holdingdarkness

[holdingdarkness]

Poem 8

You cannot make me

grow up. You grow up.

To be a little is to

make innocence

and righteousness last,

and joy, in the duty

to remain pure

always and forever.

Process: Erasure

Source: Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. New York: New York, 2006. 122-124. Print.

[holdingdarkness]

Poem 7

Welcome inside the mind.

We have marvels before us,

so many little odd rooms.

The Others might be there.

Here is the heart of the house,

our center of operations,

a kind of common room,

entirely inside the dark,

but we who live here can hear

each other. It’s not hard

once you get in to practice.

Process: Remix

Source: Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. New York: New York, 2006. 41, 77, 78, 45, 46, 55, 78, 72, 79. Print.

[holdingdarkness]

Poem 6

Welcome to the haunted house

of the mind. How best to prepare you?

The house does have its oddities.

It’s like the crazy house at the carnival,

rooms opening to somewhere dark,

doors swinging shut when you come

to see something not intended for you,

mirrors that make you face yourself

from the inside; there is no way to the outside;

no way you remember, anyway.

But there is no danger for you, of course.

We have done this before, many times

but not with ah…company.

We have only to go through the door.

Process: Remix

Source: Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. New York: New York, 2006. 41, 77, 49, 46, 73, 144, 79, 140, 82, 108, 75, 106, 145. Print.

[holdingdarkness]

Poem 5

See the padlocks and chain

shadowed by the ominous dark,

like the doorway of a tomb,

trying to guard against a secret

protected from the eyes of people

passing, and sometimes us, too?

Do you know what you’re asking for,

coming here? You hear anything

about what’s waiting for you here?

Last chance to run away…All right,

loosen the chain. You won’t like it.

You’ll be sorry I ever opened the gate.

Well, come here then. Follow, follow,

one foot after the other. Notice

a little soft cry from somewhere.

The beings in this house are only waiting

for an opportunity to tell their stories.

Now, let us open the front door.

Process: Stanza 1, Remix; Stanza 2, Erasure; Stanza 3, Remix

Source: Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. New York: New York, 2006. 19, 87, 113, 13, 45, 34, 37, 87, 9, 129, 130, 144, 75. Print.

[holdingdarkness]

Poem 4

Family. I am one,

inside. I am me.

However, I am we, too—

a fellowship, a mutinous

group of assistants.

You have a chance

to see for yourselves.

Drop preconceived notions;

pick up an open mind.

Now, let us talk,

since we are all here

in our own way.

Let’s go look

for the Others.

Come through the gate.

Process: Remix

Source: Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. New York: New York, 2006. 41, 48, 49, 13, 73, 104, 21, 78, 45, 64, 91. Print.

[holdingdarkness]

Poem 3

TW physical abuse

When I was a child,

I was whipped

for throwing a brick,

perhaps more than one,

into the road

with a neighbor child,

the worst of companions.

I remember the whipping,

but also the lovely crash,

but most of all the whipping.

And that fast, I am back there,

a five-year-old, watching

from somewhere outside myself.

Process: Remix

Source: Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. New York: New York, 2006. 53, 15, 5, 3, 109, 2, 380, 34, 92. Print.

Note: Some of this from page 53 is closer to source context that I usually use, but since I was forcibly spanked over throwing bricks, I couldn’t pass up utilizing the lines. So for transparency’s sake, here is the original paragraph:

“When I was a child,” Theodora said lazily, “—‘many years ago,’ Doctor, as you put it so tactfully—I was whipped for throwing a brick through a greenhouse roof. I remember, I thought about it for a long time, remembering the whipping, but remembering also the lovely crash, and after thinking very seriously I went out and did it again.”

[holdingdarkness]

Poem 2

They think me mad,

shameful, sorry.

I must show them

I am good. I am

myself, in the center

of the stage, the outsider.*

But that isn’t all.

*Note: As a system we use the term insider to refer to any alter heard by whichever of us is fronting when we aren’t sure which alter spoke, so outsider has that double meaning of the common definition & being the one fronting.

Process: Erasure

Source: Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. New York: New York, 2006. 109. Print.

[holdingdarkness]

Poem 1

To exist sanely, some dream,

holding darkness within,

stand firm—stone.

Being so cost a good deal,

a pain commonly known

as haunted.

Looking for hope?

Then let go.

Process: Erasure

Source: Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. New York: New York, 2006. 1. Print.

[holdingdarkness]

Hello reader!

Throughout April, I’ll be writing found poems as part of a Poeming project for which the source text is The Haunting of Hill House, which I happened to have read a few months ago.

This is my 12th poeming. If you’d told me as I struggled with the found poem assigned in college, and could have taken or left that poetry approach, that this would be the case, I wouldn’t have believed it. And if you’d told me when I first started participating in Poeming that blackout poems would become my go-to, I wouldn’t have believed that either.

These projects have become a constant in a world of change, a thing the year is set to, which is nice in the chaos of my brain. Each project also becomes a reflection of what’s going on in there. I never pick a theme, but often one emerges with each project. I wonder what will surface this time as I navigate an increasingly frightning country as a queer, neurodivergent, chronically ill, and disabled person while trying to find my way, and myself. And my Self is a tangled concept for myriad reasons not the least of which is being a dissociative system (ie someone with dissociative identities.

Welcome to the chaos.