20 Comments
User's avatar
Dian Parker's avatar

This hits deep.

Expand full comment
Chris Bodor's avatar

This man was my contemporary three decades ago when I started getting my poems published by the micro presses. I miss him. He was a rare find. Thank you for giving him the spotlight today.

Expand full comment
Patris's avatar

Travelling to the underworld. still standing

Expand full comment
Donna McArthur's avatar

I think the only chance any of us have is to forge a star out of our living breath.

Amazing. Thank you.

Expand full comment
Jonathan Potter's avatar

I recognize this scene from many episodes of my young adult experience. "The only chance you stand" -- that's what you hang onto.

Expand full comment
Weston Parker's avatar

from a place on the other side of loneliness.

Expand full comment
Paul S Medus's avatar

Thanks. I found and purchased a collection of his poems. Everyone of them gold...solid gold.

Expand full comment
Nate's avatar

Another incredible piece...👏👏👏

Expand full comment
JK's avatar

This is exactly how feel. I don't know if I should be relieved, or saddened, that someone else 'gets it'.

Expand full comment
Yemi Butterman's avatar

deep!

Expand full comment
appleton king's avatar

never even heard of this guy.... eureka!

Expand full comment
X. P. Callahan's avatar

Amazing.

Fix typo in line 22:

It's the you know = It's then you know

Expand full comment
Yuri Zavorotny's avatar

A question to anyone who feels they can relate: "Knowing too much to ever have a friend" -- what does it mean to you?

My answer is this: Most of us, almost everyone, live with severe learning disability. Our confusion is the reason for pain and suffering: "No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks." (Mary Shelley)

This is old news too. What no one could figure out, since ancient times, is how to teach the art of understanding to someone who didn't learned it already.

Expand full comment
Ethan Summers's avatar

Nice question! Well, I wouldn’t dare to speak in the name of the author but I personally think that deep persistent loneliness exposes the darkness in us and others, our flaws, and thus it paralyses our trust in people, our desire to connect with them and hence our attempts to make new friends

Expand full comment
Yuri Zavorotny's avatar

I'd dare to suggest that "knowing too much to ever have a friend" means that there seem to be very few people who ventured as far as you did, saw what you saw, and who, therefore, can understand you and what you are going through.

As for everyone else... well, you can adore a child, but you cannot have a meaningful relationship with it.

And that's why deep persistent loneliness. And that why it's so hard to break out of it, even though you know that it's slowly killing you.

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Jul 21, 2023
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Yuri Zavorotny's avatar

I think I can relate to that... There might be more than one reason for this kind of experience. May I offer a piece of advice?

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Jul 22, 2023
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Yuri Zavorotny's avatar

Thank you... and people's capacity for understanding could be wanting, that's true. However, there's also something about trauma itself -- when unresolved, it could poison our relationships with ourselves and with others. And it only resolved when we no longer harbor resentment towards anyone -- be it the perpetrators, or those who don't get us, or ourselves -- anyone at all.

"Unconditional positive regard" -- I think that's how it is called in humanistic psychology. Or Jesus called it loving our enemies. That, I think, is where we want to be for our own sanity's sake :)

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Jul 22, 2023
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Yuri Zavorotny's avatar

It is hard. If it weren't we wouldn't be having this conversation :)

Personally, I have to keep reminding myself that every perpetrator is also a victim. That we all are sharing the same trauma (the original sin?) that is being passed from one generation to the next for thousands of years now. That we are in this together, with everyone doing their best under very difficult circumstances...

Something along those lines.

Expand full comment
Weston Parker's avatar

Piled around my

sawhorses’ legs,

wood shavings are curled to sleep.

The loneliness sinks into you

like a winter sunset, saying,

“There are other ways

to make a living.”

But would there be wood?

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Jul 20, 2023
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Yuri Zavorotny's avatar

If I may ask, what do you know to much to ever have a friend?

Expand full comment