The Beauty of Broken Things

 

Broken lines, 

couched in jagged curves;

a jetstream of white light,

a splash of grey shadow ~ 

all reflections of 

my monotonous heart.

She thirsts for you, 

feels parched in your absence.

Missing the fluid velvet

of your touch,

of your taste ~

reflecting, 

upon the beauty of broken things.

Photo Credit: DeviantArt

Poetry: Roxanne Galpin

We All Live Downstream

they say there's a wreckage washing up
all along the coast
no-one seems to know too much
or who got hit the most
nothing has been spoken
there's not a lot to see
but something has been broken
that's how it feels to me

we had a harmony
I never meant to spoil
now it's lying in the water
like a slick of oil
the tide is running out to sea
under a darkening sky
the night is falling down on me

little seabird flying
he knows where he wants to go
guess I ought to pack my stuff
and do the thing I know
I turn around and head on back
along the old sea wall
I felt something give and crack
and now I'm sorry that's all

a bloody dove and the rocky road

its all so painfully surreal - all this loss occuring all around the world. i watched a newsclip of a rescue scene this am: some paramedics performing chest compressions on a man who was in a car that broad-sided a moving train. it made me cry.

and then i change the channel, just in time to see some mexican fisherman (a crewman of some giant spanish fishing armada) fling a giant sea turtle off the side of the boat, into the water - to its death.

and then i change the channel and hear about all the deaths in afghanistan and iraq. and then i just push the best button the remote offers me: OFF.




and ... i try to live with that unnerving anxiety that, those i love will die before i see them again. or that someone will do something ghastly to me in my sleep. all of these people killed suddenly - i bet their loved ones expected to see them once more ... those that slept in the dormatory - i'll bet they didn't wonder what they would do if a crazy dude with a glock got into their room and started shooting them. i will go crazy if i perseverate on this. but - in a chilling and twisted way, its a fascinating thread of thought. and precisely the meaning i load into that phrase i love to utter - 'one never knows.'

i want to hear and feel and see some good news, for a change. is there any?



i cannot watch TV, save for those ridiculous things like trailer park boys, rick mercer, this hour has 22 minutes, little mosque on the prairie, corner gas, robson arms. anything else i watch seems dripping with loss, violence, carnage, cruelty. for sure - any and every news cast makes the silent tears flow. all this collective grief, i feel it, @ times, coursing thru my veins.

it almost all makes me wanna go out there, after class, and find a copy of hannibal - one of the hannibal lector books. extreme, i know. (what i really want to read is hannibal rising - but i cannot afford the hardcover price.) but i crave the sort of read that provides a story about a character, suffering a most intense, and concentrated, almost unbearably painful existence. or ... the alternative is go to that used CD store on granville and look for magic & loss. what're the chances i'd find lou reed in the used cd store? pretty good i figure. hmmmm ... maybe if i make myself a reeeeeal guuuuud bargain hunter, i can buy both. i like that thought. i like it alot.



ok. now my thoughts have swirled into some lovely, silly, colourful salad of detail and sentiment. its amazing to me - i know this seems silly - to observe my own self growth, thru my actions and responses to others. sitting here in class, i hear the mutterings of students who feel frustrated by rocky course of learning a new skill or concept. it generates negative energy. they don't know what to do with said energy. they complain. they rant. the blame. instructors get the brunt of it - in much the same way children love to blame their mothers for just about everything.

and ....

i can no longer get hooked into that passive-agressive style of frustration management. so i listen, politely deflect any invitations to gossip, and suggest positive actions i would/have take in a similar situation. and i ask myself silently, why does anyone expect that their learning work entails writing the tuition cheque and showing up for class? what happened to personal responsibility for own learning? the instructor did not get hired to solve every student's difficulty. the instructor - s/he's our sherpa, guiding us thru the rugged sojourn of raising one's own learning curve. but the work - its the student's. make no mistake about it. your sherpa will guide you up the path ... but s/he will certainly NOT carry you to the summit! you must carry yourself to that height! and ... hey - sometimes the sherpa maybe needs to consult the map - what's wrong with that? nuthin, i say. nuthin at all. its good modelling - demonstrating that one's learning experiences never really end. just a little plug for instructors and teachers everywhere. we would never get to the destination we seek, if not for teacher - my thanx to you all.

to serve humanity

i entered nursing to make a difference in the lives of others. to serve humanity. to relieve suffering. inspired by my 'special' son, and his frequent contact with the medical system, i traded in my civil servant, speech writing hat for a stethoscope. my nursing training focussed on holistic, patient-centred care and emphasized critical thinking. in essence, what kind of nurse do i want to be and why? after a few months of acute care practice, I started to grasp the importance of those questions. they framed my practice. in every task, in every interaction, in every intervention, a nurse makes a subconscious choice as to the kind of nursing in which she wishes to engage. as i gained more experience i appreciated a new dimension to the question 'what kind of nurse do i want to be?'

