………….

Tags

"dramatic", accident, alcohol, brain damage, cancer, child abuse, death, family, father, fatherhood, feelings, grandfather, Hayley, healing, pain, truth, voice

I use this blog to express myself- usually in some sort of creative attempt- some more successfully than others.  However, I don’t typically directly put my stuff out there.  This blog is not meant to be a diary or a confessional.

However, this time, I have something I need to say, and I need to say it directly.  No BS.  No flarf poem.  No hiding behind a wannabe pseudoliterary conceit.  Just me and the truth.

In Wisconsin in 1940 a 17-year-old kid went for a ride on his motorcycle.  He might have had an incredible future in front of him.  He might have won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroism saving his buddies storming the beach at Normandy.  He might have become President of the United States.  He might have beaten Detroit pitching for the Chicago Cubs in the 1945 World Series.  He might have cured cancer.

He might have been a gentle, kind, loving father and grandfather.

Fate had other plans.  That kid crashed his motorcycle.  He survived, but without wearing a helmet he suffered a severe frontal head injury.  The damage to his left frontal lobe (the part of the brain responsible for higher order cognitive functions including judgment and impulse control), coupled with the alcohol he would soon add to the mix, made for an explosive, violent, unpredictable, uncontrollable combination.

To his son, growing up was a living hell.  The kid was physically and emotionally tortured in unimaginable ways.  He found little solace and no peace.  He found as he got older the only way he could defend himself was to attack- with sarcasm, with insults, with his fists and legs.  Feelings were dangerous to that little boy, so he attempted to purge himself of them.  Feelings were “dramatic” and were among the worst sins anyone could have.     The innocent boy withered under the torture and became a brooding, dark, angry, violent dysthymic narcissist.  He could not love and could not accept love.  A birthday or Father’s Day prompted a disapproving groan.  A crying child deserved horrors I won’t describe here out of concern for those who might be triggered by it.

The little boy who was tortured so badly, who only wanted love and acceptance, became what he hated most.

The kid on the motorcycle was the grandfather I never met (except when I was thrown off his lap as a newborn, as he demanded a beer and to be left alone to watch the Cubs).  The little boy was my father.

Several days ago my father was moved to hospice.  His 3 pack-a-day habit finally caught up to him, as everyone including himself knew it would.

Several years ago, after he was released from prison, we tried to make a go of re-establishing a relationship, but it was not to be.  He never had (or took) the opportunity to do the work to heal from the pain he’d carried all his life.  He’d never had (or taken) the opportunity that I had, doing the work to heal from the damage he’d done to me.  I had done the hard emotional work I needed to, so I was prepared to give it a try if he’d been capable to meet me halfway.  Sadly, he wasn’t.  The last time I spoke to him face to face he committed several deal-breakers, the worst being a joke about beating my daughter.

I dealt with the intense anger at his behavior and made peace with never having a father- not what one looks to in a father, anyway.  We didn’t speak again for a year, and when he popped back up I simply told him that while I was sorry about it, he simply wasn’t capable of doing what he needed to do to be a father or a grandfather.  “Well, if that’s what you choose,” he blithely replied, and that was it.

I do not hope or dream of a deathbed reconciliation.  I know there would be no peace to be had showing up at hospice.  It would only be the “drama” he hated so much.  His death is more peaceful for him (as well as me) as I keep my distance.  I am convinced his death will bring him peace that he has never found in life- and for that I am grateful.

I have great compassion and empathy for that little boy he was who had to live with the hell of his father’s brain damage.  I mourn that little boy.  I mourn the man my grandfather could have been if he didn’t crack up his motorcycle.  I mourn the 73 years of intergenerational hell that happened because he  did.

In a strange way I can feel the little boy my father once was inside me, inside my DNA, and in that way we are connected (and will continue to be so after his death).  I mourn that little boy, the little Anakin Skywalker who would be turned into Darth Vader, but who I cannot turn back.

