Fireflies, held,
In bear paws of pelage –
Thick-furred bodies.
Thermoregulation.

Silently.
Watching over.
Protected.
For so long.
Days. Weeks. Months. Years.
The jar screwed tight.
Turning, turning, turning.
No light. Right.

Decades.
A half.
Century.
Passing. Glowing,
Larvae. Until.
Metamorphosis!
Wings beating again mesh.
Eyes peering, up, toward, freedom.

Finally.

Each.

One by one.

By
Magic.
By.
Alchemy.

Bioluminescence.

Lighting up.

The.
Night.
The.
Your.
Wild.
Loving.
Seeing.
Heart.
The.
Your.
Churning,
Inquisitive,
Soul.
The.
Your.
Lithe,
Physicality.
The.
Your.
Gorgeous
Eroticism.

Synchronous,
Photons,
Yellow, green, orange, blue flickering.
You.
Are.
Dancing.
Across the soft body of my long
Dark night of the soul.
You.
My.
Love.
Are.
Releasing me.

Deliverance.
Untying.
Unfettering.
Unbinding.
We are setting each other free with love.

Diving deep and surfacing.
We breathe,
Together.
As.
We.
Fly.

Alongside.
The.
Great.
Mystery.

Of.

Life.

©  Susan Lynn Gesmer, December-January 2019/2020

Trees, gently swaying in the spring breezes bedazzle
Outside my windows
Still buds cascade
Down the ends of branches
Waiting for the right moment to burst forth
Hesitant, unsure
Whether tomorrow will bring greater warmth
Or, a foot of snow,
Like in 1995, on May 7th,
Here in these hills.

A few songbirds fly past the windows at
Dawn, still,
Their songs are rare.

A lovely spring place
On this ridge evokes, whispering to me like a lover,
A soft spongy spot, where there is the most beautiful white pine,
A tree absolutely perfect in form.

All this tells me much about The Great Mystery
Unfurling, unfolding, carefully and delicately,
Each bud, each leaf,
Paying necessary attention to the other
To the self, to
Whither, we all are,

In this place where oxygen is a necessity.

©  Susan Lynn Gesmer

1990/2019

 

The entire ride from hospice

To the hospital

In that god forsaken town

North of Boston, where

I’d never been before

And prayerfully shall never be again –

Down the road from

The Danvers State Insane Asylum

Built in 1874

Closed in 1992

Demolished in 2007,

Most of the buildings

Connected by a labyrinth of underground tunnels

Where for over a hundred years up to two thousand revolving souls

Spent lonely tormented over crowded lives in dank brick gothic buildings

Subjected to shock therapies, lobotomies, drugs, and straitjackets.

 

We were held captive by

The Thing On The Doorstep,

In 1933 H.P. Lovecraft knew where to go for imagery and metaphor.

We were thrust unwanted into driving through those underground tunnels,

A maze, that town,

Inexplicable entrapment,

A snare, a web, catacombs,

Befuddlement.

Remains we could not see with our eyes but were as real as the steering wheels of our cars.

 

The physical world holds in its body events which have transpired.

 

Innocent people gunned down, girls doused in gasoline and set fire,

Thousands, millions, of spirits floating,

People lied to, betrayed, smallpox

Contaminated blankets intentionally given to Native Americans in 1763

At the siege of Fort Pitt.

 

We were caught in a mirage,

An endless dream, a nightmare,

Down Upton, Pickman, Durby, Salem, Innsmouth and Arkham,

My handsome brother and I

Through mountains of madness,

Each day for four days

As we drove from motel rooms to the room where

Our mother lay, dying.

 

One night, I insisted we take her

To the closest hospital

In an ambulance hospice

Finally, after much convincing

(Was it a place to die or a prison?),

Provided for us.

In order to determine

If my mother was really dying,

Or having a medical emergency.

If she should be receiving care

In a hospital,

Not being starved to death,

Down the road.

 

On the gurney,

The entire drive through those

Dark wet winter nightmarish streets with thousands of glaring

Blinding headlights

She held her arms straight up

Vertical,

In the air.

