September 12, 2012

• ElectricPoetry: Another One Gone

  

  Saturday night one of my neighbors was taken to the hospital by an emergency vehicle. A pretty regular occurrence in a senior mobile park. But always sad, and even sadder when one knows the person being taken from their home. Jim is one of the guys I've befriended in the three years I've been here, and at 54 he's considered pretty young. He'd been hospitalized nine months ago because of complications involving his liver, and subsequently quit drinking alcohol. The cirrhosis is what put him back in Sat. night. It was touch and go for a while. He was in a coma for almost three days. He's on the mend now, and will hopefully be back home shortly. (EDIT: 6:00pm. I was called over to visit the family after I got home from work. Jim did seem better last night, but the poison in his system got the better of him, and he passed away this morning at around 9am. I have offered my deepest condolences to his mother and sisters.)

  When I got into work yesterday, allowing for weird and strange coincidences, there was a message on my Xanga chatboard from Linda, sister to my old friend Tom, who passed from this life after an industrial accident at 37 over 25 years ago. Linda's message was that another friend from high school, Evan Bridwell, had passed away recently. The cause of death was cirrhosis of the liver.

  Today is the 11th anniversary of 9/11. My tribute post (first posted in 2001) was posted last year at this time on my blog. Again, as always, I seem to be thinking about our exit from this existence, and following are some poems dealing with the subject. I haven't written a tribute poem for Evan. I hadn't seen him for 30 or 40 years. The first poem presented below was written in 2010 following the passing of another old friend from high school, Steve Buck, who, similarly, I hadn't seen in ages.

   

  "Existential Pallbearer"
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  8/22/10 9:12 p.m. pdt

  Somebody else always dies
  Sometimes I think they're just dropping like flies
  No need to try to answer the whys
  This is only truth, don't stagnate with lies

  I shall lift the casket with ease
  Send it to heaven, aloft through the trees
  Out on the ocean, adrift on the seas
  Or where ever imagined if you please

  The end's the beginning I've said that for years
  But that doesn't stifle the hurt or the tears
  Knowing's no comfort, the pain really sears
  And nothing can really erase all the fears

  I bid you goodbye like a really good friend
  Even though I wasn't there at the end
  I remember the good times around the bend
  And shan't ever wear the clothes that I rend

  Next time I see you I'll be at your side
  If wishes were horses we surely will ride
  around memory's his'try and time we will bide
  Cause I will be gone soon in time and with tide

  So long and forever your heart still and gone
  We shared some love and good times my friend
  I wish I'd made more of an attempt all along
  Before your ship sailed to connect once anon.

   

  "Mortality"
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  3/27/07 7:28am pdt

  We only experience the pain of loss
  The dead cannot console us with their presence
  We don't claim to understand
  No amount of care or grief can eradicate the
  final fact of life.

  We pray,
  We shed tears of sadness
  We embrace the memories of fullness
  which existed along with the lives of
  our deceased

  Impermanence is permanent
  Surprise and shock reign supreme
  Sadness, eloquence,
  Memory, sustenance
  Simple plans gone awry too often

  As the physical body ages,
  and as the sands of time
  fall through the glass
  ever faster
  and more erratic
  loss becomes normalcy
  eventually

  The longer one's life exists,
  the more apt other lives are
  to cease this existence,
  until loss,
  although never mundane or routine
  seems somewhat normal
  as others who lived
  now do not.

  When the rapid amount of loss
  weighs heavy on the soul,
  grief turns to questioning again
  Even after decades of knowledge
  display to the living that mortality
  severs the cords of
  both the most righteous
  and the most callous
  Nothing prepares this life
  for the loss of another.

  And surely nothing prepares this life
  for the succeeding loss of yet
  another,
  and yet another.

  But time is not cognizant of mortality's blade,
  and memory will soon become all that is
  left of another life, now deceased
  until memory dies
  and mortality appears on the doorstep
  with hat in hand

  The reaper is not a grim figure
  but a sullen sad and lonely cipher
  suddenly showing up to declare
  our mortality survives
  even as our lives are eradicated

  "The Constant PallBearer"
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  June 25, 2005 7:25 a.m. pdt

  Mom and Dad, I miss you both immensely
  Even though I fear I forget your faces oftentimes
  The shiny white walls of the hospitals never glistened for me
  And when they put your bodies in the ground
  The walls could fade and burnish, lose their lustre,
  And for me this was a revelation of respect
  I will talk to you in silence, free from those hospital walls
  Free from the sickening alcohol smells
  And the overweight nursing staff with their
  pinned up hosiery
  Plodding through the halls with the shiny walls
  Those are not missed at all

