A mind of many matters has grown close to the culture farthest away. The dark days of the year are upon me and I need to let some things go. The Creoles and the Latinos, heights afar and tongues astray, but the love, the passion, the depth. Its all in me, yet was never around me. If you click and read, I hope your eyes and ears are open, just as mine have been for years.
The mysticism of Voodoo has appealed to me for years. I scrounged for books in the library, my mother never shielding my curiosity, only my ident
ity. The librarians get scared when you those words, but she knew it as my wonder that took my steps, not any perverse out-cry or out-lashing. I put pen to paper in 10th grade, diving rather shallow from my backwoods ledge in upstate N.Y. To be fair where fair is concerned, my mother had given me the cassette “Jimi Blues”, Hendrix plugged into his given sound. In my eyes the Catholic-based yet Catholic-biased faith, Voodoo that is, tests the depths of your beliefs and the danger of your souls. Fear is what drives a man, one way or another. Fear of failure, fear of acceptance, fear of denial, fear of over-looking. You can’t run from fear, because you are fear.
I believe Voodoo’s darkness, the evil crawling underneath us all. The devil is one hard swing of the axe from filling our heads and sucking us below. Or….the depths represent a challenge, that thin sheet of ice you test in November. One person has to creep out and see if the pond is frozen. That same soul tip-toes out to the center line, daring the traffic to zip over the hill.
I’m a Voodoo Chile. I walk over to that line.
The examples can run free. I shame away from some, scars evident outside, piercing inside. Others are my badge, my merit. I can. And I will. I’ve never feared death, just expected its approach much sooner. My grandfather was gone at 37, a mine blast scarred his heart in his early 20s, ensuring his exit as quick as my father entered. I feel I’ve been sitting at death’s stoop forimg_1712.jpg years, living my days that are to be lived. I fear. Just like you fear. I am rash, just as I fear. I fear to love, just as it broke me. Fear loves me, just as I enable it. And fear replaces that love, the shadow form of remembrance bubbling to the surface each day.
Its a dark time for me. I am a machine. The worker bee. I have no balance. No pleasure, without guilt. I put in 32 hours by Wednesday and fall over the edge on a day off. I see no end at the road only the ice and snow awaiting my bare feet. I’ve been to that party before. I pledged my life to its course. I pledged my self to her.
I sold myself to the devil.. The she-devil. Taketh the money, pound your fingers and pound you head to stay near her. Selfless and loving compromised. I chose not my this, and took not my that. I tried to please them all, instead of pleasing within.
Voodoo seeks the weak, the stretched. Sacrifice is pure and sacrific
e is healthy. I am the sacrifice. But who is the healthy?
I never had the ‘boys in the neighborhood” and I always looked for them. Wishing my neighbor would be home, maybe I could go over and play. Just hang out. Something new. Not so much. So my boys became my animals. I took care of a quarter horse, Claudia, and in a Horse-Whisperer moment, could get her to run 200-yard sprints around me one moment and stop and rest her head on my shoulder the next. Never got on her back, an over-sized dog she was. Many dogs I’ve taken out in the dark cold of an Adirondack night. Husky, Labrador, Rottweiler, Pit Bull, Golden Retriever, without as much as a flashlight.
I’ve cornered Rhode Island reds, played tag with steer, ridden fattened swine, and grazed the goats. My neighborhood rarely got ruff, unless you count a Billy goat horning my head and Angus, all 140 pounds of black rottweiler, keeping that raw steak for in his teeth. Humans are too complex, changing day to day. I can’t keep up, its not healthy for me to see so much difference. I longed for the day when I would leave that land and see everything in the books. And just this quickly, I want back. Mundane me. Pain my hands with raking leaves. Boredom and necessity cut the grass. Clean the pool again, two days later. For the plane over head, might see a tint of algae sour the crystal blue of fake water.
Now I am trapped. I am inside the cage, looking out. I spin on the wheel, feet running every faster, tasks mounting so. Bring the cheese into my small box, and I shall run on that wheel ever faster. Look how fast you did that. Now do it without the cheese. My cage is inside a vast room of others, spinning different wheels, so get breaks, another to run on the wheel for a bit. This wheel is greased, not much effort to spin it. This other one requires expert foot work to spin, it showing ridges and complexity. And what about the cheese – what happened to that cheese that led you into the cage? Why was it taken away? How many times have looked for the cheese? Will that cheese holder ever return? I don’t like that cheese. I think of the other cheese. Two things are forever tied in my life. One left and I am too consumed to leave the other.
That’s my darkness, hidden in metaphors and twisted tales. These days, I don’t leave my computer, but for six hours of sleep. I don’t get cheese. And I can’t find Voodoo….because its already found me.
…….as always, my poems. this is me on the wheel, spinning away…
The Jeykill is leaving
my Hyde to do the work
My footbsteps and my work
are dragging me away
I look to my strengths
to my valor
to keep me from crumbling.
All my hopes and dreams
all my fears and doubts
got put in your basket.
I made that mistake
I loved you too much.
Blinded myself in the process.
Pushed everything to the side
longed for the girl I fell for.
She was a mirage, something so fake.
I will lace them up again
seek my direction
As if…
–VC
