I Don’t Pray But…~
By: John-Russell Bossé
I don’t pray but I pray that somehow our Republic will survive.~
This especially treacherous time might be, virtually, the only time I pray.~
I don’t know who it is I’m praying to, or if he, she, it, or they are even listening, or caring… but I care, and that’s why I pray.~
I don’t pray because I expect anything. I expect nothing, but despite this—even as irrational or desperate as it might be—my heart still cries out for the protection of all it values. ~
I don’t pray because it’s the “right” thing to do. I WANT to pray, and that’s the only right I need. ~
Whether or not these prayers will be answered is a fancy whose value is only slightly more than nothing.~
Based on what I’ve observed, I know the universe was created, but beyond that, I know nothing other than whatever I’ve observed, or learned to exist. It is not, however, my job, my obligation, or my interest to know who or what created everything that exists. This agnosticism is because such things can inhabit only the realm of speculation, faith, and belief. ~
I know that my time on earth is short—as short as everybody else’s under this sun. As that sun flings its spheres into annular solar constants, I exist here, right now, on this Earth—loving and living my life with boldness. ~
Because I realize that life is short, and nothing is guaranteed, I take care to live it with the solemnity or passion that befits a last act.~
May you likewise love yourself with such finality in your brief sparks alive—for what else can be as beautiful as these moments that ask for nothing else?~
Consider What You Would Naught
By John-Russel Bossé
Why do we anoint as martyrs those who die by their own hands
But exile, and shame, those who survive and suffer?
Why is it that even as we tell those in their strange anguish to “suck it up” or “go to jail,” we show mercy to those in whom no life remains?
If we, from buildings, fling ourselves onto the hard, unforgiving earth,
Why do so many enshrine that last act in mercy and soft welcome?
I have noticed that when our delusions or repulsions take different forms
We are met with chains, gates, and stubborn doors.
When we open our wrists, though, to the bleeding world, pity gathers the dead.
Ask yourself why it is that when those whose troubled lives need community,
Their eccentricities are seen as burdensome, and peril for others.
Why do we not extend the cloth of mercy to those who question the fabric of everything?
Why are we so – without question – harsh to the naked who bump against the heavy cloaks of society?
In hypocrisy we see as genuine those who can no longer speak
And deem worthy their scattered pieces on sidewalks underfoot.
To the lifeless parts of those that can never again be one, we are whole in our sympathy
But for those still whole, trying to gather what sense remains,
We are ready to shatter them against institutions of concrete.
We set free the dead and, in our lives, resurrect their memories,
But lock away the living and treat them as if already dead.
And for those whose suicide blots them out of the book of living,
We write tomes and, for generations, mourn.
They, though, who still live—and by living add pages—who question, languish, and whose wandering anguish drives them to odysseys and epics—spurned and unpublished:
It is they whom we consign to the dusty blots and remotest spots, in boarded shops.
Perhaps our salvation is tied to those lives we discard,
Who remain alive in worlds we reject and fail to see.
And perhaps their eyes we call blind, see the cliffs to which we, in our crowded masses, march.
Maybe . . .
Maybe those lone candles of sentiment and choruses we snuff out, or drive into desolations we’d like to forget,
Call for the desolate corners within us to be remembered.
And if we think we need not remember, perhaps we should consider, for the first time, that which we esteem last.
The Substance of Light
by John-Russell Bossé
Painted in light,
Golden yellow transforms once white,
Now sunkissed, walls.
This morn, I’m blessed
By that hot empress –
Whose molten, ancient press
Of lips dress
Me in youth again.
Throughout her time,
She will climb
Such heights sublime –
Beaming with life.
The cruel winter of grief
That came as a thief
Is now bested by flower
And emerald leaf.
Bound by but freedom’s chords,
Winged feathered lords
Soar above and dip towards
Their charmed home greens.
Experiencing rebirth,
Creatures with mirth
Glory in the girth
Of their vernal lands.
I love the way
That during the day
Bright clouds may spray
Liquid chandeliers for my eyes.
The drops, like prism crystals
Of fragrant mist, will
Blossom from billowy pistil
To the glad earth and crowned ones.
This dazzling array,
In its ethereal way,
Can spark poets to say
That heaven and earth have become one.
Autumn Blankets
by John-Russell Bossé
It has been years since she passed away.
Every year, around this time, I observe the leaves changing color and saying, “Goodbye,” to their matronly branches.
I say, “Goodbye,” to her in just such a manner as the falling leaf whispers, and with each “Goodbye” I drift as if free before joining earth at Mother Tree’s feet.
“Goodbye.”
I imagine my daughter hears me with each wispy utterance—each fluttering conclusion of our bond. I imagine that my parting words blanket her, secure her in warmth wherever she is.
Can, however, our bond ever be concluded? A mother’s role is never over, even when the autumn season of life flutters our arms bare of their laughing charges, and winter’s cold ensues.
Neither can sweet nectar flowers and the waking honeybee distract us from what we’ve lost. Nor can summer months of singing bird and quiet stream give respite to our full breasts.
