“Chirpy-chirpy-chirp-chirp-chirp,”
catches my ear, wakes me up.
Yes, I’ve been
awake,
but not like this
for many days.
“Chirp-chirp-chirp-chirp…”
this conversation
goes on. Makes me smile.
Best part of my day?
My best self,
my innermost
has been tapped
…sappy
…happy
…maybe
today will be a hoot
I hope this is the root
of the whole
healing I need.
Yesterday,
Dad in aphasia
no worries, lasts but a moment,
but my leg’s been a drag for months.
Quietness of chatter
begs a symphony
of relief.
the words coagulate, stuck
in the back of my throat, I choke
on the words I cannot seem to
acknowledge, articulate, remember.
aphasia commandeers my body as her vessel
inarticulate and mute
and in so much pain
but she doesn't seem to care.
when it matters all the soliloquies falter
and stumble from my lips, lame
and inadequate
like everything else i touch.
Let me start without an apology
Because you, honey, need not be in apiculture
Every second you bee apiece apiary
As I fall for your rich honey droop apace
Take me to space if you must but never cause apathy
Because you dug in my heart with a never closing aperture
And when in your presence I fumble on words like one with aphasia
Darling the gospel you preach to me makes you an apotheosis of an apostle
Sometimes your therapy I take like you were an apothecary
Or maybe you are but again you make me aplomb
Knowing fully well you're the apostrophe
That omits my imperfections like an apparition
Let me make an appeal
Because if I don't all this might not be applicable
So I appreciate your every applause
As I apprehend
This love you shower me with a posteriori
The End of Herstories
It used to be called senility
now Alzheimer’s, or dementia
but in Agatha’s case I’d choose
primary progressive aphasia
in which her language capabilities
slowly and progressively became
impaired as the author of more
than eighty novels lost the ability
to swim in the Alphabet Soup.
Postmortem textual analysis
suggests her vocabulary decreased
by fifteen to thirty percent.
And was her last mystery
“Elephants Can Remember”
an explanation or
a cry for help?
Memories of future events
Recollections of measures ahead
Reminiscence in fast forward
Aspirations leaping back
Projections of past reckoning
Icebergs frozen in conscience
Consciousness without borders
Recollective molten amnesia
Advanced reality looms precariously in forgone loops of oblivion
Renounced surrender pleads for reprieve in courageous defeat
A clairvoyant seeks to make sense of tea leaves still drowned
The backstage raven cusps darkened hope where none is left
Futuristic amnesia on the run is looking onto sunken imprints
Dragged feet are pegged to a ragged core of stuttering insanity
Wild wings roar raging on collision courses with roots’ firm recall
Yet the fool seeks wisdom if only for reruns of nascent madness
The black bird is caught in a trap of concerted voices in aphasia
A torn music sheet drifts down an abyss behind closed curtains
But the clouded clown’s mind refuses time's penultimate applause
Claps his bound feet and decides to enrol in imponderable cheers
21st February 2020
Tear drops roll down my cheeks.
Blessed with mirror-touch synaesthesia!
Claircognizant empaths - inflame my aphasia.
I know, I know - the die is cast!
Eh! Still words - pierce through my silent heart.
Leave me – leave me!
I need time to talk with my soul.
For no one knows – why!
Why emotions welled up so high?
How would you know - the reason behind my sigh!
And why such deep grief and frown?
And why the frozen sea melted down?
And the pain behind my collapsing castle!
How intense is my tussle!
Yeah! How would you know?
What I just lost was my holy grail!
All I need is solitude to sail!
LOVE’S GRIEF
Dear LORD,
I am grieving
My innards quiver
Once words flowed
Now are silenced
Aged health changes
Seem cruel-
Dementia, aphasia
Memories, experiences leave;
Those who remain
Saddened-
Dear LORD,
Teach me
Help me to be strong
Show me how to help
Show me how to live
Silence my being
Increase my capacity
To love without love
To serve without being served;
I pray for them and me,
Thank you, LORD
-Evelyn Pearl Anderson
11-08-2019
If there's kingdom of bad moments,
Its oubliette's sticking;
Where none owns any place, but-
Places own the being.
Cramping inside bad, ugly cells-
In graveyards locking in,
Inside cars or spooky cellars-
All are dwarfed to spelling.
Oh, once I heard a speechless speech;
The lad stuck while speaking,
Being tongue-tied between two words,
None knowing his saying.
Two words: Scylla and Charybdis;
They're easy as a pin,
Although, they caused aphasia,
Like Sci-li la-la lin.
The poor guy sweated and whimpered,
The audience: laughing;
He dashed, rushed, and ran away by
Shrilling Scy-la-la-lin.
