Some Excerpts from a Forthcoming Novella-Length Poem

Dear Reader,

Twenty-six years ago, I was a nearby witness to an authentic Greek tragedy.  A tragedy that I believe is justifiably described as a “murder”.

If it was not some kind or species of murder, then there is no English word I know of to describe the outrageous cruelty and brutality of what a false lover did to a beautiful young woman who worked with me at the time as my data-entry clerk.

Today, the word “trauma” has become a popular word  to describe the effects such things can have on people.  I never sought nor received professional help for the personal fallout from witnessing her betrayal and murder.

I wish I had.  A professional might have saved me years of numbness.

I am calling the novella length poem, “A Death in the Spring”, because the fast moving events the poem is based ontook place during the six-month period between Christmas 1992 and June, 1993.

I regard the novella as perhaps the best effort I have ever made to see below the surface of a series of events and see into their truer nature.

I published an earlier, premature version of the poem about a week ago.  It wasn’t ready then.  It was “scarce half made up”.  I have since worked hard re-writing it.  It’s very different now.

The poem will be posted sometime within the next few days on this blog.  Here are some excerpts from it.

An alchemist. She was an alchemist, Traveler.
Beneath the warmth of her sun
Beneath the lightness of her breeze,
Beneath her cloudless blue eyes,
Beneath her bold and fearless Spring,
Beneath it all she was an alchemist.
In her depths, in her nature, she was an alchemist.

An alchemist I told my true name.
Unbidden by her, I surrendered
My true name.

I fated myself, Traveler, when I told her my true name.
I fated myself.

 

Chris was himself a ball thrown hard and fast into a room.
Child-raped by his step-father,
Subjected growing up to innumerable other evils,
Chris was understandably warped and weft by his life.
His heart and mind both were twisted yarn
Dyed black with self-centering and selfish pain.
Screaming in self-centering and selfish pain.

She phoned me at home on Christmas Eve.
Her boyfriend had been missing for some days.
She had friends. Some close, some further away.
But she turned to me.
She turned to me in trust,
The sole reliable elder in her world.
She turned to me
As people have always at times turned to elders.

That’s how it began.
In hindsight, her evening had come.

Love sometimes is
Too softly spoken
To be heard
Above the wind

Hearts sometimes are
Too softly broken
To be heard
Tara Lynn

Love sometimes is
Like a dance
We don’t think
We’re in

Hearts sometimes
Dance apart
Tara Lynn.