Snow Angels

I wanted to convey the feeling an addict like myself has when the high comes on, why we do what we do. I hope those of you who stigmatize or who don't understand, can understand from this.

Something was dead in my heart

         even as a kid

laying beneath ice blue sky

     dwarfed by Eternity

laying in cold playground snow, fanning my arms, my legs,

           trying to fly

         going nowhere

smoothing the impression of an Angel in the snow

Not a red, radiant heart like the ones we scissored from cardstock

          on Valentine's day;

I had a mass of entrails and black tissue beating inside me

     something dirty pulsed inside

while I lay there, melting all that heavenly snow around me

           Afraid. So afraid

                of Eternity

I think about myself laying there on that playground,

all my guardian angels just empty imprints in the snow around me

        where I'd flapped my arms and legs

         mimicking the shape of angels

      pushing out my tongue, closing my eyes,

        waiting for a snowflake from heaven to melt there .

             Cold tang on warm tissue.

         A snowflake falling from heaven

                             *

I ratchet back the cap of this latest pill bottle,

each tick of its safety cap winding off the minutes I may--or may not--have left

     small bones rattling in a jaundiced bottle

           that will soon join other bottles

                 piled high in my closet

            dead soldiers with white caps.

               A snowflake from heaven

             just like when I was a kid,

Now I wait for that morphine tablet to dissolve beneath my tongue.

Snow rasping against the windowpanes,

       hissing and scouring across the roof,

            along the rain gutters,

    spraying cold sand across the dead leaves guttered there,

      whispering, drifting, against the front door downstairs.

Salt through the rafters of my soul.

Salt under my tongue, a cold alkaline burn

    as I lumber downstairs to start the coffee pot,

           thinking of snow angels.

Why would you play in the cold snow?

Those thoughts percolate in the strong aroma of coffee,

The reality of my life an icicle that hung so long in the eaves it just now broke:

   my car sits stalled in a snowbank at the end of my driveway, beckoning through my kitchen window,

      cold air cutting through its metal lungs,

         holding the promise of a thousand more broken mornings

         driving it to work

         blind, entombed in frosted windows

         no heater , every breath fogging the windows more,

         until I have to stop and wipe the glass

                   inside and out

                   with cold wet sleeves,

         the panic of “you're late! you're late! you're late!” precipitating

         like an icicle slipping through my heart,

         cursing and cursing again into a cup of slopping coffee

                   that goes cold and

                   loses its flavor to bitterness

                   before I can even turn from my gravel road

                   onto civilized blacktop.

        A snowflake falling from heaven.

                           *

That car snarls at me through a snaggled grill

and promises �" tomorrow it won't be my excuse.

That frozen hell will recrystallize as reality again and again and again

This is just a Stolen Day.

A snowflake falling from heaven.

                        *

My yard is littered with the bitter childhood of

trampolines, bullied by the weight of last night's snow,

tricycles and bicycles,

casualties crippled in the tundra.

Why did I ever play in the snow?

I settle at the window, watching snowflakes

descend from heaven,

the morphine done stinging below my tongue,

dreaming the imprint of my childhood angels,

no longer waiting for the snow to melt along my tongue

the morphine salts rasping across soft brain tissue,

like someone's grainy whisper in my ear,

“There, There. Now everything will be alright. There, There.”

Now and again my mind screams, dulled through the heavy ice it's encased in,

“But this happened to me! It wasn't fair! It huuuuuurt! It still hurts! I'm poor. I'm poor. I'm so poor.”

                  And the narcotic whispers back:

       shshshshshshshshashshshshshshshshshshshshsh

                  blanketing all those miseries softly in snow

                               Just like that.

                              “There, There”

               Hushshshshshshshshshshshshshshsh.

Author's Note

An extreme rough draft. I just finished it, minutes ago. Any help or suggestions always welcomed. My next step is formatting, but if anyone can add anything I will love you for it.

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

third and fifth lines it should be "lying"---

you do make us feel how it is...i haven't had the morphine experience...but the cold, the not seeing throught the car windows..

the barely surviving...for much of my life that has been the case..

i have felt that cold inside and out.

you relate this well...this is very different and in parts gets very prosy...like a mix of poetry and story form..

but i think it works well here...

it's hard to criticize because it made me feel...and that is what you are shooting for i believe.

my tongue got dry reading this.