I am being held hostage by a pressing force of incognizant, and I am impregnated in a world of spiraling storms of confusion.
Fragments of memories prods my mind. Sudden and swift memories of my failings and sins are but a measured minute of my life.
Why can't I remember slipping into this fog of incertitude, this doom pressing force of incognizant.
My heart grows numb against the days and nights that I spend in despondency.
Familiar faces shifts to peculiar and ill-boding images.
Solitude is a conundrum of emptiness. A bittersweet embrace.
My tongue is locked in an aphasia space.
My brain has forgotten its ability to command, and so my legs and arms have no will of its own.
I want to run away, run to a place that will strike a familiar note in my brain.
I hate being handled by strangers who pull at me and torture me with applications of abuse.
In a regular diurnal, my dignity is decomposing.
Despair is the song of my wretched soul.
I can not stop crying.
copyright Labyrinth of Life
…obliterated night of the seven seasons
tickets and thickets and trains collide
into the cliché of licking tongues
wed to the bred moan of capitalism
(grinning gothic gremlin) smile of a nurse
before the coma saturates the elliptical
thought of the ghost mutes trepidation
(ride the crest of the adder’s riddle)
infested with scales of karma flaking
magic merging with the indifferent
Earth (and the sky implodes anxiety)
--a voice says crawl back to childhood—
innocence is an oblivious death-sentence
terminated without punctuation (again her)
approval is a mark of degeneration (descend
-ing) linked aphasia is the coded dance of night
…sour taste in the heart as the mouth spouts
…verbs of deeds painted like profanity
…I see her riding the obelisk of risk
…until the tendrils lie
shivered awake by mourning nothingness
thrown back within the iris of truth
drowning in the colors of reason…
I cannot show it. I have promised.
Building up in the shores of my thoughts and soul,
An overflowing ocean of emotions I'll risk,
To drown in my own sorrows and tears, in folds.
Tirelessly I longed but only in secret I'll whisper,
I am haunted by the essence of you, this fear sips deeper,
You crept everywhere in sight, endlessly, searching for her figure,
As those beats grew faint and this ocean grew bigger,
What of me, "Oh God! Please do your worst!
I will be far away in this ever state of Cursed,
Nothing said but I still feel this agonising thirst,
As my breath utter those words, in knives I immersed.
I'll hide in the abyss. I will keep myself hidden.
The truth. In infinity I will hurl.
Sawed off chains from your heart and set it to Eden.
I'll stay silent forever so you can have the World.
I fall into unknown reasons
I lay wanting,needing
Convolution,soul sucked dry
Aphasia,alone within
A battered shell,augmental decay
Life slowly passes away
Debilitated to my dismay
An accidental tragedy has
lost the lives of many
Contumaciosly
The musk from last nights indulgence
still lingers and it accuses me
I have debased the family tree
Through my lost cognizance
The pain others must breath
Censoring all relations
A dissaproval of my being
The air as thick as sulpher
A cyanosis of the soul
I'm left alive to face it all
Retribution paid in full!!!
Thrice divided am I in why. Fighting my flight response with determination to make
might right. No slight of hand or devilish spite. Plain and right, the soul's trident. Lack of
action spites my plight. Fear of destiny rears the thorned head and blinds with laser
calibrated lightness of sight. No longer can I claim 'why' but 'why not'. No soft option or
blotted white, only purest truth. To know is blasphemy and I can't afford that. Height is
a blessing but only for lords of serenity and need for solace. I have no title, no name,
no space for placing blame on nameless phrases. So I bow to cowards and pray the
devout will set pace. Scroll erased and made a torch for clouded eyes and cavernous
synapses. But I collapse under my own hate and scream 'I!' Meat and light aren't in
fight but shame is the remaining course. Of course, my hoarse will run and be weary in
cemeteries of me's. Please in sand filled fists. Kiss her away and slay what is left. Flip
the wild flight in the white spaces between fate and the places I'll go to show fate her
reflection and mine.
Hint: This is not a poem.
If one can put words in feelings then
things will go easy for me.
And if feelings will have words with them
then things will never be.
…
Let’s start with the blue bird -
a mane, that’s what you shall have;
because a birdie with no mane
is an owl exposed to sunlight.
Let’s not forget the blue moon -
a muzzle, that will be handy for you;
Let all your screams dwarf the stars
and for once shine.
And the blue eagle -
a character. All you have is
a large beak and rowdy feathers!
Fly not with false pride.
…
And if this is not coming across,
all I can say is that, “You have
to have an eye for a poem and
an ear for a nice painting.”
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