poetry-doggeral-et-al's name

Note#3--I keep getting readers saying they can't find: The Girl With the Cheshire Grin--Duh! I forgot I went with a different title--the other one makes more sense, but dunna expect any sense from me...ok?

(Note—a) is this a poem or a fable? I am not sure; b) did I write it? Again, not sure, felt like it wrote itself; c) it is the longest piece I have written—is it worth reading? You, dear reader will have to make that decision. Gotta admit I almost did not post this, but the blog does warn you of the potential for doggerel…Note#2--changed a couple of mis-used words and a typo)

“Follow me”, said the girl with the Cheshire grin,

“Let’s see what trouble we find down that hole”.

So I followed, I followed her right in,

Then I asked if I would come back out whole.

“Silly boy, what makes you think you’re whole now?

Why do you think I asked you to follow?

Do not you want to take a chance to grow?

Have you not looked and found your heart hollow”?

Then with an even bigger grin, she said,

“What have you to lose? I heard you last night,

When you sadly cried: ‘I wish I were dead’”.

And then she rapidly slid out of sight.

I followed that girl as fast as I could,

Still not sure I was doing the right thing,

But if I didn’t now, I never would.

She was right: nothing here to lose—nothing.

“I read this book! Alice In Wonderland—

I also remember this from the movie.

What more can I learn; can I understand?

Is there something new for you to show me”?

“Silly! This is not a rabbit warren;

There is no Red or White Queen below.

No, no, this is something far more foreign”.

She grinned—that Cheshire grin—and then to slow

I asked her why we were slowing our flight,

She laughed, “Dear boy, it’s relativity.

You see, we’re keeping pace with the light flow,

Faster is an impossibility.

Her words shocked, shocked me to my very soul,

There was no way that her words could be true.

I should not have followed her thru this hole,

And I prayed that this journey soon be through.

I was underground with a crazy girl,

I should have known before—the Cheshire grin!

And I found my mind racing all awhirl,

Wondering just what I had landed in.

She looked back and said, “You’re falling apart.

Remember, I said this will make you whole?

To bring you life, to fill your empty heart,

Is what brought us to traveling this wormhole”.

“Where does this take us? Where are we going?

Another universe? Another world”?

As I asked, I knew I feared knowing—

The idea had me, once again, awhirl.

I wasn’t sure I really believed her,

But, I know that I wanted it to be.

As if reading my mind, she looked over,

“We have to stay within your reality”.

Her smile broadened, her smile—that Cheshire grin!

It looked peculiar, not a bit perverse,

And she said, “It is not where, it is when;

It’s your life, not space, we need to traverse.

Wormholes can connect time as well as space—

It’s a time in your life, a time of peace—

We are going to when, not to a place;

A time where you can find needed release.

A release from sadness you hold so close,

A release from madness you might bring on,

A release from the fear that you might lose

Anyone who loves you, leaving you alone”.

“Will I see me happy—all together?

Will I have a family, will I have friends?

My future wife, will I get to see her?

I can hardly wait ‘til this wormhole ends”!

“Once more I will be very contrary:

The future is not what you want to see.

We would wind up in a cemetery,

Because, sorry to say, it’s where you’d be.

I came specifically, on this eve—

Any future time would have been too late.

For tonight you were to take your leave

Finally giving in to your self-hate”.

And then I awakened from this odd dream. My eyes were scrunched tightly shut, as if glued together; my heart was pounding so loudly in my ears it was as if I were in the midst of a drum corps; and I was profusely sweating, drenched. It all crashed back into my brain: I am going to end it today. So why am I so upset? Shouldn’t this decision bring me peace? I worked at calming myself, slowly working my eyes apart with my fingers; the heart was slowing down to a distant murmur; but I was still drenched in sweat and starting to feel a bit chilly. Wow! What a dream—I now knew what “lucid dreaming” meant, so real, so here-and-now. Wow! Once my eyes and ears were again usable a thing even odder than the dream occurred. I did not recognize my bedroom and I heard this slightly child-like voice. Then it became clear to me: I had finally lost it—I was now truly crazy.