This season I will keep drifting down that word to you, dear one, and so tuck you into the warmth of a hundred thousand goodbyes.
A Quote by John-Russell Bossé
Try to believe the best in people.
You are but a fractal piece of the whole.
Foundation People: Twelve Gem Souls
by John-Russell Bossé
The people I love the most
Have courage and are kind
— traits naturally theirs
And not even on their mind.
I love pearls who strive
For the best every day,
And who forever keep alive
The humble and pure way.
I want to be with gems
Who, artistic, create,
Walk the hard path,
And seek the small gate.
Such souls are hard to track,
But whom through heavy oppression we see
Through murk and utter black,
Brave them while light – free.
Enjoying Trees
by John-Russell Bossé
Star patterns of shadows and sunlight
Are what he sees when hidden from sight.
These shadows move with the breeze-so-soft,
Light columns shifting – held up from aloft
By celestial glory he knows not of –
Save this secret place as sacred as love.
This shelter also lives in his chest,
Amidst golden rays in shaded breast.
Under regal ceilings of kind boughs
No trouble will win him or his mind house.
For ’neath canopies of guardians strong,
Swaying arms shield him when the day is long.
Hushed and meek, yet towering with bark and leaf,
They stand round him in cradling wreath
To rest head and soul underneath
In dappled majesty.
Another quote by John-Russell Bossé
The humanistic belief in mankind’s responsibility over his own salvation is not a vice, as many theists belieive. It is that humanists’ belief that draws each of us away from personal destruction and all of us away from the annihilation of a faithless world.
–John-Russell Bossé
The Secret of the Precipice
by John-Russell Bossé (April 2, 2021, Friday)
Dedicated to Susan
I have traveled a long and difficult way to get here, and it has taken me around twenty-eight years to write this. Hidden throughout those twenty-eight years is the import of the event I will soon describe.
I’ve long thought about this event—nearly every day or week since it occurred—always digesting and turning it around inside the innermost workings of my intellect. It was from somewhere within my being where I was always trying to feel the shape of this event with blind dendrites and uncomprehending senses.
This phenomenon was like being in a dark room next to a mysterious and dark object whose size and presence are undeniable. That was an illusion, though, for it is the moving colored light of this memory that, through the years, continues projecting dimensions onto the sightless contours of
my mind. I see it now as “the secret of the precipice.”
I was around sixteen or seventeen. At the time, my first-born sister, Sue, and I enjoyed a relatively close relationship. That night we would be in attendance at my first live music concert: James Taylor, uncut and free.
I still remember parts of that night’s drive to the concert in Sue’s new, red, five-speed Mazda 626. The streets were empty and quiet, the expectant drive peaceful and amber-lit in the sports car’s dashboard light.
The concert was, by contrast, loud and relatively bright. A lively and hooting James seemed to enjoy playing the music we had all been so eager to go and hear. I don’t remember the concert much, or much of anything else that happened that night. The curiosity I will soon describe, however, would stand out for a lifetime.
It was before the beginning of the concert and probably before the two of us sat down when my sister and I—from our seating row higher up—watched a packed crowd filing down the stairs of a center aisle.
My focus on this crowd was diffuse and passive, at best, but what my sister Sue said next brought me to a level of awareness that, greatly intensified, would tantalize and evade me to this day.
What Susan said, she said in a sort of preoccupied muse that she was, at unexpected times, wont to speak from . . . I can’t remember her exact words, but they went something like this:
“I just realized that, if the ground opened up in front of those people, they would just follow each other off into it.”
There was a gravity in her detached but gravid statement that echoed the gravity in her muse.
I can’t remember if I responded. She didn’t seem to expect a response to the perhaps inner dialogue I happened to intercept.
I’ve thought about that moment for the better part of three decades—not knowing its meaning or importance, but constantly seeking both. Now, in this late evening of our mother’s life and on the remote precipice of my own, I am beginning to know why what my big sister Sue told me that summer was so important, and perhaps also what it meant:
For those in a crowd who find that the ground has opened up in front of them—when they see that panorama of abyss—they will know, in that moment, where the next step will take them.
Despite this, they’ll find that they can do nothing to prevent themselves from being pushed into that abyss by the crowd pressing at their backs. Even their high cries, their warnings, their last-moment epiphanies or ultimate revelations will be lost to the blind multitude of voices and forward momentum of those behind them. Only the people in front will see it and know when it is too late, and when no one will listen.
Perhaps what my sister described is but a march toward whatever is irreversible. Maybe death is like that, our lives, or history. Maybe all anybody can do is try to scream as they are pushed forward by those who are ignorant of what awaits them.
Lay a Kiss
by John-Russell Bossé
For Mike and Dave
Lay a kiss on my head, son,
For all those times you laughed and played;
For the light that bore me throughout the day —
Lay a kiss.
Your eyes, so bright in playground park,
Would banish away the lonely dark.
Lay a kiss for me.
