Days of Reckoning

Life challenges each of us uniquely, and yet, we all have our days of reckoning—days that demand we choose one path or another, and in so doing, plot our spiritual life journey.

Days of Reckoning is an autobiographical collection that chronicles these choices and presents the resulting evolution of character. The poems included in this collection vividly depict a range of life conflicts and emotional upheaval.

We observe the depravity of abuse; the tragic, mind-numbing experience of rejected love; the disintegration which occurs upon the death of a parent; and the epiphanies that result from the day-to-day prevalence of cruelty. But rather than lead us down a road of despair, these poems present strategies for envisioning our hardships as creative instruments—another means of defining ourselves.

Days of Reckoning suggests that our struggles define and, potentially, refine our character, offering each of us an opportunity to advance our moral strength and spirituality.

1114274497

Days of Reckoning

Life challenges each of us uniquely, and yet, we all have our days of reckoning—days that demand we choose one path or another, and in so doing, plot our spiritual life journey.

Days of Reckoning suggests that our struggles define and, potentially, refine our character, offering each of us an opportunity to advance our moral strength and spirituality.

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Overview

Life challenges each of us uniquely, and yet, we all have our days of reckoning—days that demand we choose one path or another, and in so doing, plot our spiritual life journey.

Days of Reckoning suggests that our struggles define and, potentially, refine our character, offering each of us an opportunity to advance our moral strength and spirituality.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781475963687
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	01/29/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	323 KB

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Days of Reckoning

By ronald mccann

iUniverse, Inc.

Chapter One

How I Loved You

~
All is quiet on New Year's Day.
Adam Clayton, The Edge, Bono, and Larry Mullen, Jr., New Years Day
Performed by U2
~

I wanted to show you the depth of my
love,
To guide you from a loving hand,
Through so much you wouldn't understand,
To give you what you needed to weather
life's difficult storms,
To show how I loved you.

And so I beat you until you screamed,
I slapped your face raw and put the belt
to its task,
I touched you where you would remember,
And I locked you in dark rooms never to come
back to find you,
I sent you to bed with no food and knocked you
to the floor,
I embarrassed you in front of your Friends,
And called you names you would remember
forever.
I threatened you into fear and submission
I ignored you and made sure whatever you did
wasn't enough.
And I criticized you and what you did,
For God knows you were the cause of it all.

Oh how I loved you and how hard it was
for me,
How difficult you were and how hard
I tried,
Oh how I loved you and did my best,
And I just can't understand, I just cry
why you can't just visit.

Bones and Caty

~
"When they made your Mother they threw the mold away."
Donald B. Wilke, USMC R.I.P.
~

A troubled man of war, he drank himself
to death he did,
And did some damage along the way.
At times he was a devil and hard on her
and knocked her around a bit,
He never knew she wanted out, I did, but
with four kids
She stayed with the man through hell and
his dying days,
Through fights and tears and Sinatra echoing
off those trench walls,
And on occasion how close they danced to
old blue-eyes,
With smoke billowing over the top and the Chateau
La Salle and Jack Daniels clinking in smudged
glasses,
How he loved the woman he called Caty for he
Always claimed when they made her they threw
away the mold,
It was something nobody could fix, I couldn't,
Yet in the settling of the triage there was that
Crumb of love 'til death did they part.

Kicks

~
And you can send me dead flowers every morning
Send me dead flowers by the U.S. mail
Say it with dead flowers in my wedding
And I won't forget to put roses on your grave.
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Dead Flowers
Performed by the Rolling Stones
~

What ugliness there is in life's tortuous sides:
In all the kicks,
The kick that knocks you to the dirt: The wind
and life out of you,
The kick that takes your will to live out of your
breath,
The kick that takes hope,
The kick that stomps faith,
The kick that brings up bile where once there was
love,
And life towers over your helpless catatonic fetal
countenance,
Screaming for you to get up: The champ in the ring
Wanting another chance to kick a rising you to the dirt,
And in your not rising, ugliness kicks you anyway:
And again.
You lay there, with tears in your eyes,
Not even feeling the kicks anymore,
Not feeling anything anymore,
Gone to shelter in that place behind the curtain,
Gone so far only God can follow,
Gone to the darkness, trying to find light
for a soul.

