Today’s Oracle takes us to the Scorpio weekly of Jan. 6, 2006
People who hold injuries from the past don’t often want to hear that this is an optional state of affairs. All injuries are in some way the result of the past, so I may seem to be proposing that holding onto pain is unnecessary. It all depends on who you ask. If you ask the people who hold onto their pain, they will tell you it is in fact necessary. If you ask the people who have let go of their pain, they will tell you pain is not necessary and probably offer some details. So, what I am really saying, is be careful who you ask, and even more careful whose answer you accept as the truth.
(The Daily Oracle is a random selection from one of 10,000 Eric Francis horoscopes. New horoscopes by Eric are published weekly plus twice a month in Planet Waves Astrology News and Planet Waves Light. The Oracle itself is a divination tool available to subscribers to either of these services.)
I forgot to say that revisiting the depths of where that first poem came from brought up some deep sadness that took me a while to recover from. By a while I mean a half hour to 45 minutes or so. To revisit those places is painful. But it’s worth doing for a purpose, whether it’s to improve performance art or help another human being. But it’s not something I live with day to day anymore.
It sounds like to me that “holding onto injuries from the past,” and people who are “holding onto their pain” are stuck in unforgiveness. I had the opportunity to revisit the past in a performance class for poets a couple of weekends ago now where I was encouraged to go inside, not just to the words I had written, but also to where those words had come from. And that poem came from a time when I was working through my feelings about being sexually abused by my dad and was not yet in forgiveness with him. Here is the poem I read:
Dracula’s Cat
Our incisors, long and sharp
our eyes reflecting red
in headlights of cars
We prowled the night looking
for love and sustenance.
He had a taste for young girls
well under the age of consent, and I
trailed along after
The sewer rats he attracted.
He had a magnetic personality.
He liked ’em young, he’d say
their blood sweet and untainted
with nicotine and formaldehyde
Virgins were his special treat,
although those with previous violations
were easier targets
Already cast in roles of
submission to forces beyond their control.
This next poem is recent, written well after I had “found my way down the secret path of forgiveness.”
Dear Daddy
I remember the night
you made yourself
Stop
My eyes shining up at
you in the moonlight
at midnight
My eyes the dividing line between
you and our agreement
the forgetting part
of forgiveness
You made yourself stop
thinking I would
remember to
forget
and I did forget
for decades
everything but that
last visit
when you stopped yourself
before my shining eyes
You thought that my forgetting would
keep me safe
from your betrayal
Not knowing that
others would immediately
forge ahead
On the path of our
agreement
already so solidly
so firmly tamped down
Silence
I learned it
all too well
applying it
in my four year old mind
to all who came after
the ones I didn’t forget
to remember
Only one careful enough
to threaten me
for it
my silence
for your life
“Don’t tell your father.
He’ll kill me and then
go to prison for it.”
I protected you
you didn’t kill anyone
but still I failed somehow
To save you from prison
the bars went up in your eyes
the gates slammed shut
on your heart
And they stayed shut
even after I found my way
down the secret path
of forgiveness
Until you came to my home
in hospice and
death’s kindness finally
opened your eyes