Lay a kiss on my head, son,
For how could I – to you – express,
Before I close my eyes to rest,
And slip off from life’s eve-tide crest –
That you will always be my little boy?
Lay a kiss for me, son.
Though I’ve seen sad days and sorrow,
Your life had promised hope for tomorrow,
Till now, when I have no more days to borrow.
Lay a kiss for me.
Like windborne seeds you must let me go,
For there are other lands for me to sow;
But in your heart, please always know,
That in this land you were my last . . .
My me.
Of All Truth
by John-Russell Bossé
To stand next to our words with all belief is to be covered by the warp and weft of textile true.
Even so, however, we’ll be seen by the substance of our tongue’s tapestry.
And as one as thread and soul and optimism and ideal, is this perfect garment:
Pragmatism.
Birthright
by John-Russell Bossé
Sidewalk is soft when I drink.
Clothes I always wear as blankets don’t seem to mind concrete.
Family lost among moving sea of faces, unanswered phone calls, and tripping shoes.
Gray bits among black collage in tar mind:
Agony of thought defies
Description tosses itself into nothingness –
Raging in twisted fits and screaming off into a void.
I’ll float on tides of desolation—unable to move while beached.
Dirty, barley-choked sleep comes mercifully to the dismay of inquiring hands, far-off voices, and
embracing steel cuffs.
For days they punish me with cruel light and sobriety in bar-land.
They’ll never know the sweetness of my sleep in places they cannot reach,
Nor why I’ll live to kiss the earth-shell again in coveted bliss—hearing the wombbeat of the city
’neath hardened soles.
The Black Cat, the Guitar, and the Protector
by John-Russell Bossé
Our sister Sue . . .
With long, graceful fingers she would strum to us her songs on guitar cords. When we were children, my big sister would lend us her childlike voice and make her twelve-string guitar come alive.
Sue! Susan!
Colorful chords of warmth from her music would connect our hearts, vibrating into the new frontiers and undiscovered rooms of our little but spacious souls. I was six. My brother Marc was five, Mike twelve.
Susan lived in an apartment mere blocks from Lynn Beach. I lived with my mother and two brothers in a house not much farther into town. Sue’s nearness, however, was like a reminder that she was there as our angel and protector.
During that time, she owned a black cat that she had saved from the street. She called him “Kitty.” Even though she was allergic and had asthma, she held onto him like an angel and protector.
I was too young to remember much of her third-floor apartment. I do, however, remember a large, framed profile drawing of the space alien E.T. peeing. In that picture, the toilet’s lid dropped shut onto his penis. In shock and pain, E.T.’s tongue thrust out and his neck extended.
Even before I was old enough to know what “cool” was, I knew that her apartment was it.
It could not be denied that her refuge was cozy, having an order and warmth I remember of all her homes. The sable Kitty seemed to meld like a cuddly and silken shadow into the most pleasant nooks of that haven near the sea.
There is a family story that has been passed down, and it goes like this:
Some years before our grandmother, at the age of sixty-six, suddenly left us, Sue was with her in her living room. On this particular occasion, she was holding onto one of Grandmother’s cushion pillows, when Grandma stared at her with translike intensity: “I see fire. I see flames.”
“There’s no fire,” said Sue, still holding the pillow.
“But I see it. You have a gift and you have to listen. If you listen to your gift, it will save you and you will live for a long time.”
Sometime after that prophesy, and after Grandmother’s heart attack, that same pillow was passed down to Susan. It was, indeed, there in that cozy Lynn apartment when the apartment burned down.
Perhaps it was that “gift,” though, that saved her. It came as a voice inside her to wake her up from a half sleep on that fateful night: “Get up. Get up. GET UP!”
On the night of destruction, Sue, wearing only a robe, looked for her beloved Kitty, but he was hiding and wouldn’t come out. With escape time dwindling, she grabbed her guitar and rushed through the smoke to the safety of the street.
Her long, graceful fingers never again stroked her black Kitty’s head. Neither did they ever again caress the strings of that guitar that she, like an angel, would play for us.
In the years I’ve known her since, she has kept her guitar—the only thing that survived the fire—in a black, coffin-like case I never saw her open. I would never again see her make it come alive.
It has been over thirty-seven years since the fire, but I’ve always half-wondered, and only half-known of, where her songs went.
Through the years passing like smoke I have, in the obscurity, sought to understand the full meaning of the black cat and guitar case. I think that if I were to ever understand those two things and what was lost, I would understand life.
Remember Bosnia
by John-Russell Bossé
On TV, I see him.
His gaze over the barbed wire is dazed. The barbed wire stretches mere inches from his bare skin. His shirtless torso is stretched taut with starvation, a naked display of collar bone and ribcage. His expression is a naked display of bitter and caged bovine acceptance. His caged bitter acceptance stretches out to me through the television through the years, mere breadths from my naked eyes and bare recognition. I feel recognition for the boredom of his ordinary day within his abominable, extraordinary situation.
His situation is forever borne on those thin shoulders of martyrdom—immortalized through cellulose and digital compression—to remind us that we are hungry to discover ourselves.