Left Alone Again

~

There's no shelter tonight
No Escape from the pain
There is nothing
No end to this game.
Billy Idol, Buried Alive
~

It's a lonely world when you're
left to suffer alone,
When others know or don't
The horrors that you live in,
The place where monsters make their web,
The place where nightmares come from.
And when the doors lock at night,
It's the sound of a coffin being latched at the end,
And the booze finds its host,
The demon begins to roam the
Halls hunting a victim, finding a place
to purge its rage,
Looking for someone to hurt, to beat,
to sex, to scream.
There is no one to intercede,
Even those who know the monster's ways,
Let it feed, look the other way, leave you to victim's hell,
And even God and the Angels, even the Leprechauns,
Would watch the beast unload,
Until you wonder of how you deserve it,
How it is your own fault, how you bring it on yourself.
It seems forever later the monster is claimed by the reaper,
While you are guilty in your gladness,
Left to heal your scars, left to trust
but few,
Left alone again.

Trust Fear

~
Marnie, Alfred Hitchcock
~

Injury in the night the assault of
the demon,
So young to learn unworthiness,
So fragile to have trust locked
behind,
The doors chained shut in the
unconscious storerooms,
Doors that take only the right cures
to smash open again

Darkness on the horizon felt in the cold
winds blowing from the northeast,
Over the vastness of the Great Lakes,
A November storm no match for any
sailor.
And when the cues arouse the hibernating
rage in the untrusting,
The tempest's force would explode open
the chained doors,
And release its rage like the wickedness
of a tornado,
Or a hurricane overflowing and knocking
all to their knees,
Becoming the monster that created it.

"And that thing I feared the worst has
come upon me,"
For trust has become an enraged
animal,
A wounded ugliness in its early born
defenses,
Born of the identity in generations of
deformity,

And the trampled trust has become the
Victim's wickedness and cruelty.

Yet when the waves have settled and
waters reside,
So once again would the untrusting move
behind doors,
Spent and lonely in self-aggrandizement
guilt,
Backing itself into a corner, curled in horror's
disbelief,
Paralyzed again in the night alone behind
closed doors of trust fear.

Broken Glass

~
Is it getting better?
Or do you feel the same?
Adam Clayton, The Edge, Bono, and Larry Mullen, Jr. One
Performed by U2
~

Blindsiding lies, those daggers in the back
That tears out the viscera of trust and splatters
It in the stones with the broken glass.
The closer the love the larger the gash; More
so the lies we tell ourselves,
And blood is washed in the tears of grief
and disbelief,
That one so close has always masked what
is rat and scoundrel
How hideous one feels at being hoodwinked
Standing in the broken glass as the knife
turns,
At that moment of paralysis when all sets in
With the vacant dead zone stares,
And the shaking hand that lights the smoke.
Room to room is dark even in the light
And the nights are absent of anything light
With hands over face and but one thought:
Where is my God, I need you so.

Double-Edged Sword

~
Oh you're a hard one
But I know that you got your reasons
These things that are pleasin' you
Can hurt you somehow.
Glenn Frey and Don Henley, Desperado
Performed by the Eagles
~

Would many of us fall on hurt's double-
edged-sword: What others do to us
and what damage we do.
A life moves away from life from hurt's
stings,
Protecting the soft spots from another's
carelessness,
Or would you protect others from you:
From the pain of knowing you and all the misunderstandings.
So wall in and wall out with but few gates,
For a life once lived is now a maze
of protection,
A spider hidden but for the web,
A monk sequestered in a cold mental
monastery.
Hurt's sword hangs over the hearth,
The security edge warning all apparent
foes,
the beginning and the end fall all in the
same moment: A scent of what others
do to us and what damage we do.