Rest in peace, Dad.

in the dark

Tags

anger, betrayal, child abuse, family, fatherhood

in the dark-
the secret, in Dad’s chair,
watching the Cardinals game
eagerly looking ahead to
when this is done
by childish adults,
mockingly rejoicing
the sacrifice.

Recently discovered
the secret
absconds to the bowels
of St. Petersburg,
faith so utterly misplaced,
so fully betrayed,
struggling to keep her family
destroyed by the intrusion
of a runaway from St. Louis.

Her lies-
going to get
the unsuspecting children,
grandchildren
of her dead husband
by her  betrayal of my trust,
by cruel sadistic acts
of sacred ritual of molesting children
by administrative fugitives
out on $2500 bond
who keeps her warm at night,
in the dark.

Blogging The Wall: “The Happiest Days Of Our Lives”

Tags

Al Filreis, child abuse, criticism, Kelly Writers House, music, Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, The Wall, World War II

 

Note: some readers may find some contents of this post offensive or disturbing.

 

 

When we grew up and went to school
there were certain teachers
who would hurt the children in any way they could
by pouring their derision on anything we did
exposing every weakness
no matter how carefully hidden by the kids

but in the town it was well known when they got home at night
their fat and psychopathic wives would thrash them
within inches of their lives

 

The song begins with the sound of a helicopter and children’s voices, then the sound of a man (Roger Waters) with an affected thick Scottish accent, shouting “Hey!  What’s this?  Guards, get on with it!”

Immediately thereafter we get a heavy downbeat of D on guitar, bass, and drums.  The guitar resumes the D ostinato rhythm from the previous track.   After four bars, the bass descends in a G minor scalar pattern to establish a temporary tonality of G (probably G minor). Two bars later the tonality is transposed to A minor, with the same ostinato rhythm.   The lyrics are chanted over this ostinato with transpositions up a third or down a fifth at the end of a phrase.  The “but it was well known” portion is accompanied by the same G minor downward scale heard earlier.  Once the lyrics complete, a chorus (originally scheduled to be the Beach Boys) sings alternating F and Bb chords, settling on a C chord (C7), which wants to resolve to F major.  This tension is left hanging at the end of the track.

The lyrics are a prose poem.  I found it difficult to determine where lines break- ultimately, I think the only natural break happens as marked here (“kids/but”).  The lyrics are more spoken (or hollered) than sung, though there remains a vestige of tonality to them.  Before the line break the lyrics are spoken in a soft but sinister voice.  After the break they are shouted.  There are some notable approximate rhymes (school/could; night/wives/lives) but it’s difficult to tell if these rhymes were intentional or were meant to create a structure.  In the terminology of Pat Pattinson, the rhyme scheme adds to an already tremendously unstable song.

The story told here is straightforward.  The title is sarcasm; Pink recalls his school days (we’re clearly in past tense now) and recalls unpleasant and hurtful teachers, represented here by the character of the schoolmaster. He also remembers feeling powerless except for the revenge fantasy that his tormenter is also suffering.

Early drafts of The Wall apparently developed the character of the schoolmaster, seen here as a hostile caricature.  He appears on The Final Cut album (“The Hero’s Return”) as a disillusioned World War II veteran who can’t relate to the children he teaches or to others, not even his wife:

 

      Sweetheart, sweetheart, are you fast asleep?  Good. 
      That’s the only time that I can really speak to you.
      There is something that I’ve locked away
      A memory that is too painful to withstand the light of day

     When we came back from the war
     the banners and flags hung on everyone’s door
     we danced and we sang in the street and the church bells rang

     But the burning in my heart
     the memory smolders on
     of the gunner’s dying words
     on the intercom…

 

We don’t see this human face, with whom we could empathize, of the schoolmaster in the final version of The Wall.  Here he is a caricaturized puppet (in the live shows) who metes out abuse to the children he teaches by day, and who in young Pink’s imagination receives the same treatment at night.