Though hungry, we deny our humanity the acknowledgment of what makes no one different from the next. Though hungry, we withhold from ourselves the bite of conscience or semblance of recognition for that listless gaze reaching out to us through the years.
Ownership
by John-Russell Bossé
You may have my body, but not my mind.
I don’t hate you, because
You have no real power over me.
Guards, prison staff—I haven’t bought your lies.
Your system I reject.
Most prisoners have given you their minds because,
On some level, they believe what you stand for.
It is, however, a bitter relinquishment,
And they despise you for it.
I love you because
My mind is not yours . . .
I am free.
Winter Whispers
by John-Russell Bossé
Deposits of fine, crystal latticework received like a ghostly communion: That is the endlife of
winter flakes upon my tongue.
May the wine of sky and clean air loosen my lips to speak of these holiday sacraments. In the
form of whispering pages, poetry will capture them.
In cool, cleansing, icy kisses, let them descend upon our minds to ever imprint these times of
settling frost—so short lived upon our imperfection.
Corrections
by John-Russell Bossé
When guards insult us—
to kill the inner man,
we call them “COs”
as if they were greater than.
When guards crush
and destroy our things,
we numbly claim “corrections,”
though our heartache they bring.
When they savagely attack
and break bone,
you conceal with “correction,”
that salve your own.
Prison may deny one’s needs
or let rot the flesh,
“But it’s corrections,” you say
Of that putrid mesh.
We say those words
without irony or thought—
careless of the falsehood
and callousness wrought.
We relinquish freedom
word-weapons of war
and fallow ground
that free people died for.
With “corrections” we leave
our sword in its sheath
and knock out of our mouths
any bite with teeth.
For with that term
we withdraw from combat—
letting victors sup
on spoil and grow fat.
The prisons and guards
honor lazy lips.
They’re nourished by fawning
souls and bloody sips.
From their lordly hands
fall stately crumbs;
from that pompous grasp
they sprinkle their slums;
And by so doing,
they let slip the fact
that their work’s not a corrective
or compassionate act.
We will stubbornly, though,
insist by-and-by
to quicken the double-speak
and keep up the lie:
Corrections . . . Corrections . . . Corrections . . .
The Black Cat, the Guitar, and the Protector
By John-Russell Bosse
Our sister Sue…
With long, graceful fingers she would strum to us songs on guitar cords. When we were children, my big sister would lend us her child-like voice and make her twelve-string guitar come alive.
Sue! Susan!
Colorful chords of warmth from her music would connect our hearts, vibrating into the new frontiers and undiscovered rooms of our little but spacious souls. I was six. My brother Marc was five, Mike 12. Susan lived in an apartment, mere blocks from Lynn Beach. I lived with my mother and two brothers in our house not much farther into town. Sue’s nearness, however, was like a reminder that she was there as our angel and protector.
During that time, she owned a black cat that she had saved from the street. She called him “Kitty”. Even though she was allergic and had asthma, she held onto him like an angel and protector.
I was too young to remember much of that third-floor apartment. I do, however, remember a large, framed, profile drawing of the space alien E.T. peeing. In that picture the toilet’s lid dropped shut onto his penis. In shock and pain, E.T.’s tongue thrust out and his neck extended.
Even before I was old enough to know what ” cool” was, I knew that her apartment was it.
It could not be denied that her refuge was cozy and had an order and warmth I remember of all her homes. The sable Kitty seemed to meld, like a cuddly and silken shadow, into the most pleasant nooks, of that haven near the sea.
There is a family story that has been passed down, and it goes like this: Some years before our grandmother, at the age of 66, suddenly left us, Sue was with her in her living room. On this particular occasion, she was holding onto one of Grandmother’s cushion pillows when Grandma stared at her with trance-like intensity: “I see fire. I see flames.”
“There’s no fire,” said Sue, still holding the pillow.
“But I see it. You have a gift and you have to listen. If you listen to your gift, it will save you and you will live for a long time.”
Sometime after that prophecy, and after Grandmother’s heart attack, that same pillow was passed down to Susan. It was, indeed, there in that cozy Lynn apartment when it burned down.
Perhaps it was that “gift”, though, that saved her. It came as a voice inside her to wake her up from a half sleep on that fateful night: “Get up. Get up. GET UP!”
On that night of destruction, Sue, wearing only a robe, looked for her beloved Kitty, but he was hiding and wouldn’t come out. With escape time dwindling, she grabbed her guitar and rushed through the smoke to the safety of the street. Her long, graceful fingers never again stroked her black Kitty’s head. Neither did they ever again caress the strings of that guitar that she, like an angel, would play for us.
In the years I’ve known her since, Sue has kept her guitar – the only thing that survived the fire – in a black, coffin-like case I never saw her open. I would never again see her make it come alive.
It has been over 37 years since the fire, but I’ve always half-wondered, and only half-known of where her songs went.
Through years passing like smoke I have, in the obscurity, sought to understand the full meaning of the black cat and guitar case. I think that if I were to ever understand those two things, and what was lost, I would understand life.