Bridges and Trap Doors

~
"I can't cover up my feelings
In the name of love
Or play it safe
For a while that was easy
And if living for myself
Is what I'm guilty of
Go on and sentence me
I'll still be free
Michael Masser and Carole Bayer Sager, It's My Turn
Performed by Diana Ross
~

I have crossed many bridges, some over the
smallest of creeks,
Some of solid steel and girth: The kind that
handle heavy loads and travelers.
In their model, I have constructed many of
my own memory bridges,
And left behind invisible trap doors of purpose's design.
I keep a lookout over these bridges and trap doors
from the mountain pass where I dwell,
Watching for trespassers without invite, and
welcoming those I trust.
The maze of gates and trap doors make my
bridges impenetrable.
For it is only I who walls in and walls out,
It is I who bears guard over the historical
scriptures in my holy of holies,
It is I who protects my wellspring, and it must be I,
For in past years, those who would cloak themselves
in trust, proved to be impostors.
So it is I, who patrols the bridges and the trap doors,
And in my care and choices, there is much
safety and peace in the mountain,
The trust built from memories mended and healed
the manifest of bridges and trap doors.

Run

~
But there aint no point in talking when there's nobody listning so we
just ran away
Rod Stewart, Young Turks
~

Born without choice into a drinking
hell,
With spirit so deep and so leavened
with survival,
And through years of loving in vain,
Lying for preservation and for want.
Yet always lowering the bucket into
the dark approval well,
Full of hope at its rising,
But forever full of emptiness,
And so with hope and love smashed
with the last slap,
It was time to run and run,
For the horizon is calling and no
worse,
Could there be where the sun sets,
And it was time to run and run,
For the well is dry and the appetite
is not.

Just Enough

~
Gone tomorrow, here today
Just in case you got something to say
I'll be leaving with the breast of goodbye
Is all we have
Alison Krauss, Goodbye Is All We Have
~

I pulled out those old pictures last night
And saw all the 'what was before.'
I saw myself in those younger years dressed
in all that plaid.
The nostalgia washed over my heart to see
All those who had loved me that are now gone.
I remember that two-gun holster, Roy, Dale, and
Trigger and that fine fat two-wheeled Schwinn,
Those years so close in memory yet so long ago
in years.
When I left home at seventeen I took all that
with me,
The scars and the crumbs sustained me along
all my life's paths,
I got enough to get me through and each year
When I pull out those old pictures,
I can see where I got just enough.

Whiskey's Trouble

~
Whiskey Scotch Whiskey
I need my scotch whiskey
The Real McKenzies, Whiskey Scotch Whiskey
~

    How restless a night can be when trouble
      falls upon you,
    And time, who otherwise is relentlessly
      quick, slows to at tick-tock.
    How the mind takes each small seed of
      thought,
    And runs it into perils never to be reached:
      The toss and turn of lost sleep.
    And so for a man, the medicinal remedy
      takes its calling:
    The task where only whiskey prevails in
      the bite of death and taxes,
    And a harsh morning follows a shallow rest
      in the fight,
    While the sun rises and a dawn breaks over
      red eyes and whiskey's trouble.

An Idle Mind

~
An idle mind is the devil's workshop.
H.G. Bohn, Hand-Book of Proverbs
~

Where is your place and where are
you to be,
Questions an idle mind listening to
itself in the quiet,
For an idle mind is anything but inactive,
It stews in its vanity and having no
Employment feels free to kick open
Every door and enjoy the idle chatter
Of guilt or expound on any inadequacy
That would chirp: You're shiftless and lazy.
Finally, under the yoke of anxiety and the
Pressure from an idle mind's pummeling,
One seeks any activity to shut it up:
Any mindless activity that stifles un-occupied
thoughts,
Until the last submission; The last quell
That yearns to find conversation with another
idle mind.