We don’t really know what Pink’s teachers were like.  They may indeed have been stern and abusive.  We know, however, that Pink is telling the story in hindsight, and we know that he is not only an unstable narrator as an adult, but was full of angst and anxiety as a child, which likely distorted his perceptions of others, including his teachers and headmasters.  Likely the truth is somewhere in the middle.  As a work of fiction, there is no truth to be known on this matter, really.  The only issue is how Pink’s perception of his treatment at the hands of his teachers affected the development of his character- which will be addressed in the next song.

The primary purpose of this piece is to introduce the schoolmaster and set the listener up for the next piece- “Another Brick In The Wall- Part 2.”  The two pieces are so closely tied that they were released together as a hit single; casual listeners probably don’t realize the two are separate pieces.

In the live versions of this show (both the 1980 Pink Floyd tour and the Roger Waters shows), technicians begin stacking “bricks” in front of the band, gradually building a wall between the band and the audience.

Tell It Slant

Tags

child abuse, death, Emily Dickinson, flarf, poetry

 

You didn’t know this child.
The less you know about me the better.
The grave digger will find all the sick little secrets.

I’m standing over the grave of another dead secret.
Will they be used against you when they are revealed?
I don’t want to give the bastard the satisfaction,
but if I am only as sick as my secret,
are you then purely anecdotal?

I hear silent cries.

I might as well be pissing on his grave.

You sick bastard!

Your ideals lie as dead as men in secret graves,
a Pandora’s box of all the hateful parts:
your arrogance, your spite, your condescension.

I just dug up a grave, dug around a bit, and found
the remnants of your sick, demented being.

Some secrets are better left six feet under;
all your lies and secrets get buried in unhappy fate.
I might have guessed your little secret.
Ah, yes, sick enough to want to believe so badly,
I was ill-prepared to call you an evil loathsome bastard.

What one secret have you taken to the grave?

 

Paperwork

Tags

child abuse, flarf, paperwork, poetry, violence, work

 

It will probably be evening before we have sorted out the paperwork. I am afraid that a manhunt is on for a paperwork error.  Every couple of days you learn something about abuse, about the murder of a child’s soul.  I imagine you talked to Holly; what she went though- my God! Have mercy on your soul. A killer appreciated the little things in life, and not even murder could stop.  The effects of childhood abuse and deprivation should be respectful, what happens to us and around us—also forms our character.

Now that the world has ended, and due to errors in the extradition paperwork, they were not returned to Myrtle Beach.  A prosecutor filed new allegations against soul-searching about how they could see the paperwork.  A person unburdens his soul and confesses hatred for mankind, in the days leading up to the fateful attacks, while she sorted out her paperwork.  We know that these documents will not make violence magically use an axe to murder.

Perhaps it’s possible to bring back his infant daughter during the arraignment. I am truly from my heart and soul so sorry for the family.

Join me in creative acts of torture and murder, the fog of unreality into a hellish landscape of my desk piled with paperwork to sort, sinks full of dishes to be done.

Moloch #3 (for Reba)

Tags

child abuse, Moloch, poetry

Stupid.

Dramatic.

Useless.

Motherfucker.

Coffee can.

God dammit.

Hold still.

Belt.

Belt.

God dammit.

Belt.

Belt.

Belt.

Belt.

Son of a bitch.

Belt.

Belt.

Belt.

Belt.

Belt.

Belt.

Belt.

Belt.

Belt.

Belt.

Belt.

Shut up.

Burn.

Open letter to Moloch

Tags

child abuse, Moloch, Newtown, poetry, psychiatry, school shooting, trauma, work

What more do you want?

 

How many more have to die?

 

How many more will live,

but will come see me years later,

begging for Xanax or Oxycontin

so they can endure the memory

of burning in sacrifice to you?

 

I don’t remember it but I know

the smell of burning flesh.

Your brand is on my forearm.

 

I too was offered to you,

but you didn’t kill me,

and now I spend my days

bandaging those burned

in sacrifice to you

 

and the wounded keep on coming