The Force of Speech or Silence
By John-Russell Bossé
If I were to die tomorrow, I would say nothing to prepare or commemorate.
Why should I work to fit, with desperation, treasure boxes into fleeting and final hours?
If the stubborn ghost within me were to yet cling to mortality, let me tell neither kindred soul
nor blood.
My life has always spoken, but they who have not listened have never cared to know I was
alive.
My passing would be like a night whisper that both snuffs candle and dies on sleeping ears.
If then you would search for me, you’d wake to silence and forgotten dreams.
Till then, for the mourners who wake and who die inside every day, I will live forever-now
without regret or regard.
How glorious it is—if not to have power over death, but rather over my tongue, to speak not of
calamity ordained or bejeweled in my stars.
Let my passing come upon you like a thief or a pall of wind that is felt no more.
Let the possibility of your regard—swaddled in virgin disuse—be lowered on dirges.
Perfect and impregnable will that receiving rectangle be—trenched in dirt—unsullied by light.
There, wordless and quiet, I will wash myself with darkness.
Can you see how that wet navel of earth will swallow the cries of those born to the realization
that the gulf between us is fixed? for then it will be known that nevermore will the light
of your world touch mine.
Susan’s Cradle
By John-Russell Bossé
Wafting on pillows of silky sound
Was the voice of my sister true.
When I was a child, she’d read to me and
I’d rest my head to the heaven
Her words lifted.
With the kindness of a mother,
She’d shepherd me and my brother.
As if companion to meadow and staff
She’d lead us where we lay amidst
Hedge of bed and blanket.
Speaking, her voice sang, and singing
It was as if hers were the only language
In the world
And ours were the only ears,
And her strength and breath
The only strength and breath
In the structure of those moments
Susan’s voice was like a house whose
Humble Doric columns would support my
Trusses of hope-never-hoped.
I will not speak ill of my mother,
But in the unrest of my youth,
And the strained yoke of our lives,
I’d sin in envy of the unborn soul who
Would win Susan as their own.
Everything unappreciated and abandoned,
My big sister would handle with
Curator’s love.
A lifetime before becoming one herself,
A mother’s care would attend her deeds
And manner.
I still hear and feel it today when she
Speaks to me and
Everything is possible for the library of my
Unbound mind.
I tell stories and I write
But it is she and her voice that gives spirit
To my formative veins and
The inky stroke to this heralded craft.
Our blessed mother fostered my pursuits
But it was our dear sister, Sue, who would
Place me in that cradle of bedtime stories.
Fire, Water, Cup
By John-Russell Bossé
Believe what I write.
Let me ignite a fire in your heart of kindling.
With lanterns I wish to foment a revolution of spirit, to break down walls and illuminate places you never knew were dark.
I want you to be moved.
Be it fear, joy, or passion, may you fill the shape of the words I labor to give birth to.
Let me, though, not labor.
With ease, let me draw from my well of spirit, and from my core, give you drink.
Let it be that as my depletion is, so will your invigoration be.
Feel oh heart!
Through tribulation let me touch you – well water dripping from my pen to the golden cup of your life’s sanctum.
So That You May Understand…
By John-Russell Bossé
I wish you loneliness.
When you’re free, I wish you all the freedom in the world and the despondency to do nothing with it.
I wish you lifelong lassitude.
I wish you crippling paths of paralysis and depression-laced indolence.
I wish you suicidal fantasies and a lust to tickle the fringes of achieving them.
I wish you to be alone.
I wish you wailing and groveling in the filth of self-abasement.
May you find comfort in the mirror, but alienation with others.
May every place you go, and the people thereof, see you as a strange man and outcast.
May you struggle your whole life to operate through a numbing cloud, in a world you don’t understand.
May you be looked down upon as stupid and slow.
I wish you loneliness.
I wish you lips that have never kissed a mate and women who’ll esteem you forgotten.
Let the family you start exist in imagination only, and the family you grew up with, be aloof and obscure.
I wish you mortification.
I wish you a unique concentration of self-hatred that drives you to the extremes of society’s need to exact punishment.
May that society thereby complete the symmetry of your inner world.
May you be mocked by the word “friend” to describe those who associated with you in only heartier times.
May life’s fat and meat be carved away so you are left with gristle-water to drink.
May you find the nourishment of a weed busting through concrete.
May a desert of cell blocks stretch before you.
May you be forced to live amidst eternal rivals and slowly bleed the dawns in every year.
May your nightmares and fears enjoy fulfillment in your waking days.
May you writhe in agony that no one sees.
Highest Holiday
By John-Russell Bossé
(For Patricia Mattatall)
The high holiday is coming.
The holiest sanctum is upon us, for it is the last I will celebrate with the one who gave birth to me.
It is a day I fear to approach…that I may never be able to prepare myself for.
Still, it plods forward as our last.
How can I ever say how much you mean to me, or how thankful I am?
How could the measure of my days fit into the day that’s coming?
For it, anything that could be said would be inadequate.