Furniture of Sadness

~
Cupid lay by his brand and fell asleep
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 153
~

What needs are these
That run their course
Never finding their meeting
And what language learned
To settle for a life without;
Eyes always looking for an object
Hearts that blacken in the search
Until indifference's devil moves in
Bringing the furniture of sadness.
The valium and the vicodin the
Liquor and the sin in its gin
The food that fattens Mother's place
And appeases sweetness's appetite
The sublimation of love and sex
The oral fixations of a mind fix
Lounging on the furniture of sadness.

Look At the Mess

~
They are one person
They are two alone
They are three together
They are four for each other
Stephen Stills, Helplessly Hoping
Performed by Crosby, Stills and Nash
~

Cast your bread upon the water with
all your heart,
Throw your efforts into it with all you
have,
Hold nothing back as if your very life is
dependent upon it,
As if the life and love of others would crumble
Without your untiring, relentless determination.
Do it to exhaustion; To the end of all your ropes,
And until the air goes out of every bag of all
of your hopes.
Then stand back and watch all of it crumble to dust,
The mortar and brick but a house of cards,
Tumbling hard in a rubble, looking as if it hadn't been
there,
As it lies at your feet, only then are the cracks
so visible,
All those places where the structure needed attention,
All the unseen small details that went unnoticed.
Now you stand hand in hand with God at your side,
With a smile on your face and a tear in your eye.
Would you say, "Look at the mess?"

Final Breath

~
all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, I.II.72-73
~

Death, where is your grip on me
For I have died a thousand deaths
Each one on earth, each one at the
depths of humiliation,
And all with endless pain.
So Death, where is your sting, your
reaper's bidding?
Will you tell me now that the final
breath,
Shall be in peace and on ethereal's gurney,
Removed from earth's gravity and all its
clumsy sufferings.
For deaths on earth are the true fears,
So balance would find the final breath of
angels and God,
The preparation for returning home: a soul
welcomed to its birth.
So Death, where is your grip on me?
So Death, where is your sting, your
reaper's threat?

What Have I Become

~
I close my eyes, oh God I think I'm falling
Out of the sky, I close my eyes
Heaven help me
Madonna, Like a Prayer
~

It is sin I'm drawn towards.
It is in me and only you can see it
Knowing me since before I was me,
You hold me in the palm of your hand.
I crawl, like a child, one day at a time
through all the temptations,
And fail at every corner with the will of
weakness:
The swimmer that screams I'm drowning;
A good intentioned Samaritan that, lost
in love, becomes Herod;
The glass of champagne that becomes a
brown bag;
The flower that chooses to be a weed;
The burning bush that is red in rusting
anger;
The virgin dressed in white that wears the
undergarment of a harlot.
My Lord, I have lost my way: In veneration
And prayer, knocked to my knees,
What have I become.

Days of Reckoning

~
Mean mistreater, you make me cry,
You lay around, and watch me die.
Dennis Bellinger, Don Brewer, Mark Farner, Craig Frost, and
Mel Schacher, Mean Mistreater
Performed by Grand Funk Railroad
~

How blood turns to ice when the hurt is
returned,
When you know cruelty has been called out,
And it is you who is the author of another's pain,
The sting of using someone for your means,
And justice is served on a day of reckoning,
When reality stands in your courtyard,
With the accusing finger finding its mark,
The time of your penance; the test of
Character's walk through fire.

Find you in the skin of your humanity,
Humbled with questionable choices and
all that sinnin,'
The mirror image of goodness yet more to
the flipside of that gold coin,
In present, now be judged shall you,
In her eyes such disapproval and scorn,
The disbelief at who you think you are,
In the cross hairs of revenge and the
nature of account balancing,
And justice is served on a day of
reckoning.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Days of Reckoning by ronald mccann Copyright © 2013 by Ronald McCann. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Days of Reckoning

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