Then a voice, a child-like voice, said to me,

“Silly boy, this is nowhere near a dream.

Look around, all around, what do you see”?

As I looked, I felt the tears start to stream.

“Is that my dad? And is that my mother?

That cannot be! They’re both many years, dead.

Is that Sissy laughing with her brother?

Can that be? Or is this just in my head”?

That Cheshire grin grew, grew even bigger

As she stared at me as if I were slow.

If words were a gun, she pulled the trigger:

“Odd, it is only you, you did not know.

Why do you think that is? Here is a hint:

It’s nineteen-fifty-one, one year before

You experience your life’s worst event,

And now you must follow me just once more”.

Dazed, I followed, through a second wormhole.

This tunnel seemed to be much, much shorter.

We popped out into a brightly lit hall

And we walked along this white corridor.

I recognized the smell, I knew this place;

I‘d been here before, many years before….

Once again, tears were streaming down my face,

As I thought of what was beyond that door.

I looked at the girl with the Cheshire grin,

A looked that asked why are you doing this?

“It is time to learn, you are going in,

Here you will learn where your life went amiss”.

My dying mother, I saw before me,

And I saw myself lying by her side.

I knew this was not right, this could not be,

As I was not with her the night she died.

“Only part of you made the decision

Not to be with her as she Pierced-the-Veil.

What you see is no more than a vision

Of your inner-child, also setting sail.

It is necessary for you to be there

As your mother releases her inner-soul.

You need to be with him, as well as her—

For you to have hope of becoming whole.

Go on in there, hurry up and go in”.

She said to me, she with the Cheshire grin.

I opened the door, edging slowly within,

Turning back again to that Cheshire grin.

As I looked the girl was fading away,

But still grinning, grinning that Cheshire grin.

Then I noticed, for the first time that day,

Her eyes, with love and tenderness within.

Entering, I looked towards a mirror

And saw a boy, who had barely turned five,

His head downcast, his face reflecting fear,

He was praying she would yet be alive.

He drew near and his mother raised her head,

Sadly smiled, and mouthed the words: “I love you”.

Then her head fell back—he knew she was dead,

He was too late to say: “I love you, too”.

“I told her for us both, as I held her,”

Said the other me, as he hugged me tight.

“I truly wanted to go with Mother,

I felt so terribly alone tonight.

You walked in, and I knew it was all right.

Neither of us will ever be alone

As long as we never forget this night,

And remember it takes two to be one”.

I awakened this morning, decades after the event of my mother’s death, but almost tasting the antiseptic smell of the hospital upon my tongue. There was a momentary pang of loss, but it quickly passed. It is not I am unfeeling regarding my mother and the loss of her, rather I did not have much time with her to build hard-wired memories, so the ones I do have are fluid and somewhat ephemeral. Yet there is a core within I think of as my inner-child, and he seems to have a less tenuous bond with her memory. When I fleetingly gloss over my scant memories of her, he rises to the occasion with a deep sense of warm, loving peace, and though I can neither recall memories of her, nor actually share his memories of her, I know he keeps her with us.

There are other fragments—splintered glimpses of some “girl/woman/guide” that visited me either before or during the night of my mother’s death. No idea of who she was, no idea what her role was, no idea why I would manifest such a person within my psyche and incorporate her into my dreams—especially a dream of my mother. Yet, I seem to think it important that I recall her, or at least, her face. Why, again, I have no idea, it just feels important. Kind of like a feeling I had yesterday when I met this woman at, of all places, WalMart. We bumped carts as we simultaneously tried to turn into the same aisle—the Frozen Food aisle, as I recall. We then collided as we tried to open the door to the entrée section. Oh, another bit of synchronicity: we both reached in and pulled out a Healthy Choice pizza—single serving.

For once in my life, I allowed myself to be vulnerable and asked her if she wanted to go out for pizza—a double serving, even. She laughed and accepted. She then added that this was not a customary action for her to pursue, but she felt she knew me, this woman who was grinning at me, grinning her Cheshire grin.

Oh! We are going out again tonight. As odd as it sounds, I feel I have known Alice all my life, and I think I have fallen in love with her—and know I have with her Cheshire grin.