Lest this pen bleed for you, though, you, my source, will not be memorialized as mine this day.
Please know that all I ever wanted to say, may be said just in the sun’s rise on this last holiday together.
It will be a shadow, though, unless it symbolize a million other daybreaks for us.
I hold this in my heart; that there will be an eternity of Mother’s Day sunrises before I die.
May they still never be enough for the woman whose altar cup was filled with the legacy of what she herself could not consciously express.
Before I had a voice, though, and before my pen could ever sustain, you felt me as no other will – bearing me in that altar cup of devotion.
Cloaked in secret and monastic shade, I then moved to the sound of the only heart I would ever know.
Ever after my inception – ever after I opened estranged eyes to air and light – I would live to seek that heart again and try to know what had become so strangely distant.
Everything I am or ever expressed would be that seeking and that trying to somehow return to that temple and that beating I was almost one with.
When you leave, mine will be tabernacle bereft and abandoned, so I approach this last candle with the flame of knowing that everything that matters and ever mattered will be symbolized in this coming holiday together.
I’ll defy the proclamation of the darkening shell you inhabit, by preserving for you a necklace of eternal candles; a string of amber I’ll ever wear till I wax ancient and abide with you.
I love you Mom
By John-Russell Bossé
(For Patricia Ann Mattatall)
When I was a child, I was expected to love, even though I didn’t know what love was.
You would often sing to us; “Do you, do you, do you, do you love me? Do you, do you, do you, do you care? Do you, do you, do you, do you love me? Do you, do you, do you really care?” and we would dutifully declare “Yes Mom!” but we didn’t know.
I don’t think you knew what love was, either. Maybe you socialized with friends to know, courted men to know…Maybe you married to find love, and by the time you had kids, you still hadn’t found it, so you asked us if we had.
We didn’t know what love was, but even children can sense and fear for a heart in danger of being broken, so we said we did.
And yes, yes we did love, in the simple way children know love, but even what little we knew, we were not fully aware of. It was worth holding onto, though. If there is anything of worth in all the universe, even a stunted, malformed love holds supreme and absolute.
Your love was not stunted or malformed. I met you only when you were an adult, and you loved us as best as you could, in your own perfect way. Still, though, like a blind person who can not recognize the entirety of an assembling shape, you did not recognize the full contours of love. Under your blind searching though, you would know those fragments more than any greedy or careless eye could… but the whole of love eluded you.
I wasn’t completely aware of this blindness until now – for it had taken me nearly 40 years to know fully myself, what love is.
Love is need, but it is not only need. Love is dedication, but it is not only dedication. Love is sacrifice, but it is not only sacrifice.
The whole of love is to accept wholly and as perfect, everyone as they are, for who they are; To need them, to give to them, and to sacrifice for even those who do not know their supreme and absolute worth; To live for or die for even those who do not know they are worth living and dying for; To believe for those who believe they have nothing to give; And to cradle even the stunted and bruised leaf.
I love you Mom; not only for what you did for me and do for others, but for who you are in your uniqueness I could never know; for who you think you aren’t, and for who you think you’ll never be.
Please
By John-Russell Bossé
(For Laurie, Mike, and Me)
“Please”
I have no God unless all the sky and ground would be to worship.
I have no prayer most times, ‘cept most times, when I do, it’s “Please”.
I say it to no one, I say it to all, but whatever or whoever might hear it, I do not know.
Can a prayer be any less of one if it is to no one, or it is spoken to the air?
Can a prayer be one, if it’s only word is one? “Please”?
How could all my wants and needs, and myriad cries within be contained in that one word?
And yet they are.
Could anything else hide behind such spare an utterance?
“Please”
It seeks nothing and yet asks for all. It expects nothing yet is spoken none-the-less.
“Please”
It’s like hands to a blind man groping for substance, or like a tongue – lone of any other bodily sense – rolling around and tasting the ineffable.
It’s like a message thrown to shifting winds I know will carry it somewhere.
I know somewhere is listening.
“Please”
Not even I know what mysteries inside me it represents, but when all I have is gone, and I’ve barely a body, I’ll still have that one word.
Till then, I’ll not know who it’s to or what it’s worth, but I’ll search the cosmos with my lips, and that abiding, mystic emblem:
Please
This Present
By John-Russell Bossé
We have now.
Tomorrow is not now,
And now does not give us tomorrow.
As you’re reading
It is only this place in eternity
That we are guaranteed.
When we are together
And fixed,
In page or in voice,
These moments
Are the body we can’t touch.
As sure as I here write
We share this time
This present.
Everything we should ever hope for
Is in the inspiration that fills us.
Yes, as we breathe,
The place we inhabit,
This instant,
Belongs to us.
Emma’s Comfort
By John-Russell Bossé
(Dedicated to actress Emma Stone)
When Emma sucks her thumb, she is the personification of peace wrapped in innocence. From her thumb she can draw sheets of warmth from the milk of comfort. She draws this comfort as if in remembrance of giving breasts, blankets, and teddy bears.
