Sitting (in Catherine’s chair)

Loneliness is not even something I could have
conceived of, not so many years ago, I seriously thought
I was done with all that, but
I sit
in Catherine’s chair
and gaze across the landscape
at the bed we bought
with the money the lawyer from Nashville sent
and realize with sudden clarity that I sleep in
the same position I found her in on that
dark day that
brought the loneliness crashing in again
from all corners of the room,
crushing the little spirit I have left inside.

Sitting
in Catherine’s chair, I can
see Gail’s tanka that I hung on the wall
just a week or two before she died. On every wall,
a painting by Catherine’s dad.
Hand me down art and hand me down words,
hand me down chairs and hand me down sons,
hand me down cats,  they left it all behind and
left me here
sitting.

Sitting and
grieving lost friends that time has accumulated,
one more out the blue and
into the black in the time it took
to write this poem and all I can think about is
lost time and how I read his last poem and
just clicked ‘like’, like that means something and while
sitting here listening to Stravener and Young and Dylan
helps to bring Scott into focus, I can’t escape the feeling that
I’m sitting and
grieving me.

Sitting and
wondering about why Hunter
pulled the trigger, amazed by the number of
people I know who touched his world, who have
touched mine as I have touched the hearts
of many, but in the quiet of the
evening, the heat of the late August day fading away,
it remains the last great secret and yes,
you are all real and
in my head and I wouldn’t have it any
other way and this is such an awesome power and
responsibility, because you know
whose chair I am sitting in.

I grow so tired of eulogies, but no one can seem to stop
the dying, it is the last great secret Chris, but here is the thing:
there should be a law against
sitting and
fading away.
The whispers become obscene shouts after three am and
endurance requires a method of
stifling the screams, give me the blood of life
flowing again and a loud guitar, glass of wine,
endless words that hold worlds within their meaning and
perhaps I can survive, hold them all within,
live all the life that remains,
give all I have within to those that
remain trapped here in bone and flesh.
All I have to do, is simply be,
me.

Sitting in Catherine’s chair, I know the real promise
to Gail is the nurture of what she left me,
that awesome hand me down son and the elfin
daughter we created, the visible ripples of the
life we lived, the love we loved.
I hereby promise to
rage,
rage,
rage,
against the dying
of the light
until my day
turns into night.



MJ Carson
8-28-2011

Beauty Isn't

Once I knew a queen of beauty

who preferred the life of tramp,

when the navy had us practice

walking through fire and drowning,

I could have told them

I learned that long ago.

Beauty isn’t as easily seen as ugly is,

stolen dreams and bones well broken

is ugly at its very best,

never let them steal your soul;

that is where beauty truly lives.

I knew a man from Biloxi, not far from

New Orleans I’m told, the land of fun streets.

I’ve known guys and gals who walked the mean streets,

Harlem, 8 Mile, Southside, but I’ve heard

the rubber burning down the thunder road.

Do those S curves at 100 mph and

three sheets to the wind and then tell me

about the razor’s edge.

We were young once, but never free,

forever we yearned for that glory road.

Once there was a dancer whose beautiful soul

was entwined with that of a poet. As luck would have it,

they each ran as fast as they could

down roads leading out of town;

never knowing that each were bound for each.

The glory road patiently waited

for their arrival.

I have seen the lies that beauty tells and

I have walked through fire down

the glory road and I know

what beauty is and what

beauty wasn’t.

Mike Carson

11-14-2010

The Faded Man

Plastic yellow roses don't
hold their color under
the skies of July.

Absurd colors swirl madly
into the black center as
the faded man searches for
something, anything that isn't
gray.

There's no marker.

In 1972, the faded man watched
his father console
his father
on the night his cousin died and
the faded man's father's father
couldn't understand why
a God would take
the young and leave
the old behind
to grieve in such
agony and pain.

The faded man has seen
grayer skies than he ever
would have imagined or
dreamed of and oh, yes,
he has seen rainbows
and blue skies;
but the gray plastic rose
has sent him tumbling
down the years
to all of the places
that sadness does not reach,
but he finds it lurking now
in every corner and
nothing, no thing, will take
it's place.

In 1976, the faded man
talked to God and
begged him to reconsider.
Ignored by God and
the rest of the universe,
he told them all to go to Hell.

The faded man feels faded
inside and out.
Secretly, he was never really sure
he was really here.

There should be a marker.

The faded man forces himself
down to his knees,
thinking maybe she
can hear him better
the closer he gets.

The faded man has lingered
long past all of the
others who put
the color in his life and
his mind circles round
and round the keen idea
that he might as well
end his fading now.

The faded man once brought home
a dozen yellow plastic roses and
now he wonders if
he should go get one
or a dozen
or a hundred, just
to watch them fade?
What would be the point?
That, of course, leads back to
the question of why and
what is the point of any of it.

The faded man can only hope that
he never stops caring about
the answer.

Mike Carson
7-30-2009

Goodbye

I. Before and After Dying

Yesterday a wasp landed on the rail to my back deck
and died.
Today a honey bee made a feeble attempt
to enter my car and join me
on the drive to work.
The last gasp in late fall
of bees looking for a warm place
to be before dying.
Believe me, I can relate.

