Poem

The Children's Hour
It is an old and constant journey
unfolding behind closed eyes

Running to greet my father
every sunset

as his train rolls back again
through the clouds above Radomsk
boxcars of ghosts whisper
above pebbled rails

In Poland grey skies
defeated the sun
like wilted lemon
by his glass of tea that sits cold
time ceased, unclocked

behind closed eyes
our shuttered windows
sealed by the dust
we are in-
the Children's Hour

Come play, tell me if the haze is really outside
where dogs bray and smoke in perpetuity
rises in the distance?

Or is it only in my heart?
that pine trees populate the world
in which our family became kindling?
I never know
because the dead have names I never knew

Come visit
during Children's Hour
the Nocturnes play themselves
the trains no longer whistle but
listen between the whispers
my father says farewell...to whom?
We never said goodbye.

2013 (c)
Rachelle Singer

Poetry coming out

I am quite excited...seems being older has given me a kind of confidence I've never experienced before. In 2 days my latest poem is being published in a volume of literature and poetry, CRANNOG, in Galway, Ireland. I am putting the finishing touches on a small volume of selected poetry that I hope will be published and available this fall.  I kept myself in a physical situation at home where writing was virtually impossible as there was simply no surface space to put work and type. Since my kids hardly come round to visit I gave up and made the dining room table my desk and moved it into a different position so there's surface for manuscripts and laptop.

Therapy is getting more intense, I'm seeing therapist 2x a week because we were going nowhere fast with once a week. After giving me some new diagnostic insights she came up with, she said we've reached a fork where I'll have to decide whether to dig deeper or leave myself as I am; to dig will require courage according to her, to do nothing is a choice I can also make. Well, I went into therapy to see whether lifting lifelong depression is possible, so I don't see much of a choice...only fear of what I will uncover is holding me back. I also don't want to jeopardize the project I'm working on-in short, I want to finish the book before any more breakdowns if that's in store for me. My therapist is very supportive so I think if I'm on thin ice, we can work through it.


I briefly brought in a 3rd cat that I wanted to adopt. She so upset my boys I could only keep her 4 days before returning her to the shelter. My small fat cat threw up and still startles easy over unseen, unrecognized noises since she left. Turns out the young miss cat took at least one poop in a large flat box filled with tissue paper that the boys play in. She sat in their litter box like a hen on a clutch of eggs, but didn't use it, she ate their food despite having her own litter box and food dishes. She was so dominating she walked right into their space and chased them out, literally. Then she would walk back into my front room and rub and mew like a little angel. I realize its a cat, but I can't have the boys upset to that extent in our small place.

So keep me in your thoughts so I can finish my own book, all prayers and good energy is deeply appreciated. If you want to view the poem coming out in the next 2 days, I'll post it.

Funny thing, Sex

Being older now and having had a hysterectomy in my early 40s due to fibroids, my sexual drive has calmed down. It used to be a compulsive part of my life in a way I don't even see in my children's generation. My neighbor is extremely active sexually, I know because she talks about her interludes very frankly to me and her mother who seems to not blink at whatever this young woman says.

I've always been attracted to older men and still am....but the followup to the mental attraction just isn't there to back me up. I wonder about much older women who are having lovers decades younger than they are--a woman's body decays after menopause, body odors change, body shape and muscle mass changes and so I'm hard pressed to understand why any man would want an older woman if something else isn't on the menu. It may be different for some couples who have been together for many years and have grown older together, have bounded so deeply that droop and decay are secondary to making love.

Sex has always been a painful ordeal for me. I didn't have a mother who discussed sex and its escapades, she was busy with her own sexual trysts. She laughed when I got my first period and said she thought (at age 9), that my school mates would have filled me in, while I thought I was bleeding to death looking at my underwear drenched in red fluid.

But I still find there are men, always older, that have a certain quality that attracts me, a strength, self confidence and sexual way of looking right through you as if just by looking at you they know how they're going to make love. Men who don't need instruction guides, know when to be gentle, when to speak and what to say, men who gather you in and allow you to experience their flow and your own feelings without interrupting the entire episode by asking questions....is this good? is that good? And a man who is confident enough to be gentle. Almost all the men I've been with think that ramming a woman like a pile driver is the secret to creating an orgasm in a woman....just keep plowing away, bang bang  bang and surely the banging will create a magic reaction.

There's been times when I stare up at the ceiling and pray for it all to end. My second marriage was like that, all the time until finally I just pushed him off me in disgust. I had previously asked him to stop ramming himself or his hands into me but his training with online porn had taught him that women secretly love that rough painful form of sex. or maybe that was just his preference...to cause pain. A yelp or moan(from pain not pleasure) always got an excited reaction from him.

So now, I look at men with a different kind of hunger, more of a sadness and wonder how other women are able to quench their thirst with men, how some men look like such wonderful potential partners but I know there's nothing left inside me to respond as a woman. 

Working

I've been focused on finally putting together a volume of poetry, my first....could be my only:-) But I must do this as I left my children very early in their lives in order to write. While that might see frivolous or outrageous, I put myself through college while working full time and wrote. I critiqued feature film scripts, lived in basements, had my toes bitten by mice as well as my manuscripts chewed at by mice. And I managed to do it all while living with severe depression and other undiagnosed mental illnesses. So, in my own mind I owe the good Lord who allowed us all to survive my journey to produce something before I die.

That little intro is my excuse for not writing on my blog more recently.
My therapist opened a discussion about "leveling" and passive aggressive--we've only covered leveling and even that needs another session to clarify. I'm curious how many more layers of labels are going to be slapped on me before all my idiosyncrasies are covered/


I brought in a shelter cat that was in part a Maine Coon, 18 lbs of fluff and turned out to be very domineering. She sat in the Boys' litter  box like a chicken on a clutch, she jumped everywhere all 18 lbs of her, she ate their food but ignored her own and chased my smaller nervous cat into corners with bared teeth, ears pinned back, growling. While she was alone with me, she was a fluff ball of gentle shyness that liked being brushed and talked to. It was like Jekyll and Hyde, after 4 days of watching my Boys not eat and trying to find hiding places, I packed Missy up and a friend helped me return her to the shelter. She didn't mind my friends Yorkie yipping and yapping all over the room and licking her, but fellow cats did not meet with her approval. Absolutely no boundary lines, I dare say a very obnoxious cat...talk about passive aggressive.

Otto Kernberg quotes another doctor (Gunderson?) as defining passive aggressive as " a dog who licks your face while peeing on your shoe." Very unsettling to say the least.