Tag: isolation

“A Few Haiku (26)”

On By Mike U.In Poetry35 Comments

(c) 2022 by Michael L. Utley

(#151)

drifting blizzard snow
not deep enough to inter
all the world’s sins

…..

(#152)

fallow field
without love and compassion
there can be no hope

…..

(#153)

the thresher’s flail
I am not yet able to
leave my past behind

…..

(#154)

iced boughs bend in shame
winter’s woe too bitter for
weeping willow’s tears

…..

(#155)

silent winter night
sound of my heart’s muffled cries
bereft of echoes

…..

(#156)

bitter reckoning
seeds of love in time shall meet
the harvester’s scythe

“Exhale”

On By Mike U.In Poetry18 Comments

“Exhale”
(c) 2021 by Michael L. Utley

A handful of words hastily shaken
Thrown like dice against a filthy brick wall
Skittering across deserted sidewalk
Bouncing into foul gutter rill
Profound thoughts from a tired mind

Is this all I have to say and if so
Does it even matter when no one cares
These words buoyant as a waterlogged corpse
Sink slowly beneath the surface
Of a world bereft of conscience

I mix metaphor and stark imagery
Insert heart and soul, blood and torrid tears
Craft a paper boat to launch on oceans
Of antiquity and futures
Yet to be and watch as it sinks

Words fall like proverbial autumn leaves
Raked into pretentious piles of damp dross
To become compost to feed the dull worms
Of bitter earth and mindless murk
Where nothing echoes but darkness

I have shouted from the tops of mountains
I have whispered in sepulchral shadows
I have groaned in blackened pits of despair
I have lost my voice so often
I can no longer hear my thoughts

Sharpened edges of serrated starlight
A thousand vapid cuts my soul bleeds out
I offer up my penance to the gods
Ragged blood-soaked sheaves of parchment
Etched with runes of my existence

It is not sufficient for redemption
For what are words but empty utterance
The fetid breaths of wretched souls exhaled
As dying light slips languidly
Beyond aloof eternity

“Winds of Sorrow”

On By Mike U.In Poetry16 Comments

“Winds of Sorrow”
(c) 2021 by Michael L. Utley

My beloved kiku lay in withered waste
Yet their ivory tears still fall
Drift against the sides of my heart
Winter’s woeful weeping

In the northernmost climes
The bitter wind howls in my soul
Frigid lamentations haunt me
Hokkaido’s kanashimi no kaze

Winds of sorrow have frozen me in place
My mind flees on grey heron’s wings
Far away from this futile life
From this land of sadness

There is only whiteness
The aimlessness of a long life
Poorly lived, poorly loved, a life
Bereft of meaning, bereft of color

I can no longer remember the sun
The green of konara copse gone
Faded as the ferns have faded
Spring grass now dusky dun

Memories of flowers
Cause my heart to seize in my chest
There are no more lotus blossoms
Only shifting shadows on lifeless pond

Past the willows, past the stream, bamboo groves
Stand dead and haunted as yurei
Beat strange tattoos on hollow husks
Disappear in darkness

My hut is deserted
Now a silent chill resides there
Only empty bed and one chair
At the table where I broke bread alone

No matter where my mind takes me there is
A sense of a world in mourning
Earth comes to a stop, all life gone
Naught left but winter’s tears

And yet I still endure
Wake each day to a barren world
Pass my time in haze of regrets
Wait for callous night with its numbing dreams

And yearn for winter’s end
Which never comes

“The Snow That Never Falls”

On By Mike U.In Poetry12 Comments

“The Snow That Never Falls”
(c) 2021 by Michael L. Utley

The snow that never falls cannot assuage
The sorrow of the autumn’s grim defeat
There is no balm
For open wounds
No gilded cup
To slake the dying season’s thirst
No whispered words to quell the fear
Of failing heart
Forsaken soul
Abandoned hope
There is no honor in autumn’s demise
In absence of the snow that never falls

The tears that never fall have silenced me
Left desiccated bitter memories
Of desert sand
And alkali
That sting my eyes
Abrading zephyrs scour my soul
Abrasive hardpan sears my soles
I walk through life
An empty husk
Of what I was
There is no succor for these blinded eyes
In absence of the tears that never fall

The love that never comes has passed me by
And stranded me along the mountain path
The chilly wind
Bereft of warmth
Has sundered life
There is no trace of hart nor hind
Nor shadowed copse in which to rest
Treacherous scree
And empty tarns
And granite bones
Epitomize my solitary life
In absence of the love that never comes

The spring that never comes can never heal
The grievous pain inflicted on the earth
By autumn’s death
And winter’s drought
And dearth of care
For those who walk the silent path
Through torrid flats and frigid slopes
In search of what
They’ll never find
And stumble on
In darkness spurned by sun and moon and stars
In absence of the spring that never comes

“What the Sun Denies, the Moon Divines”

On By Mike U.In Poetry2 Comments

“What the Sun Denies, the Moon Divines”
(c) 2021 by Michael L. Utley

This light that burns
Through bone-hued slats
As serpentine sun
Sheds its pretense
And glissades through
Fey reeds of twilight
Cuts razor-lines
Across eddying galaxies
Of dust motes
Infinities of minutiae
Indifferent spirals
A feckless requiem
For rise-and-fall futility
Ley lines annulled
As monuments crumble
Broken cities dissolve
In caustic deserts
Of ebon sand
Lifeless seas
Heave and sigh
And evaporate
Under red alien suns
There is nothing here
For light to illumine
Nothing remains
To set eyes upon
No ear-to-ground echoes
No cryptic communiques
Just dust and rust
And eternity