About a month after my dad died,
my mother took me and Gail outside
to show us Sam’s star.
She said it suddenly appeared about
a week after his death and was proof
that he was watching out for her.
I told Gail I was worried about her,
Gail said, “Don’t, she’ll be alright.”

Those of us who have not, but need to
say goodbye;
twist in the breeze like the last
leaf on an oak, desperately clinging
to the known and familiar ways.
A wise man once said, “Make no changes for a year,”
and then he died, leaving his wise woman
in charge of the lost and grieving
left gasping for air in the vast vacuum
that followed his passing
from this presence to the other.


II. Pain

Goodbye hurts,
it hurts down to the marrow
of my bones
which someday will be
pulverized and returned to the sea.
The hurt blackens all
of the colors that used
to live in my life and
readies me for the deep, dark night
that leads somewhere, but
no one here can say for sure where.
No, don’t give me the surety
that you have no right
to give. You don’t really know
anything for sure, just as I.
I know that hurt can change
a rainbow into black and
like all other obstacles we face,
must be overcome before it
takes us down
below the ground.

III. Us


There have been 18,800 days
of me and
7,035 days of us.
When I say goodbye to you,
I say goodbye to us and
most of me.

It was late on a Thursday evening,
early November and I was down at
the gas station helping Sara with her
paperwork and you dropped by to say hello.
You were getting impatient with me by then;
your transfer had gone through and we had already
danced and kissed and you made sure I
had the chance to run my hand down
your leg and it would have happened
that Saturday night if Sara had not got drunk
and picked a fight that Bud had to finish and
we all ended up at the jail half the night,
but with another fun story to tell, but
I never told this one,
did I?

I asked you where you were going as
you started to wander off and you
replied that you were going to
the Holiday Inn to drink schnapps and beer and
I recalled what you had said about
what that leads to on the night I saw
you tie a knot in a cherry stem with your tongue.
I looked at Sara and calmly asked her
what I should do.
Sara, who besides having a Psych degree,
was in San Fran in the summer of ’67 and
on a farm in upstate New York in the summer of ’69.
From the moment I hired her,
we started teaching each other.
We certainly both got each other immediately.
Sara looked at me and uttered the immortal words;
“Shit or get off the pot.”
I ran into your arms and
all of our tomorrows.
We got schnapps and beer and took it
to my place and sat on the floor and starting watching
LA Law and
never made it anywhere near the
end.

IV. Beauty on the Balcony

On a cool winter’s evening,
long after midnight,
you stood on my balcony
naked to the world
and I waited for
my warm place to be
to return to me.

There are places, words and feelings
that never fade, no
matter how dark
it gets. I remember saying,
“I love you,” and your reply,
“Don’t say it unless you mean it.”
I wanted nothing else but
to share your space for
the rest of my life.
It was just one month later
that we both knew for sure.

“Will you take this woman…”

The moon and the stars were
shining down on us
“I could turn the air conditioner on…”

“It’s better this way…”

“To have and to hold…”

with a deep yellow glow
“I want to hold you for the rest of my life…”

“Promise?”

“I do.”

as we became one

“In sickness and in health…”

“Where did the stars go?”

“It’ll be alright.”

by candlelight.
“So very dark…”

“I’m here, dear.”

“Till death do you part?”

“I can’t feel you anymore…”

“I did.”

“Yes, we did!”

“Whisper to me, wet and wild…”

All of our tomorrows
belong to yesterday and
even the moonlight fades to black
after the stars are
hidden away and
the whispers die
in the late autumn breeze.

“Goodbye my love.”

MJ Carson
11-01-2009

Drowning

I saw you

in the deep waters

of life

going down

for the third time

I, your knight

with all his armor

dived in to save you

pushed you clear and

soon was drowning

treading water

faithfully

in your service

and you came

to me

and

removed

the cold steel

that was rusting

in the open waters of life

whispered in my ear

"come hither

swim, dear, swim!"

~

mjcarson

6-25-2007

~

Everthing Fades Away

So sad when
it just whithers away.

Nothing makes sense
anymore...the rational
left wondering why
must sorrow rule.

Feeling blue, for a friend,
I go up the 14 stairs in pain
just to move again and
wash the dishes.
I turn on Page and Plant,
"When The World Was Young..." indeed.

Feeling like lighting a candle
for us all,
I walk into my daughter's room
in search of fire;
finding instead,
two identical packs of colored pens,
identical to the two I got
in my Christmas stocking
two years ago.
She will never use them,
she will, in fact,
die with them unopened
somewhere down the road.

I've been using mine,
one of each color
sit by my chair;
someday they will run dry
and whither.

I guess it is up to me
to give them purpose.

Mike Carson
4-28-2009

Forever Yellow Rose

Rose crush, the velvet underlining
Of a moon lit night
Cold hope left behind
Long after all the tears
Are shed

Yellow blues, constant longing
For warmth wrapped
In white gold rings
Both in their boxes
Hidden away

Forever known now,
Betrayed by
The sad eyes
That peer in vain

Mike Carson
9-17-2008

Belinda Gail (Sunrise)

Before you, there was
Formless void, vast emptiness
Life yet to happen

We were bound for each other
Waiting for the sun to rise

Mike Carson
2-14-2008