These are forgotten things and thought unacceptable for adults like her to cling to or covet. But even in that vulnerability, Emma is as beautiful and strong as ever. She’s mature and excels in her work, yet she’ll always find time to resort to that fount of peace harking to the womb.
Her travels can take her far away where she breathes the open air blowing through strange lands. Wherever in the world this woman finds herself, though, when she suckles, she’s in a close embrace, and home.
Even when life is strange, blazing or strident, Emma’s old habit can bring back that warm, dark universe of sated desires near the beating and nurturing heart she’ll always call “Ma”.
Home
By John-Russell Bossé
Mom,
Forever Rose
Forever Flower
Be not ash this day;
For the sun cannot scatter you –
Black soot to the winds…
It knows not
Of what everything can be
And was in you.
Though the winds blow dark your remains,
And show not the light
That crowned those few you friended,
Golden memory forever does not rot,
Tarnish, or bow to the crackle, and
Heat of a mindless flame.
There was sun fire you kept
Locked up inside
That those whom you let in
Recognized as hearth
And home.
I do not recognize this strange
Dust
That if recovered from every
Sea and stream,
Could not amount to one thought
Or fantasy of flight;
Or be quenched by the travel
Of eons
Of waters corrupted or pure.
Yet you were
And if you still are
Then those more travelled elements of you
Always lived between your heartbeats,
And tween atoms that–in their singularities
Were unable to recognize
What a heart is.
Is it faith that enlarges such
In betweens
To fill the timeless certainties, we contemplate
For an eternal life no molecule of mind
Can?
I live in between this faith
And the unknowing atom;
The ash.
And I find myself pleading for recovery,
For a time when I curled up
To the sound of your voice
And the hearth of
Home.
My Hair
By John-Russell Bossé
I love my hair.
It has entangled fingers
Coffee and fair
Whose freedom ranges like lusty mare:
My hair.
When I look at them
I think of my parent’s love.
My locks evoke thoughts
Of what my ancestors wrought.
At least six tribes from five shores met here.
The love of my parents was forbidden.
And to this year, people sneer.
But, you see, it cannot be undone.
Of this, both I and my hair are testament.
As rebellious as they were
Are my long locks
And now, let no blade take aim.
The scorn of others reveals their servitude,
For they bow shorn heads to
The simple and accepted,
And worn trails for tribes
Compliant in their shades.
I defy them all – for look –
French poet and hot voodoo nights made me.
Of hidden gypsies and Saxon steel on Irish shore
I’ve been made manifest.
But my hair, my hair, you see,
Is where they all rest.
Both curly and straight
My silken mane
Springs out the same
As cork-screw lanes:
Forever roller coaster tracks.
The wild ride of generations
My hair remembers.
Read this and know
That as I still grow,
My head’s bold flow
Shows the explorer’s heart I share.
Yes, I do love
My hair.
I Never Quit
By John-Russell Bossé
Mommy, I can’t breathe. When you can’t breathe, I can’t breathe. Mommy, I’m dying.
When you’re dying, I’m dying. I’m losing control. Everyday, every moment, I scream and can barely hold it back. When I do, I can feel my body dying.
Sometimes I wake up at night and I am four years-old again. For the first time in my life, I feel like I did when I was four and would rouse to cast about the sleepy halls of our house. Wandering like a yowling ghost, I’d seek the wake of night, like a spirit in pursuit of its shadow.
In those lonely hours, groping in a coil of blackest maze, I’d look and look, and look for something. In memory though, is when, in that unspeakable affliction, Dad would save me. He’d comfort me in those times when suffering and loss were crushing the tender petals of my inner man. It was as if he would pick me up with everlasting and godlike arms – rescuing me from that nightmare cradle of Hell. It was in those times when he would soothe – feeding me cold “eggynoggy”. Surrounded by silence and both alone, it was as if I were to him the only person in the world.
Mommy, you were not there when I looked. Like God, it was my father who rescued me. I realize now, though, in this hour, Mom, that on some level, I was not searching for my blanket. I was searching for you.
King’s Highway
By John-Russell Bossé
(Fiction)
Daddy! Dad! See the new men walking, their dark bodies towering.
They move like kings – their backs straight.
Their heads are held high, but it’s almost like the blue sky isn’t high enough for them.
They’re like cool shadows against the sunlight, their smooth dark skin bringing night with them on these bright streets.
Where are they going? I imagine to a place of royalty, as mysterious as they are.
Once the rulers – cars have cleared a way and parked to allow their royal walk.
Horses and elephants, I have only seen in movies will probably meet to take them to their marble and gold castles.
The big words they carry on long sheets of fabric and paper might say something important but I don’t know how to read them.
Daddy, their walk is quiet and proud. Why are we throwing bottles at them?
The Same Sun
By John-Russell Bossé
The same sun that paints your walls, also shifts the shadows of mine.
The same sun that colors days, also forms black borders, elsewhere.
The same sun slashing through my dull tomb, also glints off razor wire and grass blades.
