Poetry saved me once thirty years ago when CFS laid me low. So low, I could no longer stand, sit up, kneel, walk nor talk. In fact, speech made no sense to me. When others spoke I heard noise, not language. Exhaustion over took every cell and the energy needed to operate cell function. It was an “all systems fail” experience that lasted for decades. Speech slowly returned after several months, as bits and pieces dropped from my lips, grammar-less and word substitution raising eyebrows when I attempted communication. It took one and one-half years to complete a single Easy Crossword puzzle. One puzzle, not the entire book. I relearned numbers and their relationships playing solitaire as I lay in bed. I learned to stand, then walk again; first with a walker, then years with a cane. I learned to read and write again, haltingly at first.
Poetry saved me. It gave me my first words. One morning I woke and picked up the empty journal by my bed, lifted the pen by its side and for the first time in more than a year I wrote nonsense for two pages until a poem suddenly appeared. This is the poem:
Snippets
like puppets
of the imagination
strung together
in the mind,
all mine.
With you they dance
in the breeze
of conversation.
Disjointed,
unanointed by grammar.
Flailing, distracted
emotion woodenly enacted.
Words tossed
together and apart
from the wound that is my heart.
what a performance!
I walk without aids now, 1-2 miles at a time. I garden. I paint. I write a blogs of poetry, commentaries, political essays. Before health restricted my ability to engage in personal contact with others I was able to be socially and politically active, personally. Now, I rely on words to show love and move others to action. Words I once lost are now my only connection to a fully lived life.
I worry for Covid long-haulers and what they will go through. At least they will be believed. Those of us with CFS(sometimes called ME, CFIDS etc) have seldom been believed. Only within the last year has my illness been given an ICD code although it has been a recognized disease by the CDC for decades. The reason this happened is because researches recognize the same symptoms in Covid long-haulers and thought it prudent to look at those with CFS. However, no data was organized enough to research since without an ICD code there was no effort to track patients like myself. Our medical histories are hidden and untraceable. My records will show only “easily fatigued.” That is the least of the symptoms; the result of the struggle against the underlying systems fails. Fatigue is not the disease itself. My hope is that we will not dismiss nor diminish the long-haulers who seek medical care in the decades to come. My hope is they will find the words needed to connect them to more fully lived lives. Life is good. The struggle is worth it. I pray they never lose hope. I pray they find the poetry of their lives.
annarino writes 
KILLING FIELDS
In the 4th. grade we made our confession of faith during the sacrament of Confirmation.By that age we were well-steeped in the Catholic teachings shared with us by our parents and then by our teachers. First grade, we learned through a simple catechism. Second grade we made our first confession and a day later, our first Holy Communion. The best behaved I have ever been was the 24 hours in between each sacrament. I did not want any sin on my soul when I brought the living God into my body through the sacred Host.
During my time in Catholic school I attended daily Mass before school each morning and on Sunday. On Saturday I walked to church to make another confession. It was usually the same one each time: I disobeyed my mother ten times a day. This became the theme of my life with authority figures whose expectations seemed beyond reason to me.The Church became a refuge for me, a place of calm and forgiveness beyond human comprehension; very much unlike the world around me seething with ambiguity and hypocrisy,misogyny and racism, ethnocentrism and abuse of power. Each lunch hour became a Holy Hour where I sat before the altar and conversed with Jesus, Mary and my namesake, Joseph.
I asked Mary to be my spiritual Mother and teach me to be a good daughter. The church, for Catholics, is such a sacred space. It is open to the heavens and limitless grace, because the actual Body of Christ in the form of a Host of bread resides in the Tabernacle in the Center of the altar, directly under the crucifix which reminds us of an immense love for fellow human beings. In front of that altar lives are transformed. Mine was. From a self-centered child to an other-centered human being. Oh, still a sinner who needed confession at least once a week. But, one ready to forgive and to be forgiven as a member of a flawed human race. most importantly, Catholic sanctity requires social action, not merely prayers and thoughts. Oh, there are plenty of prayers and thoughts. But, those drive us to social action.
On the first day of classes, or soon after, an opening Mass would be celebrated by the entire school. Each class was guided into pews, with some pushing and shoving as the pews grew crowded. A teacher sat with each class to keep us in line. Silence is a hallmark of that sacred space where it is expected our minds should be on silent conversation with God, not with others in the pew. When I attended Protestant services the friendly chatter, greetings and conversation seemed strange to me until I realized that, there, communion was a symbol not a presence, of Jesus. Chatter and conversation was a good thing. It helped build community in ways silence might not.
But, for me, silence built an even larger community. I was aligned not only with the souls in the seats around me, but with the souls who had gone before me; with the angels and with the saints. The children at Annunciation Catholic School were thus surrounded as a gunman shot them, as they thought and prayed in their most sacred space. The angels and saints could comfort them. They could not stop the evil. Only we can do that. We must act.We are given the grace to do so if we are willing to accept the challenge.
Firearm deaths are the leading cause of death in children aged 1-17. Adults, for the most part, are killing our children so gun dealers and manufacturers can profit. The NRA and right-wing propagandists erroneously convinced Americans that the second amendment protects the right to own a gun. Unlike other protections in the Bill of Rights we are told guns cannot be regulated. Every right can be regulated within reason. The Second Amendment to the Bill of rights protects the right to own guns to form a militia, a National Guard, in case of foreign invasion. Now, The National Guard, is being used against our own population, not a foreign nation invasion. Immigration is not invasion. It is a civil, not criminal, process. No immigrant is an illegal. The National Guard, under state authority of its governor, is trained to assist us. Instead it is being used to assist a racist, partisan coup. Elections may see even more troops meant to intimidate and control access to voting locations. While wildfires, floods and storms persist, those who might help us are being diverted to protect an administration’s image and authoritarianism.
Hate for and fear of others has become the Republican Party rallying cry. There are minds fueled by drugs, alcohol, mental illness, hopelessness and despair who become aroused to violence by the hate and bullying being shouted out in presidential news briefings. Minds twisted by hate with access to weapons too easily become killing machines. Instructions in weapons and killing are available on-line. Social Media does little or nothing to constrain hate speech and manifestos of death and destruction; and yes, of the killing of children. Yet, social media regulation is continually stymied by profiting politicians, and by presidents who encourage gift-giving.
When I watched the footage of children describing their experience I thought of my own classmates so many years ago. I felt the grief and tortured cries of my soul knowing how significant evil in such a sacred space was the worst kind of sacrilege. It was only a matter of time that the sacrilege going on in our streets, nightclubs, restaurants, and schools would invade our most sacred spaces. But, in reality, every bullet fired into another human being is a violation of a most sacred space.
As my first grade catechism explained why I was born into this world: To love and serve God in this world and to be with Him in the next. I shall serve Him by demanding we protect His most sacred creation, our children. We have no time to waste. The killing field is being put in place hour by hour, day by day.
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