Snow Angels

I wanted to convey the feeling an addict like myself has when the high comes on, why we do what we do. I hope those of you who stigmatize or who don't understand, can understand from this.

Something was dead in my heart

          even as a kid

 lying beneath ice blue sky

    dwarfed by Eternity

   in cold playground snow,

  fanning my arms, my legs,

          trying to fly

         going nowhere

         smoothing the impression of an Angel into snow

Not a red, radiant heart like the ones we scissored from cardstock

         on Valentine's day;

No, I had a mass of black tissue beating inside me

         something dirty pulsed

while I lay there, melting all that heavenly snow

          Afraid. So afraid

            of Eternity

         all my guardian angels

         just empty imprints in snow

   where I'd flapped my arms and legs

   mimicking the shape of

           Seraphim

Pushing out my tongue, closing my eyes,

waiting for a snowflake from heaven,

for the delicate angles of microscopic ice,

intricate folds of crystal snow

                                  to unfold

                                    collapse

                                      buckle

  lattices, girders, trusses of ice

                            disintegrate

                 against my tongue.

       A snowflake falling from heaven

                                     *

I can still feel myself lying on that playground,

back pressed against the crunching snow,

Breath that my lungs and heart had warmed,

      slipped from my lips

                  to drift like frozen souls

lost between the brilliance of a billion glittering granules of snow

         and the firmament of blue above.

I ratchet the cap off my latest pill bottle,

each tick of the safety cap winding off minutes I may--or may not--have left

     smooth bones rattling in a jaundiced bottle

            that will soon join other bottles

                 piled high in my closet

                 dead soldiers with white caps

                 the bright red and yellow insignia of warning labels

                               showing rank.

                                     *

      A snowflake falling from heaven

        just like when I was a kid,

   Now I wait ,though, for embittered morphine angels

        to dissolve beneath my tongue.

            Snow rasping against the windowpanes,

            Snow hissing, scouring across the roof,

                          along the rain gutters,

            Snow spraying like cold sand through guttered leaves,

            Snow whispering, drifting, against the front door downstairs.

                       Salt

                             through the rafters of my soul.

                       Salt

                             under my tongue, a cold alkaline burn

     as I lumber downstairs to heat coffee,

     thinking of snow angels.

Why would you play in the cold snow?

Thoughts percolate up through burbling, gurgling coffee,

           Stresses in my life

           like strain in an icicle

     that hung so long from the eaves

         it just now fractured:

                        *

A snowflake falling from heaven

my car sits leering from the snowbank

                     down by the mailbox,

beckoning through my kitchen window,

cold air whispering through its metal lungs,

snow rasping against the oily undercarriage,

holding the promise of countless broken mornings ahead

     beating the wheel on my way to work

     entombed in frosted windows,

     squinting to see through the patterns of ice and snow and frost,

          thinking “that must be where angels breathe at night”

     No heater. Every breath

      fogging the windows more,

      until I have to stop and wipe the glass

            inside and out,

            cold wet sleeves,

           the panic of “you're late! you're late! you're late!”

        like an icicle slipping through my heart.

Cursing and Cursing, cursing cursing cursing

      into a cup of slopping coffee

      that goes cold

      loses its flavor

      and bitters

before I can even turn out the driveway

onto civilized blacktop.

                   *

A snowflake falling from heaven.

That car snarls up at me from the end of the driveway

and promises �" tomorrow it won't be my excuse.

A frozen Hell will recrystallize

in swirls, fractal patterns, and lattices of ice against my windshield

again and again and again.

I just want to hit the wipers and be able to see the road

I just want to relax,

           but I can already feel the dread of six days a week

crunching in the back of my mind

with all the impact of a speeding snowplow

This is just a Stolen Day.

                   *

A snowflake falling from heaven.

My yard is littered with the bitter childhood of

trampolines, bullied by the weight of last night's snow,

tricycles and bicycles,

casualties crippled in the tundra.

Why did I ever play in the snow?

I settle at the window, watching snowflakes

       falling from heaven,

      dreaming in the imprint of my childhood angels,

      the tablets done stinging beneath my tongue,

My right arm

      the arm that hammers and hammers and hammers all day at work

       familiar aches and howling bones

            melt like wax,

      ebb softly around the knobs of my shoulders,

      massaging the clenching tendons there,

      bringing a flush of colour back to the pinched white skin of my face.

Morphine salts rasping across soft brain tissue,

      like someone's grainy whisper in my ear,

      “There, There. Now everything will be alright. There, There.”

Now and again my mind screams, dulled through the heavy ice it's encased in,

“But this happened to me! It wasn't fair! It huuuuuurt! It still hurts! I'm poor.

                                  I'm poor.  I'm so poor.”