 

These are the worse experiences

When our lives are balanced

In the hands of paid strangers, when they’re

Not about love

But about nine to five:

The emergency room doctor told us our mother was dying,

Almost seven years later, and I’m still not sure.

 

What was she reaching for,

Or toward?

Was she holding the hands of spirits in the ambulance air, or

Her mother?

Dead thirty years.

Was she conversing,

Having tea, in a room with a hundred dead women,

Dressed in their Sunday best? Was she reaching for

Her adored father?

Dead more than seventy-five years,

Abraham, my grandfather I never met,

Who she never stopped grieving.

 

Or, maybe she was just trying

To steady herself on the journey

From this world to the next.

 

Was she reaching toward God

Who I do not recall her ever mentioning with words.

 

Do our bodies

Stretch toward what our minds

Cannot comprehend?

 

~ November 22, 2018

 

 

What does it feel like 

To live with the reality 

Of time 

Going

On

To imagine more than a day

Week

Month 

Maybe 

If you’re really lucky

A year ahead.

Yes, this is all about the earthy dense rich soil of the well 
Verses the inexplicable wilderness of the sick.

What does it mean 
To be really fucking sick to suffer suffer suffer
To live constantly with Death hovering flapping her wings always calling to you
To be really fucking hour by hour
Day by day
Week by week
Year by year
Decade after decade
Sick?

While I’m asking this why not expand my myopic question and ask:
What does it mean to be really really beautiful? 
Hey what does it mean to be really handsome? 
What does it mean to be angry despairing hopeless? 
What is it mean to love 

What does it mean to be alive 
What does is it mean to die

What does it feel like to love 

What does it feel like to be alive

And what does it feel like to die?

What does it feel like to lose every day of your life,
Having to work 12 hours a day 
What does it feel like to be so angry that you can’t see past 
What is lodged behind your eyes 
What does it feel like to be so afraid that you can’t take a step forward backward side ways 
What does it feel like to be frozen in place 
What does it feel like to be walking down the street and have people 
Gaze at you because you’re just as beautiful as a flower 
Or just as handsome as the movie star you saw last night in the film 

That man whose name you can’t remember because you are so sick or old getting old and brain cells really really do die.

All that rage you wielded at your mother when she was the age you are now;
Where was your compassion 
Where was your heart
Where is our wisdom when we are young
Where does it hide
Now you know what it feels like to not be able to remember.

If someone asked you who the vice president was you would not be able to answer

Not because you’ve not remembered but because it’s not important enough for you to pay attention

Because you don’t care

Because you know before you know it he (or she, you would remember she), will be history.

What does it feel like to love 

To open your heart totally loving another being 
Knowing at any moment
Tonight tomorrow next week next month next year in the next decade 
That person will leave you for another 
Or leave you for death 
Or just stop loving you.

What does it feel like to open your heart anyway

What does it feel like to walk into a room barely able to stand 
Filled with anger and despair, sickness love fear hope 
Promise or so many 
Many regrets
And know that nobody can see any of what you feel 
Because all they see is what you look like.

What does it feel to show people what you really feel

That beautiful woman across a room with a handsome husband 
A couple of lovely children
A beautiful house in the hills 
A great job 
That beautiful woman who is half your age, 
What does she think when she looks at you? 

Does she think the same thing when she looks at you 
You thought when you were her age and 
You looked at a woman your age? 
Does she think “thank fucking God I’m only 37”
Does she think, 
I’ll never get to be her age not because I won’t get to be her/ age 
Because I will always remain 37.

We all think it will never happen to me never me. 
Nope. Won’t happen to me, not me, 
I won’t get old I won’t get ugly I won’t get wrinkled I won’t get sick 
I won’t lose any body
I won’t lose friends to death before they turn 50 
I won’t lose my home to a fire
I won’t lose my parents to illness first, dementia and death
I won’t lose my child I won’t lose my brother my sister my best friend no not me.

Yes, I know it all happens
But no not to me. 

Truth about our lives, about this life,
We are all living, is
Precious and invaluable,
And so hard to discern. 

