ARTICLES
Healing Arts
Poetry A - L > Jones, Kara L.C.

By Kara L.C. Jones
author of Mrs. Duck, Flash of Life, and forthcoming Good Wife

Waiting

weighing

waiting for gadot

women waiting for you xxx

holiday weight control

waiting while your loved one is in a coma

which way is the greenhouse

the weight of my world has always been fat, i mean phat

there is a band called thewaiting.com

she didn't wait on me fast enough

you will wait your turn
you will weigh in
you will find your way

the religions wait for you
weighing the consequence of saving your soul
hoping you will find your way to the saviour,
whatever their particular saviour might be

you have to find your way to god coz
he won't call you and even if he did,
you're such a chatter mouth, you don't even have call waiting
so he'd just get the busy signal of your soul

yes, well you may be the father,
but you'll need to take a seat in the waiting room
while we comfort your bereaved wife because she
is so distraught over the death of her son

you can't carry that grief around forever,
you'll need to lose that weight to be normal again,
why don't you try the grief zone weight loss program
or maybe weightWailers anonymous or maybe
you can grieve for six weeks, but we'll have to check the numbers
on the weight calculator-- what is the molecular weight of grief again?

you will have to find your way out!

there's the divided way, opps, i mean the united way or the milky way
depending on how practical you'd like to be, there's norway
and my way or the highway, but please don't be passive,
instead PAH-LEZE lead the way for gawd sake!

you could go this way or that way,
or be very fundamental about it and take the Taoist way
Whatever you do, just make sure you take the healthy way
and eat the proper daily servings of your curds and whey,

okay?

   Editor's Note about the above poem: Upon reciting this poem to the KotaPress Creative Director, he commented, "It's cute, but it's way out there!"

Takeout Order

by Kara L.C. Jones

To place a takeout order for
dinner is so easy.
You decide what you want
on your taste buds and
simply dial the phone.

But in my house,
we used to cook as much
as takeout—that is to say,
there was balance until
Dakota died—since my son’s
death, we take out way more
than we cook in.

And takeout is not so easy now.
My husband cannot trust me
to dial the phone and
place our order.
On more than one
occasion, my husband
has caught me
arguing with the waiter
on the other end of the phone.

When the waiter
answers my call, he says,
“May I take your order please?”
To which, I’m suppose to
easily answer, “One order
of Channa Marsala with
steamed rice, some Aloo Gobi, and
a side of Nan, please.”
But instead I often
snap back angrily at the waiter
almost yelling at him,
“Yes, you can take my order
and please get it right this time.
I want one perfectly
healthy baby boy with
ten fingers and ten toes
and a perfectly good
brain, spine, and heart
and this time
he needs to be breathing!”

The man at the other end
of the phone line is often surprised
and shocked at my request
and will demand, “Is this
some kind of a joke,
young lady?!?” which just
pisses me off more and I
yell back, “It is not a joke, buddy,
I’ll tell you what a joke is! A Joke
is being pregnant all that time
and then giving birth to death!
Now damn it, Mister, are you
going to deliver my
baby the right way or not?!?”

At this point my husband
is so frustrated and upset
with me that he just
severs the connection
probably wishing he had been
able to cut my son’s
umbilical cord with this
kind of success. And I’m
sobbing, and he’s freaking,
and the phone is beeping
with the sound of being
disconnected but not quite
hung up, and I say,
“I think I’m hung up
on Kota’s death,” and
my husband says, “Let’s
hang the tears out to dry
and order a pizza for dinner
instead.”

But this time, he calls
and appropriately answers
by saying, “We’ll take a large
with extra cheese and a 2 liter
of root beer, please.”

And I am disappointed
that my son
won’t be resurrected
in tonight’s
take out dinner.

For Dakota, Born and Died March 11, 1999
I wish you were here for your birthday, Kota.

Compartmentalize

by Kara L.C. Jones

We compartmentalize our lives.

Think kitchen counter.
Think glass, airtight, snap-shut containers on the kitchen counter.
Think flour, sugar, coffee, tea all separated into individual, bright, yellow containers.

Now apply that to your life.

Your mother-in-law is coping with mortality. Renal failure. Congestive heart failure. But she doesn't want to hear anymore about your dead son. Enough grief, she says. You have to live now, she says. Even as she enters the doorway of death, she wants you to snap your grief shut into that cute yellow container marked "Sugar."

Your friends are sick to death of the way you can't get over this "mission" thing. Who cares if someone uses the word fetus, they say. What possible difference could it make for the state to call your dead son a child instead of a fetus, they say. Would you get over this death thing if they gave you a birth certificate rather than a fetal death certificate, they say. After three years, your friends are sick to death of having this mission shoved down their throats, and they want you to snap that preaching shut into the air tight jar marked "Coffee."

Even your writer friends have had enough. They begin to say things like, "Being angry when you tell your story doesn't work. Let's make this funny." Funny, you think. How do you make dead children funny, you wonder. Make it light and fluffy so the audience can "get it" instead of feel like you are yelling at them, they say. Put that anger into the big jar on the kitchen counter marked "Flour."

And at work, the academic on duty tells you that no one wants to deal with "lay people" like you. You might have a dead child, they say, but what credentials do you have? If there's no PhD listed on that fetal death certificate, then how can you expect anyone to take you seriously. The academics want you to shut up, lock those "lay people" ideas into the container marked "Tea" and go do your support work for them instead of brewing those crazy ideas you have about helping bereaved parents. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Compartmentalize.

Com - part - mental - ize.

Come - apart - mental - lies.

Bereaved parents come apart with all the mental lies told after the death of a child.

   Tanka is a poetic form of 5 lines using 5-7-5-7-7 count for syllables. The poem below is not quite a Tanka because it messes with the specifics of the form.

Not quite a Tanka

by Kara L.C. Jones

you are a precious
piece of glass
worn smooth
from the tumble
of life

honor your contradictions

The following Tanka is an excerpt from the KotaPress book "Father Son Holy Ghost"

Excerpt from Son In Tanka Train
included in Father Son Holy Ghost

by Kara L.C. Jones

We go on to live
full lives, empty of our son.
The waters gather

deep and cold in the well
                                    carved
                                    carefully
by Grief's own hands.

 

About the Author

Kara has been using poetry and other expressive arts tools on the grief journey since the death of her son in 1999. Her poetic and non-fiction works have been included in publications such as New Works Review, PoetsWest, Real Henna, Shared Heart Foundation's "Meant To Be", LightHearts Publication's "Soul Trek", MISSing Angels Newsletter, American Tanka, Mother Tongue Ink's We'Moon, Honored Babies, Cup of Comfort series, and more. She is a Carnegie Mellon graduate who co-founded KotaPress with her husband Hawk Jones. Through KotaPress her books Mrs. Duck and the Woman as well as Flash of Life have both been released. She is currently in an apprenticeship working toward Master level of Reiki. And she founded HennaHealing.com where she is exploring the ancient art of henna and its uses for ritual and healing.
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