travels

he unloaded

in the toilet

the membranes and blood

and a brown, milky fluid

which his doctor called

liquefied pork

 

later on

(once the children were asleep)

there was more

 

neck cheese

and some sort 

of jelly-like mass

 

Sweet Jesus, he said

a body 

can travel this Earth

the accumulations 

will accumulate

the toenails will yellow and crack 

and that’s what

we call a life

 

Reviews

[Ern M. Yoshimoto]

while a bit gruesome, this work really captures one important essence of our lives. Siddharta Gautama once asked his father 'i wish to never be sick' which his father, of course, replied he cannot grant him that. the young prince then bid farewell to his father and life in the palace to become an ascetic, then the Buddha. illness is part of our condition, and while it is no doubt the worst part of it, it is a part of us. and that is why the final stanza is appropriately placed. that sickness is one part of our 'travels'.

[SkinlessFrank]

Thanks Ern. I appreciate your take on things. We are such imperfect beings, and it is odd how when we fall ill we do not recognize the illness as being part of "us". But I also always try to recall that my body is not necessarily my own. It is also a vessel for all the other living things that inhabit it, including those that can make me ill.

[Eilis]

Aging along with my kids has been a more awkward experience than I had the imagination to anticipate. When they were babies I didn’t imagine my own timeline. Theirs was the dominant one. But when they hit the teen years and I began to feel very keenly the differences between us—the ways their paths diverted and my mind and body started showing the age, the splitting of the timelines was obvious.

Your poem made me think of this. When we are in the middle of things there’s this sort of suspension of awareness almost. Life is happening but the living of it creates a dynamic that sort of defies some kinds of registering. I don’t know. Maybe this is just me. I feel I’ve lost years.

The juxtaposition between the expulsion of what’s been taken in and the building blocks of accumulation—and how that wears on us—creates this interesting dynamic in my head. Like we’re bouncing around in time. With others but also alone. And what happens is rarely clear until some after time.

[SkinlessFrank]

I think this sense of loss of time is part of what defines us as humans. We may not want to acknowledge it, but things just go on and on accumulating and we are powerless to do much about it. We hide this powerlessness from our children, knowing full well that they will soon feel it too. For me, the result is a kind of sickness, a feeling of being disgusted while I watch it all "come back out" so to speak.

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[Emily B]

Growing older is not for the faint of heart.

[SkinlessFrank]

Nice to hear from you Emily. I've missed you.

[Emily B]

I've missed all y'all.