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Any Hint of Tomorrow
© Lisa Manning

Every Hint of Tomorrow

    Frightened of every hint of tomorrow it’s hard to live with today. Do I even hear the little birds singing in this morning? Just barely, and so must hum to myself and wonder if I am heard, and do and don’t want to be, heard that is, except perhaps to hear myself. The ring so loud in this day as to make it hard to hear the thought itself of the next thing, the next tomorrow where I will be far away from this present form of my captivity, wondering how I will survive. It comes so easily, the casual imagining of things to do, places to go, with those others I am running to, whose arms seem so easily outstretched to me in welcome, which could as easily, it would seem, be retracted, pulled back and away if only they see in a passing moment how unworthy I am actually of all the promise of their sweetness. Am I who they think I am or not? Do I only pose as such in order to get their proffered response? Will they find me out before I even get there to the shelter offered? And finding me thus of course not so worthy as they thought come to second thoughts and all will be withdrawn before I come into the light there and go into only the truer darkness of my self-doubt plaguing me whenever I might think to turn and dispel its power? Oh fearful me, I’m weary before I step and cannot help blocking out the light I seek. Will I get there before the shadow I carry cancels out my chances? I say I follow love, and tell myself I do all the while hesitating, believing secretly none of what my heart wishes were true.

The Likeness

    Just like anybody, I fall, or dive, again back into the dimmed pit of unexamined or untended secret harborings of blame & resentment against those I am called to show my most demanding loving to, and can just barely keep myself from ugly remonstrances or scolding or reprimanding, while they only request aid or advice I’ve promised and invited, welcomed them to expect and ask for again. Clanging against the quiet patience I pose as having an endless supply of, ring my needs. Do they think of me as anything other than what I want them to think? And that very face -- isn’t it a lie? Because I am the same as them no matter how different, aren’t I? A bird is a bird. The feathers and bones and beaks put together at different angles, sizes, colors, still a bird is a bird. The rabbit is all rabbit, nothing more, hopping about alone all day. Even if he never comes upon another rabbit, he’ll know one if he saw one, and somewhere in him knows there is another like him. Always the cure for aloneness, excessive or painful separation is to remember or be reminded of the likeness, the sameness, the similiarity, and not the difference. Fury and its flames fly off into fog.

Sins & Scents

    Sins & scents & sending mails through the boxes of machines --- how long? How long till I find my pace again so severely lost again and not yet regained no matter how slow I order my pace to go and train my fiercest gaze against the flashing landscape of horror and disaster I see it not, I am going. I am beginning to go somewhere, finally. My step regained is almost sure, but each time I incline my posture toward the going I am made again to flinch and nearly falter from the largeness of the spasming lurch of my broken heart bursting in my chest that will not heal no matter how still for how long I might remain. So I am going, trying to, as light and unencumbered as I can, trying to move myself toward what is good and free and allowing of me as I am, away from my solitary absorption, away from what landed me alone here, away from what still seems to drag me -- masquerading as my dream of a loving life -- back down into denial, untruth, doubt, darkness, where I cannot live for myself or as myself for anyone else not even those I love. I am going now, I must fly. I am the still and placid cat, who watches in contemplation the constant, frenzied motion of the many birds, who does not pounce, but instead becomes one and takes off with the rest of them, with wings and flutterings indistinguishable and merging with the flock, away and awayhome, where love waits.

The Place Where It Is The Right One

    Everywhere birds showing themselves, showing the way to me, in sound and quivering, fluttering presence, before they up like breath rise and take off for parts unknown for destinations undetermined and it does not matter much till they get there , and gain the sense in getting there of having arrived. Oh, when I get there, what will I do, what can I do different than this what I’ve been doing that can land me in the place I’m meant to stay and can stay and how will I know, what will be the mark I make or the mark made on me that will let me know I am there where I can stop this roaming I’ve only just begun but seems so endless already? Where am I going as much the question as where have I been but nowhere home everywhere home unless I’m willing to pretend comfort beyond the temporary ones of eat drink and be merry. Is there a place anywhere that welcomes me enough to need me as much as I need it to be there, as in: here I am, in the place I’m called to be the place where staying on the planet, sticking in the thick of it is the right one, where the sense of it speaks of me and I am part of everything a part of me, the place that says stay and is not playing.

What Once Was Up

    From the slightest hint of what once was up, the past crawls out -- the more distant surpassing the less -- and re-imprints itself onto the actions of dreams. There I am re-doing what I then did repeatedly in the same sort of scenes, but in landscapes remade in the guise of what could be the present. There I stand beside that crazy old blind man as I once did for so long, again and again, but haven’t done or seen in half as many years as I spent at it. He and I wait, with much impatience but not half as much as when we actually did, in line and then at the counter, for someone who waits on us while we stand in semi-silence, persevering as we did then, each in our own suffering of penance and endurance, calmly now in a strange present I imagine, making remarks as quiet as we never did, asides commenting on the service we watch and wait for. Everything the same, and not at all. We move without awareness over small distances, from tight unevolved station to station waiting on the services of newer younger versions of strangers we encountered, irritated and embittered in this new world we will never see together. Dreaming, only dreaming so, I wonder and miss the old man, where is he and how has he survived, or has he, without me? Never helpless, ever impossible. I tried so hard to negotiate for him, to manage him on his way without intruding, until his madness intruded on my attempting, his impossible way made it impossible anymore for me not to be equally part of what made it all the more impossible, his way, with or without me, forward. That day I knew would come, and finally did, when I threw up my hands and walked away, by not walking back again toward him.