This light that chills
Through paneless frame
As bulbous moon
Worms slug-like
Across the night-void
On star-trail secretions
Casts a blue-white pall
Upon the multi-verse
Of frozen motes
A languid lethargy
Of sub-cosmic energy
Dust specks in moonlight
Aglow in spectral hues
Shadows of ancient arcana
Flicker in surreal death-light
Tumbled monuments
Glimmer restlessly
Under dead stars
Ley lines shimmer
In quicksilver urgency
There is something here
That hovers
Beneath the spectrum
Felt not heard
Sensed not seen
Sun-shunned
Lunar-laved
Permeates bedrock with
Profane vibrations
Sets somnolent cities
Thrumming
Imbues oceans with
Eldritch dreams
Moon-spawned
Omniscient
And eternal

“That Road Don’t Go Nowhere”

On By Mike U.In Poetry3 Comments

“That Road Don’t Go Nowhere”
© 2013 by Michael L. Utley

That road don’t go nowhere mister

Raspy sigh of too many cigarettes
Grease-blackened claw points in the general direction of
Eternity
Stench of gasoline and sweat
Indecipherable name emblazoned on
Filthy coveralls
Gas pump chugs and stutters
Connected to my car by an umbilical cord of
Ancient dinosaurs
His eyes lost in pools of wrinkles and regrets
As my eyes follow his finger
Nothing but rock and sand and the howls of
The lost
In this desolation

Road and horizon merge in a
Fitful seizure of mirage
The heat a coda to all things here
Dull and dusty sage and creosote bushes
A wretched effigy of life
In this hardscrabble wasteland
Not real
Not real at all
Nothing lives here
Nothing can live here
Nothing at all

That road don’t go nowhere mister

In the distance
A phantom zephyr on the highway
A sinuous dust devil
Snakes from earth to chrome-hued sky
This eldritch thing
It dances and writhes and bespeaks of
Ancient knowledge
An augur of blind terror
In the breakdown lane
Of this faded ribbon of
Cracked and sticky asphalt

It can’t get me here
My mind whispers
Here in this run-down
LAST GAS FOR 255 MILES sanctuary
This final outpost of sanity
Sun-bleached boards and
Rusted gas pumps
Stand sentinel against
What lies beyond
Against what should not be
But is anyway

That road don’t go nowhere mister

The gas pump rattles to a stop
His trembling hands disconnect the hose
In post-coital silence
Hi-test fumes cloying in the
Furnace heat
The old man takes my money

The world has stopped on it axis
The day is perfectly still
There is no sound
There is only the sterile heat
Of the desert
And the blackness of what is to come

He grabs my shoulder through the car window
His ancient hand a talon digging deep
His pleading eyes rheumy and weeping
He swallows
His Adam’s apple bouncing in his
Grimy neck

That road don’t go nowhere mister

There is lunacy in his weeping eyes
And there is truth
And I smile at him
And something passes between
The two of us
A last vestige of humanity
Before the coming storm
I glance in my rear-view mirror
There is nothing behind me
There is everything behind me
There is no going back

I swallow a knot of panic
I look at the man
This road doesn’t go anywhere
I say
But it’s the only road there is

And I pull away from the station
The old man a scarecrow in the mirror
Arms akimbo
Sweat-stained cap askew on his head
And then he is gone
Devoured by the nothingness behind me

I am alone on the road

There is no going back

“An Introduction”

On By Mike U.In deafness21 Comments

Hello, and welcome to my blog. My name’s Mike and I’m currently struggling to navigate the confusion, frustration and isolation I experience daily as I travel along my deaf journey.

I have severe hearing loss in both ears caused by meningitis as a teen, and its progressive nature has impacted my life in both pedestrian and dramatic fashion. Although my deafness has been a constant companion for 40 years, I have never come to grips with it; it’s a tenuous relationship with an unwelcome guest who will never leave and whose insidious nature has infiltrated all areas of my life.

Yeah, you could say I hate being deaf. Hence this blog.

This is my attempt to reach out from my isolation to see if there are others like me who are deaf and feeling shunned or who have become reclusive due to deafness, not knowing sign language or other deaf people, and who have essentially fallen by the wayside as life passes them by. I hope to write about my experiences as a functionally deaf person in a hearing world, the struggle to survive as a disabled person in a world where the disabled are generally ignored or deliberately scorned, and the coping mechanisms I’ve developed over the years to try to stay afloat in a rural area where I have no deaf friends or acquaintances and very little in terms of deaf support services.

Despite all of this, my deafness does not define who I am as a person—it is only part of who I am. In my story, deafness is only one of the characters in a cast of many. Finally coming to accept my deafness is my goal; perhaps learning to co-exist with—or even embrace—my deafness is my only chance of finding peace in my life. I hope to hear from others who may be in similar situations. Discovering we’re not alone could be the breakthrough we need to live better, more fulfilling lives.