  Tom, I never even gave you the respect
  of visiting you in those halls of dissolution
  The sights and sounds and smells of sickness
  didn't touch me as we telephoned our concerns
  And seeming lack, as we knew you
  would never walk again, but we didn' t know
  you would never breathe either.
  The casket was incredibly heavy
  holding your girth and weight,
  which, now, has gone the way of the worm
  leaving nothing but raucous memories
  weaving between the wormwood

  Bob, I will never forget
  you, lying, naked on the bathroom floor
  No hospitals for you, just another
  evening trip to the shi**er, the last trip.
  Joel banging on the door
  needing to take a pi** and you wouldn't open it
  because your life was gone,
  and no matter what we did
  you wouldn't be revived.
  47 seems like such a young age to leave

  Cutedog, I still grieve for your passing,
  The disease never showed itself on your website
  Only happy bunnies and blooming flowers
  Only your words of comfort hovering
  over someone's perceived sadness
  But never yours
  The day I "visited" you on the internet
  and the website remained in limbo
  for a while
  but you weren't around to update anymore
  It had been a while since you had left
  But I didn't know
  And now I do

  Dan you were so full of life
  The 'Crazy Canuck' with a beer and a joint
  Still living in the same neighborhood in Toronto
  where you grew up.
  Working at the same elementary school
  you attended
  You traveled, you had many friends,
  You always came back to SoCal to see us
  and we had such grand times
  Until that day last year Joel called and
  you couldn't answer becuase that pneumonia
  stifled your presence forever
  and you weren't even 50
  We still can't believe you are gone

  The souls of humankind gather together in eternity
  On Earth we become pallbearers for existence
  We pray, we plead, we shed a tear, and we go on
  for a while at least, until it is our time.
  We command soulgrief and we carry the
  weight of time's coffin until we lay down for the last time

  The burden of existence is not carried by the dead
  They are free of all bothersome questioning
  Until that time as we are released from our burden
  we will worry, we will mourn, and we will remember
  and at some future time, perhaps in a decade
  perhaps in a couple of minutes,
  we will join Mom, Dad, Tom, Bob, and Dan in eternity
  And we might be mourned until
  our mourners join us as well
  in the place nobody knows exists
  but everybody will experience
  at the time that someone else
  becomes the constant pallbearer

  "Solitary Man"
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  03/22/10 6:11 a.m. pdt

  In the long ago I proved to be quite popular
  involved in separate cliques
  with revolving groups of friends
  I had my "buddies" with whom I could talk for hours
  (about nothing in particular)
  and counted good friends among my peers
  who would drop anything if I needed them
  Some friends were male, and some were female
  Some were young (and gay), and some were older
  Life was good in the long ago

  Years passed almost unawares
  Then people passed
  but of them I was aware
  Good "buddies" died
  and other buddies moved away
  I lost touch
  My friendships became acquaintences
  Yet life seemed good
  Not too long ago I had lovers
  Although sometimes love
  didn't enter into the equation
  At least there was the illusion
  of companionship
  Lovers passed on,
  and roommates took their places
  in conversation
  but at least there was conversation

  A few years ago
  some supposed friends turned out to have been
  plotters and thieves
  stealing my money as well as my trust
  and I let them go
  (or they went to jail)
  Two years ago the last roommate died
  and I still think as fondly about him
  as I do lost lovers, or those cliques
  from the long ago.

  Growing older, I got involved in online life
  and I proved to be quite popular
  involved in separate cliques
  with revolving groups of friends
  I had connections around the globe
  People in other countries would call me
  and I could talk for hours
  (about nothing in particular)
  I even met in "real life" some online friends
  and even found at least a
  couple of lovers in cyberspace

  But when I turn off the computer
  most of these
  online friendships disappear
  as if they never existed
  except in memory and thought
  I have become the solitary man,
  accepting of life, and my fate,
  interacting with workmates and customers,
  and chatting up service personnel at times
  I'm quite friendly with the mailwoman
  in the few minutes in which we say hello

  Has friendship disappeared for me?
  Are lovers only found in memory?
  Is friendship only to be found amongst Facebookers
  And Xangans?
  I find myself wanting to talk for hours
  (about nothing in particular)
  but I don't know who to call
  and the only time the phone rings is
  from telemarketers
  (and I don't want to talk to them)
  I'm happy with life, I tell myself.
  I attempt to forge new friendships,
  but most of them are merely acquaintences
  in the long run.

  Does true friendship die along with old friends?
  Or is this lonliness merely another
  block of time, to be followed by
  more social gatherings,
  more cliques,
  and more conversations which last for hours
  (about nothing in particular)
  I have enough to fill my time (I claim)
  Entertainment and creative choices abound
  Yet
  I sometimes wonder,
  And as the years pass,
  I seem to wonder more often in the
  solitary hours between
  idle
  conversations
  (about nothing in particular)
  if I were fated to be the
  ever present social butterfly
  or merely the solitary man.

  Posted: September 11, 2012 7:41 AM

  • 11:57 am
  • 18 Comments