[James William Dyer]

it is a super rough draft, wrote it and threw it out there, it'll be changed, i'm sure...thx for mentioning the lying error

[jacob erin-cilberto]

i think we are all our own worst critics...and surely you will play with this one..

i would not presume to rewrite another's poem...and i do like this as is...

but you will find the comfort zone for your feelings once you have it where you want it.

when i see obvious glitches in lines, stanzas, phrasing etc. i will point it out...

but alas..i am not much help to you here..because i was comfortable with the read and the feeling i got from this.

[James William Dyer]

thx so much......i always do welcome criticism, know that. I would never be wounded by an honest opinion, i'd be thankful for it beyond belief

[asdfghjkl]

This is so painstakingly beautiful.

[TL Boehm]

trampolines, bullied by the weight of last night's snow,
tricycles and bicycles,
casualties crippled in the tundra. sometimes I find lines I wish I'd wrote myself. This is one.
This poem is jagged, fractured - achingly beautiful yet riddled with chaos and it works. We all have demons. Perhaps its why many of us write. Mine are mouthy whiny capricious banshees Its like being asphyxiated by a swarm of Tinkerbells. But this. This is a picture of a monster. No one truly wants this. My dad was an alcoholic - I come from a sad lineage of addicts. And this poem spoke volumes to me.

[Ruth]

This is one of the best things I have read for a while...awesome play on prose and structure, message potently reached and wow...impact! Excellent work! :)

[KAOlmsted]

In one simple word: amazing...I am shelving this one.

[saratogaparty]

Oh. I really like this.

First of all just as an aesthetic appreciation I'd like to say your poem seems to come to life to me just by the pure fact that it has curves, which kind of gives it a little humanity to me.

I like how the narcotics have a voice, almost as if they're an actual character. The narrative aspect of the poem makes it far more interesting to me than just a poem that's simply a verbal painting.

Good Write! Can't wait to read more.

[James William Dyer]

Thanks! Hey, do you live in Saratoga, Fl? My old stomping grounds.....back before the snow.......

[Muse]

Actually...

I ADORE the formatting, it just adds to the fun of it...the choppiness just give a fresh twist to your words. And you know what? The subject matter should make your thoughts scattered, random, and hard to focus. Isn't that what happens when one is under the influence of it all? Peception on life and written words...it's not the NORM..so your presentation should be wacked!

A snowflake falling from heaven

just like when I was a kid,

Now I wait ,though, for embittered morphine angels

to dissolve beneath my tongue.


I liked the metaphor of a snow angel...what it meant to you as a child, and how it transormed it's meaning into adult hood. No longer innocent...no longer protective.

“There, There”

Hushshshshshshshshshshshshshshsh.


The addicition is now alive...with a voice of it's own. Brilliant.

[James William Dyer]

I now stand behind these words. Any opinions?

[James William Dyer]

Ok, now it's a second Draft; I believe I have it, except for a couple of word tweaks and secondary problems in the imagery. One more reworking, then a complete overhaul of the formatting to make it Visualism, and I'll be happy. Along the way, any advice would be great.

[patti]

i was surprised by the lenght of this peom it almost like a story, have you though writting this a story it might as well work
but when i started to read i totally loved it indeed, its so beautifully written and good use of metaphors. this poem has deep meaning that slowly reveales it self towards the end of the poem.
this peom does convey that feeling when you are in the moment those littles voices comforts you greatly.
a really good peom, if this a draft then i wait to read the finish version

[James William Dyer]

thanx so much, I just rewrote it lol.

[Richard Man]

Deeply saddening this adulthood stuff. The imagery,the alliteration and the assonance, the symbols and metaphors are too many and too brilliant to enumerate... save one where you describe those vestiges of childhood being bullied by the snow and crippled by the tundra. Great sense of both place and time.
Last stanza.... do you need to mention tongue twice.... somehow it doesn't roll off the tongue as easily (HA!) as the rest .... if you get my drift (another crap pun!)

[James William Dyer]

lol, thanx for the help, I changed the dueling tongues.