(PostScript for my friends n family--there is no physical "Alice" in my current reality. No, I am not dating her. Hell, she scares me--she goes down rabbit holes!)

Dad’s been gone over forty years

(he left when I was only five).

He’s never written, never called—

does he wonder if I’m still alive?

He left one cold, winter’s day;

said he was going to the bar.

Left his home and his easy chair;

left me and Mom and he took the car.

He walked out with nothing

but the hearts of Mom and me.

He didn’t think about leaving;

all he thought about was being free.

Why is it—one man’s freedom

imprisons so many others?

Mama was locked in a bottle;

I—locked in pain—under the covers.

We both hid from the world—

her with her gin, me in my bed.

Both of us were falling apart

from guilt resonating in our head.

I guess Mama really tried

to forget Dad and raise me right.

She quit drinking, cleaned herself up,

then started waiting tables at night.

We lost the house, the other car—

nearly everything we had.

We moved to a fourth-floor walk-up

and things started looking pretty bad.

I hated the neighborhood—

everyone was brown or black.

Putting pressure on my mama,

I begged and begged; begging to go back/

Mama, with tears in her eyes,

said she wanted to go back, too,

though sometimes the cards you are dealt

are bad, you have to see the hand through. 

Too young to know what she meant,

I begged to go back home—again.

She lashed out and slapped me hard,

then held me close, sharing in my pain.

We sobbed in each other’s arms,

wondering aloud, what had we done?

I don’t think we could have hurt more

if Daddy, instead, had used a gun.

Mama was stronger than I.

She walked to and from work each night;

the same streets I shied away from,

fearing to walk, even in daylight/

Mama told me that my fear

was one only I could overcome.

That the fear deep inside of me was:

she would be gone when I came home.

Mama promised me, that day,

that she’d always be there for me.

In a tender tone, she explained:

A mother’s love lasts eternally/

For the first time since Dad left

the burden I carried lightened.

Simple words from a mother’s mouth

and I no longer felt as frightened.

So we picked up the pieces

of our shattered lives and went on.

Soon, the wall echoed our laughter—

the first we’d shared since Dad had gone.

She worked hard to support us,

slinging hash and serving coffee.

Then, rushing home on swollen feet

to spend the evening hours with me.

We’d sit up ‘til the wee hours

bravely lying to each other:

a mother protecting her son,

and a son protecting his mother.

As time passed, growing stronger,

we lied less and began to heal.

Stone by stone, our walls were falling

as, once more, we allowed ourselves to feel.

We moved in fifty-seven

from Oakland to San Francisco.

Mama and I loved it there—

in our new, two-bedroom bungalow.

Mama started a new job,

and I started to make new friends.

It’s funny—memories hang on,

but the heart eventually mends.

Time flies ever so quickly—

it’s sixty-seven and I am grown.

Mama and I still together—

Fear (I think) of being alone.

She hadn’t had a lover

since Dad had left us, years before.

She was afraid it would hurt me

and I wouldn’t love her anymore.

The night Mama spoke of this,

I finally began to see,

that, like Dad, it was time to leave.

This time, though—it was to set her free.

It didn’t take Mama too long

to find a man and settle down.

A few years later I married

and had a family of my own.

Today I turned forty-five

and turned my thoughts toward my dad.

I gave him a birthday present:

I forgave him for making me sad.

And I told him that I loved him,

knowing he couldn’t hear me.

Because, I knew, in the telling,

that I, too, was setting myself free. 

I called Mama late that night,

to tell her what was happening.

She told me she had done the same

years ago; had felt her heart opening.

She said she never told me,

and then she explained the reason.

Once we are locked in our own heads,

only we open our own prison.

No matter what has gone on

we each have but one life to live,

and if we’re to live happily,

it’s critical we learn to forgive.

She wished me: Happy Birthday,

and quietly cradled the phone.

I sat for a while in the dark,

by myself, but no longer alone.

)Note: This is pure license as what might have been, had my mother lived. It depicts an alternate reality, not necessarily a happier one. It was written for cathartic value…)