                  And the narcotic whispers back:

shshshshshshshshashshshshshshshshshshshshsh

          blanketing all those miseries softly in snow

                                Just like that.

                               “There, There”

                 Hushshshshshshshshshshshshshshsh.

Author's Note

An extreme rough draft. I just finished it, minutes ago. Any help or suggestions always welcomed. My next step is formatting, but if anyone can add anything I will love you for it.

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

third and fifth lines it should be "lying"---

you do make us feel how it is...i haven't had the morphine experience...but the cold, the not seeing throught the car windows..

the barely surviving...for much of my life that has been the case..

i have felt that cold inside and out.

you relate this well...this is very different and in parts gets very prosy...like a mix of poetry and story form..

but i think it works well here...

it's hard to criticize because it made me feel...and that is what you are shooting for i believe.

my tongue got dry reading this.

[James William Dyer]

it is a super rough draft, wrote it and threw it out there, it'll be changed, i'm sure...thx for mentioning the lying error

[jacob erin-cilberto]

i think we are all our own worst critics...and surely you will play with this one..

i would not presume to rewrite another's poem...and i do like this as is...

but you will find the comfort zone for your feelings once you have it where you want it.

when i see obvious glitches in lines, stanzas, phrasing etc. i will point it out...

but alas..i am not much help to you here..because i was comfortable with the read and the feeling i got from this.

[James William Dyer]

thx so much......i always do welcome criticism, know that. I would never be wounded by an honest opinion, i'd be thankful for it beyond belief

[asdfghjkl]

This is so painstakingly beautiful.

[TL Boehm]

trampolines, bullied by the weight of last night's snow,
tricycles and bicycles,
casualties crippled in the tundra. sometimes I find lines I wish I'd wrote myself. This is one.
This poem is jagged, fractured - achingly beautiful yet riddled with chaos and it works. We all have demons. Perhaps its why many of us write. Mine are mouthy whiny capricious banshees Its like being asphyxiated by a swarm of Tinkerbells. But this. This is a picture of a monster. No one truly wants this. My dad was an alcoholic - I come from a sad lineage of addicts. And this poem spoke volumes to me.

[Ruth]

This is one of the best things I have read for a while...awesome play on prose and structure, message potently reached and wow...impact! Excellent work! :)

[KAOlmsted]

In one simple word: amazing...I am shelving this one.

[saratogaparty]

Oh. I really like this.

First of all just as an aesthetic appreciation I'd like to say your poem seems to come to life to me just by the pure fact that it has curves, which kind of gives it a little humanity to me.

I like how the narcotics have a voice, almost as if they're an actual character. The narrative aspect of the poem makes it far more interesting to me than just a poem that's simply a verbal painting.

Good Write! Can't wait to read more.

[James William Dyer]

Thanks! Hey, do you live in Saratoga, Fl? My old stomping grounds.....back before the snow.......

[Muse]

Actually...

I ADORE the formatting, it just adds to the fun of it...the choppiness just give a fresh twist to your words. And you know what? The subject matter should make your thoughts scattered, random, and hard to focus. Isn't that what happens when one is under the influence of it all? Peception on life and written words...it's not the NORM..so your presentation should be wacked!

A snowflake falling from heaven

just like when I was a kid,

Now I wait ,though, for embittered morphine angels

to dissolve beneath my tongue.


I liked the metaphor of a snow angel...what it meant to you as a child, and how it transormed it's meaning into adult hood. No longer innocent...no longer protective.

“There, There”

Hushshshshshshshshshshshshshshsh.


The addicition is now alive...with a voice of it's own. Brilliant.

[James William Dyer]

I now stand behind these words. Any opinions?

[James William Dyer]

Ok, now it's a second Draft; I believe I have it, except for a couple of word tweaks and secondary problems in the imagery. One more reworking, then a complete overhaul of the formatting to make it Visualism, and I'll be happy. Along the way, any advice would be great.

[patti]

i was surprised by the lenght of this peom it almost like a story, have you though writting this a story it might as well work
but when i started to read i totally loved it indeed, its so beautifully written and good use of metaphors. this poem has deep meaning that slowly reveales it self towards the end of the poem.
this peom does convey that feeling when you are in the moment those littles voices comforts you greatly.
a really good peom, if this a draft then i wait to read the finish version

[James William Dyer]

thanx so much, I just rewrote it lol.

[Richard Man]

Deeply saddening this adulthood stuff. The imagery,the alliteration and the assonance, the symbols and metaphors are too many and too brilliant to enumerate... save one where you describe those vestiges of childhood being bullied by the snow and crippled by the tundra. Great sense of both place and time.
Last stanza.... do you need to mention tongue twice.... somehow it doesn't roll off the tongue as easily (HA!) as the rest .... if you get my drift (another crap pun!)

[James William Dyer]

lol, thanx for the help, I changed the dueling tongues.