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Open Poetry #31
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Jaime Fradera
Senior Member
since 2000-11-25
Posts 843
Where no tyranny is tolerable

0 posted 2004-03-26 11:55 PM



For The Rites To Be Performed


I am back at the asylum,
But this time it worked out much better.
I'm having breakfast for the last day here.
S, a woman with me,
Who seems to be a girlfriend
Or a staff member at the place,
Urges me to hurry
Because they are waiting to perform
The graduation rite of passage,
And she is coming with me.
The ceremony is performed and I go home.


Back in Austin it is morning.
I am suddenly  listening to music
With strangers at someone else's house.
K and her boyfriend m,
Both unknown to me, are there.
K is unusually attentive for a stranger.
She keeps asking do I need anything,
What music would I listen to,
And is the sound too loud, too soft, just right?
I am tired by the long trip from New York,
So I tell her I don't care
And that whatever she wants to do is fine.
But K seems not to notice
Doesn't seem to be deterred
By my weary indifference.
She keeps repeating the same questions ..
Am I sure that everything's okay? ...
I want to be left alone.
I just want to go home.
But someone else would have to drive me there,
And the strangers in this strange house won't.



It is night.
K takes me to a special church
Of which she is a member.
Inside the special church there is a secret sect
Of which she also is a part.
The secret sect
is to perform a sacred ceremony
at which K is to officiate.
The church is filled with solemn, silent people,
All dressed up in their finery.
The air is filled
With the smell of incense and of burning candles.
The atmosphere is one of reverence and of awe,
For the rites to be performed this night
Are holy.
Together, arm in arm,
K and I march slowly,
Reverentially, to a ceremonial altar.
When we have reach the front of the church
She leaves me, and the ceremony begins.
During the strange, mysterious ritual,
I start to realize
That the dream is coming to an end.
I interrupt the ritual by yelling to K
For her full name or her phone number,
Because I'm about to wake up,
So I can call her back
Once I have reached the other side.
But no one in the church
Can hear me except  her,
And K is busy with some incantation,
And at first she just ignores me.
As the dream slips away
I call out ever more insistently, alarmingly,
For K's full name, for her telephone,
Because I'm waking up ...
I'm waking up ...
Finally K shouts back to me:
3 9 2 ... 3 9 2 ..
The prefix number
At a school I once attended.
This the entire congregation hears,
And the spell of ceremony is sharply broken,
And the church dissolves in incredulous confusion,
Because the sacred rites
Have been disrupted and profaned.
And then my line to K is gone.
But the wakening is false.  
It is the next morning,
and although I am not there,
I can somehow hear the scene
In the office of K's supervisor.
As I float, weightless, formless,
Seeming to be nowhere in particular,
I hear K's boss
Call her in and tell her curtly
To turn over her keys and that,
Because of the sacrilege
She has committed in the church,
She is fired,
As well as kicked out of her office,
Kicked out of the special church
That meant so much to her,
The church
Of which she had been a member
For so long,
And before she can even complain,
She is dismissed.
I feel a wave of remorse.
She doesn't know
I was a witness to her firing,
But I'm sure she knows who's fault it was,
And I just hope to God
I will never, ever have
To encounter her again.


And then I'm at an unfamiliar university.
I wander aimlessly,
Unable to find where registration is.
Suddenly K is there with me.
She couldn't possibly have known I would be here.
Without words being exchanged,
She indicates the way to me
And then is gone.
As I come out of registration,
K suddenly appears again,
With no words being exchanged,
She directs me
To the next point in the process and is gone.
Here there are three doors
Through which I have to pass.
I enter the first door,
And a barber is there
To shave me and to cut my hair.
I open the second door
Which reveals a tiny compartment
Where I'm supposed to leave my clothes.
The space is tight and cramped and stuffy.
I struggle to remove my clothes
Peeling off endless layers
Of sweaty, clinging fabric.
I let the mass of fabric
Fall tumbling to the floor.
And I am already very  tired.
There is hardly enough space
To open the inner door,
And then I'm in a teeny tiny shower stall.
I fumble for the faucet
And do my best to bathe and dry myself,
But can't do much of anything
In the humid, stuffy space.  
There isn't room to breathe,
No room to even dress myself.
Suddenly K is standing
With me in the shower.
She couldn't possibly have known
I would be in here.
I wish I somehow could get rid of her.
How could she have even gotten in here?
I don't want a stranger
To see me in this way,
Pitiful, unable to breathed,
Naked, drained,
Unable even to dress myself,
in this water-logged, suffocating crush.
Without saying a word
She helps me with the clothes,
Back through the double outer doors where I can breathe,
And then suddenly is gone.


I can breathe,
But I am also very hungry,
Having not eaten
Distracted by the day's ordeals.
Now, it is night.
I set off in one direction,
Then off in another,
But can not seem to find the cafeteria.  
I bump into a computer.
It is already on
And set up with JAWS for Windows.
It is connected to a "chat room,"
And I can somehow hear
The voices of people in the chat.
I know I won't be using it
And decide to turn it off,
But I have to close
A multitude of pages
Until it finally powers out.
  And then, suddenly K is there ... again,
And I cringe.
She is wanting to say something,
wanting to know something.
Without words being exchanged,
I know what she is thinking ...
How she is out of work and out of money,
And has to find another place to live.
  And I know what she's about to say----
That I lied when I told her I was waking,
That I was disrespectful of her,
Off the ceremonial mystery
Through which she wanted to initiate me,
That because I didn't care, because of me
She was now stripped of all that meant so much to her,
And that now she stood at the edge of destitution
And homeless desperation,
And it was all because I didn't care, because ...

Then K takes my hand.
Quietly, silently,
As though by telepathic transfer,
She tells me that I could not
Have lied to her about waking,
Because I had only told her
What I thought to be the truth.
She tells me I could never have broken ceremony
In the church,
Because no one in the room except herself
Could hear or see me.
And even at times when I must live
In the separate world of Wakefulness,
She will never be more
Than a heartbeat away,
And it will be at night, and in my Sleep,
at she will come to be with me.
Now I understand the pointlessness
Of trying to get rid of her.
She passes through walls
And security gates and doors
As though she were some spirit being,
Even when no one else
Can see or hear her except me.
It is in silence that we say these things,
Without speaking
That we somehow know these things,
And we embrace …
She doesn’t know where the chow hall might be either.
But we’ll look for it together.
And then I wake, in tears,
For real this time,
And remind myself again
That as long as I am living
I will never be alone.

Jaime


© Copyright 2004 The Sun - All Rights Reserved
Midnitesun
Deputy Moderator 1 Tour
Member Empyrean
since 2001-05-18
Posts 28647
Gaia
1 posted 2004-03-27 12:16 PM


and so it came to pass, that within the moment it took for two hearts to beat, a connection was made that is meant to last forever

iliana
Member Patricius
since 2003-12-05
Posts 13434
USA
2 posted 2004-03-27 12:27 PM


What an experience!  Interesting journey and writing!
Sunshine
Administrator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-06-25
Posts 63354
Listening to every heart
3 posted 2004-03-27 07:58 AM


And then I wake, in tears,
For real this time,
And remind myself again
That as long as I am living
I will never be alone.

~*~

Jaime, a connection as special as this, will transcend a lifetime. Thank you so much for sharing this special part of you.

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