as i gained more experience on the surgical nursing unit, it became clear to me that a nurse's role centres around the patient's response to illness and unwellness. that means bedside care. the paraphenelia, the pumps that beep and hum, the plastic and rubber tubes which we insert into peoples' orifaces, the needles, vials, and pills - a nurse these do not make. a nurse engages with patients whose body betrayals have thrust a painful metamorphosis upon their lives. with serious illness often comes loss of some kind. loss of normality, normalcy. loss of independence. loss of the little things which we encompass in our daily lives.

no amount of morphine, or iv fluids or physiotherapy will cure this sort of loss. the art of nursing lies in the delicate skill of assisting our patients in navigating the changes associated with these losses, in adjusting to an altered health status. and in guiding them to rebuild with what remains. with diginity. with compassion. and always, always, always while doing no harm.
this navigating - its the primary and most essential piece of a nurses' job, and yet its the part of the job for which we seem to have the least amount of time. and therin lies the incredible heartbreak of nursing practice.

i saw you: about my 2nd son

i saw you today. and my heart impaled itself on the searing, serrated tip of my own guilt. guilt over you. and, tendrils of shame stroked my raw and bleeding soul. shame. the shame of a fallen angel. shame. self loathing. it beats down on my chest. sucks the oxygen from the my lungs. whips the serenity out of my heart. pierces the tiniest capillaries of hope and light that nurture my ugly self. shattered light. and leaking darkness. leaking. darkness.

i saw you today. from afar. oh, distant fruit of mine. i felt you there. sitting. crouched. on the front steps. shielding yourself from the world outside your head. from the invasion of sensory information you do not have the capacity to filter. i touched that place in my chest where you used to lay your head. and i felt a stirring. my body remembers you, my child. and aches for what could have been. for what should have been.

i saw you today. i knew instantly. even before my brain took awareness from my senses. i felt you. in that part of my heart and soul which i've locked away. locked away from myself. that part of my heart and soul that got crumpled and torn on that day we gave you away. crumpled and torn - i'm crumpled and torn. and you, my damaged child. you hold such beauty and light in your essence. such beauty for which i do not feel worthy.

i saw you today. you did not see me. i glimpsed you from afar. your special, glimmering light cast a shadow on my dark heart. godspeed my child. godspeed. i wish for you much love. love that's as fierce and abundant as this aching darkness in my chest.

image originally uploaded by demagistris

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a note to my readers - this is the sort of stuff that i need to write. that i have longed to write for so long. that i have feared to write at the old blog, for fear of cruel or snarky judgement from the self righteous few who feel obliged to judge anything that does not reflect their small window on the world. thank you, if you have read this, for witnessing this darkest part of my humanity. i feel like if its on the page, its not inside, infecting me.

crushed creation

crushed. how i felt. this afternoon on the bus. on my way to see my drug dealer. and watching the humans around me, swirling like lemmings on a fly wheel. the feelings slid from my heart and sat in the pit of my stomach like a rotten meal.

crushed, i felt. and sick with sadness. thinking to self 'no lonelier have i felt in this adulthood than right now.' thinking to self 'now what?' pondering recent losses. the loss of truth. the loss of community. the loss of vocation. loss of dearest canine friend imaginable. does that spell the loss of purpose? for, i still ask myself, 'now what?' and, my psyche's teeming with questions and postulations and pondering the potential.

a swirling mass of unstable isotopes dancing in my head. and ... no one with which to reflect to reflect upon this confused tangle of life. but me. and, sometimes it just isn't enough. and, the love of my life? well, he's gone awol. gone awol into his cases of beer. gone awol into his hang over. gone awol into his hours of deep snoring slumber. hours. spent alone. with myself. and ... no one. why? how? how can a soul so deeply attached and committed to another feel such utter desolation?

the cusp of change. its barbed. and it hurts. and we're there - me and him. i feel it. i see it. its all around us. each moment burgeons with the future's possibilities. stunning. plethoric. unfathomably mammoth. like ... standing at the edge of the solar system. our solar system. looking into the blinding light of darkness. the blinding light of unknown. what lies ahead.

what lies ahead?

image originally uploaded by theronin

i plucked you away

originally uploaded by daniel morris

searing …soul crushing …relentless pain
smothering me
the fruit of my mothering …
plucked away from me …
by me ... by us
and reduced to a large plastic bag

he came to collect your belongings today
the man walked out with everything … you …
casually, like a bag of garbage

the door closes behind the man with the bag
leaving me imprisoned in my sorrow
an image of you, etched in my heart
elfin child - soft ivory skin, long chestnut lashes
intoxicating squeals of laughter

each day that passes
without you
the deeper and more palpable my loss becomes
my respirates
i do not feel alive