another time
and place,
where your mum is cooking broiled scrod
in her Bean Street Boston kitchen,
watching the fluttering stove flame,
sparkle in blue and orange;
What are you doing, mummy, you ask?
Mummy sees her little boy has a splinter,
and you know you can't keep it,
so mummy will take it.

She takes the metal tongs,
pinches the needle at its head,
says, 'mummy would never hurt you';
now I need to see that finger
and pull that nasty splinter,
while you pray to the Archangel Raphael,
to give you courage, ..you pray, now, son.

Oh! Mummy, it burns! It burns!
So hot... as the tip of a matchstick
so strong, the white buds on his tongue
could taste the smoking sulfur
with Mummy's every stroke.
And success always ended with a hug,
a kiss, and some key lime pie.

Who will know where the needles are,
you try tapping your mind's earlier years.

NO-ONE! - says the Modigliani-
hanging on the pale pea green wall,
a stunning sleek woman, staring like stone
with her white empty sockets... darting.

She's with the sleeping now
where all good mummy's go,
and that's how love in Death must be
beyond the pine, outside the crypt...
as you attempt to exist within the space
that narrows so fast and disturbing,
upon the harboring of Fear within you.





Copyright- © MMXIX
Frank James Ryan Jr
All rights reserved