The Weather Not Right

    The creeps, it gives me -- what is that is this. The creeps, the creeps, as in when the weather’s not right for the season, or the hideous war, or the repeated demonstrations of inbred hatred turned outward, or when certain men appear on-screen, or (rarer, but worse) certain women, in person, or those I love appearing in the guises of their betrayal, usually and above all of themselves, oh the creeps, it gives me the creeps, I’ll say, and it seeps through me, the revulsion, even sometimes I’ll give them to myself. All of it in me as much as in another. What is contrary to what gives life sweetness. The great revulsion, as in, simply, what I’d rather not come across. It’s the alarm that marks what could easily bring me to the violence within I so work to avoid, but that always waits in accordance with the parts in darkness I want to keep there but can’t deny without inviting eventual appearance. Often in dreams it comes, as in last night’s: my most beloved creeping me out with typical revelation of secret treachery and bad intentions, all revealed in subterfuge of sidebar-lined physical gestures, unashamed and only slightly hidden acts sure to break up fine and long-held bonds of others who allow them, pretending not to see or as though they had not seen or were not offended as anyone would be. I wake up offended and inundated with the creeps, the creeps.

As Though Laughing

    As though laughing, but really crying, as though crying, but actually laughing to herself somewhere offstage, and later she tells it to someone else like that from the start mocking: insincerity. The monster of monsters. The dragon that makes fools of human beings. The escape I gained as a little girl in the woods, the fine, clean thing I found in natural things, was the absence of this poison, this feint, mock, phony motion. The essential element in what was represented as femaleness, which I could not ever abide, and certainly couldn’t bring myself to fit my real and natural form into, was this pretending, this posing as something other, acting as if you felt a certain way, until often you wouldn’t know for certain what it was you really did feel until it was too late. Always this was the spelling out of treachery and betrayal. I could not understand why they’d volunteer to be like this, even if it won them diamonds and pearls, wonderous luxury and attention, it robbed us fundamentally and forever of self-knowledge and reliance, there being an absence of ground always from which to start.

Refuse So

    Itsy bitsy spider then refuse right left the way we learn whatever we are meant to learn no more no less the exact amount of resistance or acceptance measured out and poured into us upon our making just so as exact as any chemical composition. Well: it may be true. It certainly doesn’t seem so and I’m glad. Really -- isn’t it more like, at any moment, any one of us, could really go either way? Standing there those few moments together at the crosswalk: this one might just go ahead, go straight home and murder someone, make friends with that person, accept that job offer, give up completely, try to get a place, move out of state, tell her sister how she really feels, burn the house down, take that dose of whatever she has stashed away -- or not. Any moment, either way, in the moment. Or exact measurements at exact amounts and in exact combination, made without our consultation or imput, made before we were even born, so that by the time you get to that moment at that crosswalk, it no longer matters, in fact, it never really matters all along what you might think you are choosing or weighing with your mind or heart or will, it only seems to make a difference, really it’s already decided by the absolute details of your make-up and for sure what you will do next is only a mystery to poor silly deluded and unseeing you, the captive of who you are and how you were made by whoever it was made you?

He Doesn’t Realize

    The little songbird doesn’t realize he is solving the problem of my tinnitus right now, this morning. He’s like my little sister the day before yesterday, following me out into the garage where I’d motioned for her to come so I could give her a couple of jackets I can’t bring with me to Washington where I am, it seems, despite all my confused delaying tactics and procrastinations, indeed going, making my escape. She follows me as though I were giving her some secret stash of drugs, or just some secrets, sure of their value, her body posture and gestures much like the trusting wide-eyed little girl she always was and still wants to be with me. She knows I’ve got the good stuff, the cool stuff, the secrets, the real shit she needs, only I have it and she’s sure now, standing there open and a bit alarmed that I’m gonna give it to her, finally. She’s been waiting. And asking it of me. Only she’d become the most acrid, blaming voice in the chorus of furies my sisters became toward me starting with the start of my harrowing, hormonally linked fall into the arms of my own shadow, taunting and accusatory, keeping it up right into and through the worst of this time. And I couldn’t give it to her. Now she’s lost in her own fall and has gone ahead full into the darkness, and there she found the wherewithal to turn the key for me: she stopped pointing at me. She turned back in the darkness, looked for and found the piercing points of the harsh light of the love in my eyes, which were always there looking at her, raised up her fallen sad gaze and told me the truth. There the key clicked in the lock, the gears shifted and the deadbolt opened. Now I can give her what I’ve got, the good stuff, the real stuff -- what I’ve got. Now she’s stopped asking me for the unreasonable, unjust, inhuman thing, stopping whining at me about what I’m not or haven’t got. And here, together in the real darkness, I can reveal the secrets I know, we can let go of the bitterness maybe, some, made of all that either of us turned out not to be. The chirping of the little bird follows me and, in this moment, drowns out the all-encompassing sounds of my own distraction (destruction), allowing me again to stand in the music of what I do know. Yes, and thank you for asking: here is what I do know to be true.

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Website Artwork: "Caught in Gravity" © Denny Marshall