The Bus! TFE's Breathing Bus!

Late again! My scheduling has not quite slotted into place after the Christmas and New Year festivities, so apologies to the designer/builder/mechanic and driver of the Bus that is accelerating into legend. And corners, and stuff.

So this week:
Write a poem. Don't think, just feel. Sit yourself down,stay quiet, find silence, concentrate on your breathing, feel your chest rise and fall, your heart beating, blood pumping.You are alive, so alive.Breathe in and breathe out,count those breaths, slowly look into your heart, your soul, how are you? Who are you? Are you happy/sad/ lost/ found/ confused/ certain.Are you where you hoped to be, do you know yourself? Are you who you were? Who might you yet be. Where might you be? Forget what your brain tells you that you know,and forget what your brain tells you to think, listen to your breath,tell me how you feel and why you feel it. How many breaths have you taken in this life? Think of them, focus on them. How many breaths are still to be taken? Disengage the brain and write from the heart.Close your eyes examine your breath, examine your life and feel!

Now, I obviously didn't read the prompt closely enough, plus having spent the early evening last night in reading and discussion of Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns I got home at 11pm to one boy in tears and the other doing that expression of concern which is in fact a little bit of revelling in the other's distress. It is, of course, a common fallacy that only mothers can parent, but I do like to roll my eyes a bit before sinking into Mummyguilt. And you get that weird stomach-y hurt when one of yours is hurting so that you feel like crying yourself.
Basically, this ain't such a cheery or meditative number as perhaps it should be.

More enlightened souls may be found here:
http://totalfeckineejit.blogspot.com/2011/01/eejits-short-day-of-poetry-bus-soul.html
Crumbs, there's a lot of them!


So I Breathe

I am well within the median
of the bell curve of damaged souls.
No exception.
Breath one for the small sad son:
this shall pass.
Breath two too: flesh of my
flesh-wounded, yet cuts viscera deep.
Breath three the broken brother:
this shall not pass.
Breath four for another:
charity and hope departed.
Breath five the dead father:
again, and again, and again.
Breath six for the mother:
annoyance and awe.
Breath seven for the first little girl
known not in life:
I see her still.
Breath eight for the one that followed.
Breath nine the young woman who died at my side
because the father, on the white leather sofa,
never turned a hair.
Breath ten the prostitute I failed,
Breath eleven the bad man.
Breath twelve the girls, the endless girls
who hid blades they hurt so bad.
Breath thirteen the bad men.
Breath fourteen old bridge at Mostar,
Breath fifteen border dwellers of Mexico,
exercising my lungs much, lately.
Breath sixteen the people of the countries
of page eleven onwards, news so mundane
in its misery it merits no particular attention.
Breath seventeen history
Breath seventeen forgetting
Breath eighteen ignorance.
Breath nineteen the small son,
Breath twenty the dead father.
Enough. I must stand; light-headed
how can feet touch the ground?
As they must: I am well within the median
of the bell curve of damaged souls.