Saturday, June 8, 2019

Where's the rest of me?




Part of me is weeping against an ash tree beside a field of hay
Part of me checked out of this body at age three
Part of me never left London
Part of me is on an island of no-pain where I never have to grow up
Part of me never stopped fighting battles that cannot be won
Part of me never stopped winning battles that should not be fought
Part of me never left that marriage, or that early love
Part of me wears a lion robe lined with the night sky
Part of me remembers this as a fading dream
Part of me does not know he has more than one body

Part of me is teaching school in a dusty town in New South Wales
Part of me is painting with Kupka in a French garden
Part of me is an African witchdoctor dancing with spirits all night
Part of me is fighting the Magical Battle of Britain
Part of me is entertaining in a villa in the astral realm of Luna
Part of me is in the Cinema of Lost Dreams, lost in the movies

Part of me fights to leave my body whenever I suffer heartbreak
Part of me abandoned me when I gave up on a life dream
Part of me hanged himself from the World Tree but did not die
Part of me is swimming with manta rays in the South Pacific
Part of me is interrogating the ghosts of Egyptian sorcerers
Part of me keeps score by money and part of me flees from it
Part of me is the tiger and part of me is the sheep

Part of me stands at the center of all these selves
and reminds them of our family motto: Reviresco. I grow back
Part of me is weeping against an ash tree by a field of hay

-         - Ryzmburk, June 8, 2019

       Drawing: "Storm Bird Brings Me Back to Earth" by RM



2 comments:

Sandy Brown Jensen said...

Robert,
What a great use of repetend in this poem!
It’s a form of the time-honored Random Autobiography, and a great addition to what I hope will be your next volume of poetry.
Beautifully done!

Jill W said...

Thank you Robert, this is beautiful. I hope it helps us all recognize our inherent complexity. We are so much more than one thing.