Michael A.
Griffith's "Exposed" (Soma Publishing, 2018) is a very worthwhile
read that struck me as sad and moving and powerful and meaningful and unsettling
and upsetting and uncomfortable all at the same time. It focuses on broken bodies,
crumbling minds, and disabilities - and how they are viewed and treated by
those suffering, those surrounding the suffering, and the industry that
supposedly cares for the suffering. It caused me to visualize bodily
destruction leading towards impending death.
"The cut man bleeding out
time in his bathtub ballet
astride one good foot, hands
on slippery walls as the other foot
crumbles
to mud.
Water runs, water washes,
showers down time an impure
thing
runs a ring around him"
from the poem "THE CUT MAN"
Even more
troubling than the body-based pain and disability is the possible deterioration
and demise of the brain and the fear of being
stuck in a mental purgatory of some sort of dementia. Quite a few of the poems
in this collection express feeling trapped in the controlled horror of a nursing
home, being cared for and uncared for at the same time. Surrounded by other
ailing creatures, your physical and mental environment starts to look and feel
like a decrepit monster mash, brimming with zombies, impending ghosts and
ghouls, and others. Deteriorating bodies and minds are surrounded by workers
doing their un-personal jobs, even if their job involves keeping you imprisoned
in one space, stuck in a big house full of small room sized jail sells for the elderly
and infirm, who did nothing wrong, other than staying alive in a feeble state
of body or mind and now being all lumped together.
"I am beginning to forget
more than I care to remember.
Turn out the light and I may
forget what is in the room.
I remember Batman and Robin
wearing their underwear
on the outside and The Joker
had a moustache.
Did I remember to change my
underwear today?
I am wondering if I knew you
or if I know you.
No, you: you there.
Faces, not names, come to
mind.
And smells and sounds wash off
decades of silt,
and some details come to the surface
like dead fish."
from the poem "SILT"
The brain debilitation implied in some of the poems is sad but relate-able to me,
because I'm someone who had been very individualistically communicative for
years, then suffered an unexpected stroke when I was only 37, which resulted in
brain damage. I backtracked from being a strong reader and writer to being someone
who had to re-learn the alphabet and learn to read again via children's books.
My mind felt the same as it used to, but couldn't express itself the way it
used to. Prior to the stroke, I had been very word-based, but after the stroke,
I became more image-based, because even if I couldn't remember the words for
things, I could visualize the images. I've since recovered to the point of
being both word-based AND image-based, but I still have mild aphasia and basic
word issues and memory issues - and I've also found out that after a certain
amount of time, some people just don't want to hear about it anymore.
I still
remember attending therapy sessions in the beginning of my recovery process and
how the waiting room was filled with people older than me, people in wheelchairs,
people with one side of their face paralyzed, people drooling, people who
seemed like they couldn't speak for themselves. I wanted to know who they were; not just stare
at their physical ailments. My therapist
didn't seem to care about me on a personal level. She just seemed to be doing
her basic job and at the end of each session she gave me paperwork tests to take
home and complete and bring in to my next session. My husband usually didn't
even come in to the waiting room with me. He'd just drive me to my appointment
then wait in the car. He didn't want a disabled wife, so he tried his best to
ignore the disability, until it became clear it wasn't going away, and then he told
me my personality had changed and he was sick of hearing about my stroke and my
poetry. Obviously, he's not my husband anymore, but no way was I giving up on
poetry, and I truly think my passion for poetic words largely uplifted my
recovery.
Although
several poems in Exposed explore the uneasiness associated with memory loss,
those poems are also capturing the speaker's current thoughts (and feelings and
ideas and images) and keeping them alive within a poem, so that they will
continue to exist, even if they later disappear from the brain. I've often
thought of the present captured in a poem as another kind of present. A poetic
gift.
Of course
poems do not cause the fear of possible impending dementia, other brain paralysis,
and other mental and physical disabilities to disappear, but it is still very
meaningful and important to express ourselves while we still can and I think
that Michael A. Griffith's "Exposed" is a valuable, worthwhile, and thought provoking exploration
and collection on many levels.
For me personally, it elicited thoughts, feelings, memories - it inspired this
review - and it also unexpectedly inspired a poem.
~Juliet Cook
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