You needed reassuring.

About something less than kind.

Your beauty was alluring.

Just a glance, you search you find.

Passing through dark bleak shadows.

On grey steel, morning train.

I was dreaming in blue twilight.

About a lust that left again.

There’s a mask on my desires.

That assures you, you must choose.

All those dancing courting Squires.

Can’t find one to light your fuse?

You offer love and crazy freedom.

However, both aren’t what they seem.

There are spirits… Can you see them?

I’ve gotten old, but I still dream.

I was breathing in contentment.

Spirits hovered in the mist.

Like a heavy fog just fades away.

In bright light, something missed.

Gall heaped high at breakfast.

I couldn’t take it anymore.

Contentment left with harmony.

I can hear dark thunders roar.

The north coast of Nova Scotia is somewhere between the middle of nowhere and God’s country.

Somehow, I was still there when I was 18, and she’d been dead for 7 years. I would still look for her whenever I was in a crowd of people. Straining searching. Imagining that she had faked her death to get away from me. My mother. By the fall of 1977, I guess I figured she was really dead. All of this I kept to myself. Winding wrapped tight. In my tiny bedroom on a twin bed in a mobile trailer on an acre of land at the edge of Deception River is where the nightmare began…

I ripped out the window screen at the foot of the bed one night and the screen at the head of the bed the next. Screaming some nonsensical rage about “I’ll get you! You motherfuckers!” The next morning the fingernails were torn and bloodied from ripping out screens. Both windows smashed.

I could hear the breathing coming from something somewhere. I held my breath and lay still on my bed, making sure it wasn’t me. I looked under the bed and under the trailer. Nothing. I was alone… except for whatever was breathing. It felt like it was coming from inside me. I had never been so terrified. I forgot to pray. I forgot God.

After a few days and nights of this, I realized that I had to leave that bed, that bedroom,that trailer, that acre, that river.

I left and never returned…

I’ve been listening to the masses.

They be trying to bring me down.

I’ve been taking master classes.

Ever since the blues dropped into town.

They are talking about oppression.

Like, it’s shiny and brand new.

So much horror in that lesson.

That ironic cake to chew.

They are raging, eyes are blurry.

Tears they fall like April rain.

Going nowhere in such a hurry.

Like they just discovered pain.

I’ve been looking for a chorus. That won’t break us into songs. Maybe something just to bore us. Take our rights back from the wrongs…

I remembered everything dramatic until I didn’t. I let that shit go, which is a monumental gift.

However, I  remember certain individuals from my childhood who, at the time, I thought were unreasonably cruel. Now I realize they were just human. Nothing more or less. So, to those people that I criticized on the eastcoast!,

“All Apologies!”

I tried to be a humanist.

I just never found that grove.

All that whining at the get-go.

Had to bounce and bust a move.

I tried things less than spiritual.

More like carnal, some call lust.

Perhaps a search, a thing called love.

I just couldn’t find the trust.

All this searching has a fortune.

Maybe one that’s hard to see.

Down a path I wouldn’t recommend.

Some things you can’t unsee.

https://dennismantin.com/

There is a heart shaped carve in rosewood.
There’s a line drawn in the sand.
I pray there on grace and wonder,
and there’s a baby, she’s in my hand.

There’s a virtue called forgiveness.
From a force we can’t see.
It’s how I deal with darkness.
Of how I feel when you’re with me.

I struggle now to hear you.
Seek approval in your eyes.
I hate you for your beauty.
Like I love you for your lies.

It’s a sad sad situation
Department sad but true.
You fear that they are coming
And you fear what they will do.

It’s a sad sad situation
Under heading sad but true
You fear that they are coming
No one is coming for you.

Dennis Mantin

The bad luck raised suspicions, on a path that was beat down.

No one dared to look within or see the wise men in the town.

It was happening for eons, as long as Grandad could recall.

Like a dark foreboding plank walk or a dream in which you fall.

Until the child spoke her words that, “Maybe somethings wrong with me?”

So we made a meeting with the Doc, down at the Family Psychiatry.

The doctor raised awareness and we all took a look.

Things are looking so good now, might take Grandma off the hook.

Now life is far from perfect however the family’s not so sad.

Looking in the mirror, not blaming blind luck, good or bad.