For those of you that think you are alone in your deep and tormenting pain of the horrors of probate gone wrong, read about Janet Phelan's deep, dark, tragedy in that arena.
Janet, thank you so very much for sharing these. I hope it gives understanding to so many of you that read my blog.
This is a map of my location
For Amalie Phelan
September 18, 1915-May 4, 2004
This is a map of my location
I carry a seventy pound pack
A can of soup, a bar of soap
And evidence as icy and massive
As a glacier
This is the longitude and latitude
Of will
I insist on this truth
Over and over
To explain the fact of her death
And never to be able
To explain it away
Life becomes an act of intention
I hold these photographs
In front of your eyes
Until the images burn into your retina
And you can see nothing else
As I can see
Nothing else
Here is a photograph
She is seventeen
Drop dead gorgeous
Without a lick of paint
Or artífice
Her eyes clear
As the reflection of her life
In which
If you are very lucky
You can see the reflection
Of your own life
Here is another photograph
She holds in her arms
Something she loves
Is it a dog?
A cat? Or a rose?
You remember her arms
Lifting, supporting, embracing
Subject merged with object
In a fusion of tenderness
Here is another photograph
She is being struck with great force
She is being robbed of her breath
She is being stuffed in the ground
And you ask me why
This is a map of my location
I arrived just last week
I cannot return to my home
It was destroyed in the war
Just sixty miles East
Of Los Angeles
As the news of Iraq
Splashes across the front page
The tanks are rumbling closer
Silently
The tanks are coming closer
Already Happening
What we will be left with
after the rip has grown so large
that even all the averments to the contrary
only make the tear larger
and more undeniable
What we are left with
when we cannot pin, paste, bind together
the hole in the side of
(and this is so difficult to say)
in the side of the social contract
Mosaic law
common fucking decency
if you choose that vernacular
will be the wind
tunneling through the valleys
streets, subways
of what was once the heart
of a city
In the distance
a door bangs open and shut
uncontrollably.
A small muscle
next to your eye
begins to convulse
rendering your face into a caricature
of self-control.
It's already happening
and you know it.
Somewhere far away,
there is the sound of final retreat
beating like sad wings
against duress.
Love Has Not Been Outlawed
There you are again
waving from the sidewalk
as my car pulls up
your smile the most beautiful light
in a world all lit up
from inside
We spend these hours
in a parenthesis
no one else can occupy
The rules are different here
Love has not been outlawed
The event has already occurred
We are the only memories
of the only survivors
beached with our innocence
I fix you a cup of tea
My fingertips brush
against your arm
I do not know
that this is an act of war/
that this is an act of salvation
and then I am crashing through
the plate glass window again
into the waking world
bruised/ stunned/ lacerated
by this awakening
And once again
You are gone
I careen through the assaultive sunlight
blind and disobedient
holding in my heart the absolute knowledge
that tonight
again
in the world as it was
I will once more
pull into your driveway
Maybe tonight we will bake brownies
Or maybe we will simply kneel in the garden
and dig up weeds
it hardly matters what we do/
what matters is that there is still a place left
away from the cameras
away from the satellites
Where the blood that courses through your heart
also reigns
in mine
Janet C. Phelan
Still/Life
This is how it begins:
in the stillness of an otherwise
unremarkable afternoon
as a small grey cat
nests in your lap
its head tucked into your sweater
and a thick bar of sunlight
grazes through the half-drawn
Venetian blinds
and you reach out your hand
towards a cup of Earl Grey tea
honeyed and amber
and it shatters in your hand
This is how it begins:
It begins with an ending
sudden, violent and irrevocable:
Something breaks that cannot mend
You move backwards in time
or try to
as shock waves impel you
further and further from the point of impact
You'll never get back
and you are swept into strange
and mutating territories
against every grain of volition
you possess
as your pulse narrows to this one pinpoint:
a room
a sleeping cat
a cup of tea
and everything folded back in
to the moment before
Missing
Beneath a mottled and broken bark
a fine line of sap forks up
from a savaged heart
Dark pools of pain
circle her center
a history of jasmine
tangles her hair
And she stares up
from the bottom of the world
What she has seen she cannot say
I would speak for her if I could
but the same knot
that stopped her breath
now encircles my throat
the same dark hand
seizes my song
And only one word remains
again and again
remember
remember
### by Janet Phelan
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