Enough

This week, Poetry Thursday asks for a poem about change.

I normally wouldn't warn other poets when material is too strong. But I warn you now.

In a recent debate, I declared that poetry isn't necessarily true (or even True); it's not in the genre definition that what poets write is nonfiction. So we should never assume the speaker is the poet, that the events actually happened, that the poet holds similar beliefs, or even that what is described was drawn from anyone's real experience.

But this poem is true, every word of it.

We all have those images that hit us too hard and that plague us. For me, it's been the man who had to let go of his wife during Hurricane Katrina, a pregnant woman who went to the grocery store for ice cream at 10:00 p.m. and was raped, and this.

This may plague you, too. But I hope there is a message in the horror. After the poem, I've included what the message is for me.






enough

it is enough to know of a man
psychosis-switch flipped
by random vaccine or pill
who awoke one morning
lost to the world
inanimate as the toothbrush
he couldn’t bring himself to lift.

it is enough to know of his wife
a good mother lean and blonde
and three small children
who woke up one morning
to find the man's empty shell.

but what do you do
when the story ends
with the man on all fours
scrounging the bedroom floor
pressing the hunks of meat
that used to be lips and chin
into the holes of missing face
shortly after the suicide gun
slipped and left his brain
to suffer yet another emptiness
his wife looking on
from the doorway?

what do you do with the teeth
embedded in drywall
a bloody jewelry box?
the three children at school?
the wife looking on?

tell me what to do with it.
tell me where to hide this
and I will.


© Leslie F. Miller


- - - - -

Since I first heard this story on Friday, I've been working on a poem and the photograph to accompany it. I've wondered how I would boil it down, this gruesome discovery.

The photo: Depression, for me, is linked to basic hygiene. It's one of the first things to go—you stop taking showers, stop brushing your hair and teeth.

The poem: I don't really want to pass on these images, yet I'm compelled. Writers know that we do not erase them from our minds after we write them down. We don't write to empty our heads.

Writing is selfish—in the same way all art is. We do it because we have to. We share it because we want some reassurance that we've chosen the right path, that we're worthwhile, that we aren't wasting our own time or anyone else's.

Writing is not a gift I give you. It's an exchange. It's a chance to not be alone in my thoughts. That's why I write. So that you will hold my hand.

It's a gift you give me.



The only recorded version I could make work is a crying version. For those who want to hear it, push the button.


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