The same sun that touches me through occasional skylights and throws a net of dark grillwork onto cell blocks- that same sun brightens soaring ranges beyond.
The same sun that warms my darkened world, also lights white the moon on the other side of it.
The same sun that promises light outside our shells, will also shine for the hatchlings who will never be.
The same sun that alights upon the nest of this earth, leads fledglings who might otherwise never explore the void around them.
The same sun that’s familiar to us, also shines across galaxies to people unaware of life on other planets.
The same sun that fills and lights every aspect of our days outside; is cold and obscure, elsewhere.
The same sun that nurtures us and is like a giant yellow egg yolk, is a remote pinprick in the scattered nights of worlds too strange to imagine…
I live under both suns.
A Gravestone
By John-Russell Bossé
(For Marc)
A gravestone is like an abrupt period to a sentence lost to and obscured by time.
It’s not a just representation of one’s life.
For all the words we speak, there are only a few lines engraved to summarize.
Like it’s brief note that attempts to condense, a gravestone is our antithesis.
For warm, soft bodies, we are given cold, hard rock.
For changing lives that move, breathe, and conceive,
We are left with still and quiet sentinels that have never known breath, or even knowing.
For all the light of the eyes and mind, we have the eternal darkness of a granite abutment of grief
Trying to help bridge the vanishing awareness of our lives’ journey
Into the unknown
And unheard of.
Thirty-Four Before the Requiem
By John-Russell Bossé and Patricia Ann Mattatall
(Dedicated to Mom)
Go slowly
There’s still time
Go slowly
For you to be mine
Go slowly
For the sky to be rent
Go slowly
For my cries to relent
Go slowly
My heart beats wine
Go slowly
For you, my vine
Go slowly
Whence I was born
Go slowly
From a body shorn
Go slowly
Your spirit fly
Go slowly
Into that sky
Go slowly
For when you’re sent
Go slowly
Till my soul is spent
Go slowly
To live forever
Go slowly
From that cord to sever
Go slowly
From my mind as “here”
Go slowly
From a phone that’s near
Go slowly
And my love remain
Go slowly
To soothe your pain
Go slowly
Shun summer frost
Go slowly
When all is lost
Go slowly
Through fall refrain
Go slowly
When leaf is slain
Go slowly
Shirk winter pyre
Go slowly
To heaven’s fire
Go slowly
Till spring returns
Go slowly
Defy that urn
Go slowly
And ever eat
Go slowly
Flower and peat
Go slowly
Like turtle’s twain
Go slowly
Earth’s bond maintain
Go slowly
And always hold
Go slowly
That glory gold
Go slowly
Until you’re free
Go slowly
Take a piece of me
Our Mistress and Demigods
By John-Russell Bossé
Ancient utterances laced through amply filled silken bodices: Poetry should thus bind us over a mysterious and perenial heart.
She should be captured with our mouths even past the midnight hour when her charms may ignite our minds.
Her many layers of meaning should dip our pens and souls in a feverous desire to reveal –
Reveal the soft, naked valleys and crests that describe her.
And from this fount of inspiration as elusive as smoke in our hands, may we form her blazing lines –
Lines we will burn with, to brand eons into pages borne like demigods throughout the ages.
Torch on a Hill
By John-Russell Bossé
(A Dialogue)
(Fiction)
Wife: It’s gone.
Husband: We’ll rebuild.
Wife: Our families fled Europe to escape this.
Husband: We’ll rebuild.
Wife: The fire chief there believes it was a Molotov cocktail.
Husband: Don’t focus on that.
Wife: But it happened. It’s right here in front of us.
Husband: We’ll build despite this.
Wife: Why would anyone want to destroy a community center?
Husband: This building’s outer shell will be saved.
Wife: What, so they can burn down the inside again? Our people have gone through this since history’s youth…Things don’t change.
Husband: But youths will again fill this center. We’ll never give up.
Wife: Honey, that war has stained history like it stained these walls.
Husband: Those curses will scrub right out.
Wife: But the past…What the people did to our families will never go away or be taken back.
Husband: We’ll paint over what can’t come out. We’ll have the children paint colorful murals over it. It’ll look better than before. You’ll see.
Wife: I won’t be able to forget what’s underneath the paint, though. That can’t be scrubbed out.
Husband: We’ll have plenty of wonderful memories to cover over this. We won’t live in fear.
Wife: Honey –
Husband: Every day will be a rebuilding and with everything we repair, we’ll change the world just enough to decrease the likelihood of something like this happening again.
Wife: Decrease the likelihood?
Husband: Yes, even if it’s just a little…until the king comes to Zion and these things will be no more.
Wife: Fairy tales.
Husband: It’s something I hope for.
Wife: And until then?
Husband: Until then, we’ll have each other. We have the community. They’ll gather behind us. We’ll come out on top.
Wife: I love you honey.
Husband: We need each other. We’ll get through this…It’ll be alright.
Wife: That’s why I married you: the perenial optimist.
Husband: Do you feel this?
Wife: Yes.
Husband: This moment right here, as we stand here…This, this is what matters.
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