We all have our endless ways of losing it, don’t we?
How do we find and keep it, close,
To our minds and hearts, spirits and souls,
Like the sacred and O so necessary being it is?

What does it feel like to know truth is like a flower? 

© Susan Gesmer 2017/2018

Northampton, Mass., 1984.  To a woman I left behind in New Hampshire.

Crystalist Theater Electric, 1981.

1.

This woman with long wavy teenage hair

A small boy child

Lives just across the street from me.

As she opens the door to leave

Using my telephone this second time we meet, suddenly,

Like remembering to tie her shoe,

She tells me her boyfriend beats her black and blue.

That man whose been watching me,

For months now

I have felt

His never nearer than 50 feet

Glaring

Violence

Stalking

Stare.

At night I have pulled my window shades,

A woman alone,

Tightly shut.

2.

I tell her I will talk to others,

Find help,

(There is no battered women’s movement

In Keene New Hampshire,

In 1978,

No shelters yet, then, for women and their children),

But she never comes back,

She never comes back until tonight,

Three weeks and six bloody beatings later, she comes back.

He had attacked her today

She fought him off with a baseball bat.

Rashly he rushed off

Left her, the baseball bat,

And she comes.

She says, “ He said you were a lesbian”

She says,  “He told me if I came back again, you would be his next target”

He would come,

Not alone

But accompanied with his many guns.

3.

I thank her for not coming

Amazing the significance.

I deny I am a lesbian

But she tells me he saw me one night.

I remember that night,

Hesitant months ago,

Kissing Sarah too passionately in her Subaru

Under the bright streetlight.

I remember foolishly thinking if anyone saw us,

They would think my beautiful womanly woman was a man,

Because of her

Dyke

Hair

Cut

 

It’s just so hard to always be on guard.

Like all lovers, before parting, we simply kissed a kiss,

That will keep me awake,

The next few nights,

Longer,

By far,

Than, I would have wished.

 

Northampton, Massachusetts, 1983.

Do I dare myself to write this poem,

To commit these feelings to word spread on paper
Open and no longer hidden
In the swirling of a solitary mind.

Let the blades of the fan stop moving;
Pull out the plug, long enough, to allow this with her.

Do I dare to take the risk of looking down from this great height

Knowing that every time I have looked before from this room

Soon after the view has turned into crushed broken and awkward remains

Jutting from the earth like an ancient ruin.

I write because I have dared myself

Like a child to another

Not to step on the crack,

I write because it is fall now and the leaves are turning yet again on the trees

Turning to reds yellow ashes and seed.

I write because I could have died in my feverish sleep this past week but I lived and she lived with me

The risk too great for her not to come.
So I prepare my wetsuit to dive one more time into this wreck

No longer willing to be a pawn

In what has become a parrot-like garden game

On a plastic card table

A fable,

A wild horse corralled in a stable.

~ November, 1983

Blue, the mountains are blue here today,

Blue like the blood in my veins before it sees the light of day.

For so many now, I’ve been ripped open in mourning,
All my clothes shredded,
Hanging off my body, limp, is the loss.

I am almost empty

Before you slice into the fruit

I appear full and fleshy with disguise, discover inside,

Dried up seeds, nothing but

Unrecognizable ash

Of what once was.

 

It’s really such a joke sister

Because I never learned how build the fires full

And there are remains without any structure

So from where did they fall?

 

All these years an architect building building building

To break down the bricks piled top me,

And then I turned half turned not knowing how and why only when

And for so many months pulled apart to grief.

 

My lover O lover of the nowpast,

The mountains are blue
When they should be green,

Remember, when I tried to tell you about that onion, myself,

I discovered to be circular going inward into winding wetness feeding female

Then split down the middle you cut me like a cantaloupe with an axe

And still in separate hands I balance the pieces

Fool that I am,

On one foot,

Weighing the losses.

 

I am so tired.

It is awfully hard now to tell the building from the breaking,

And so bad I want to simultaneously be

Cat tailed clear-eyed beach tree,

And cast ashes,

Over the deep blue sea.

~ August 1982