In a dark time, I lived in a home and was homeless. I struggled to develop an adolescent manhood, convinced that no one could protect me. Well-fed, I paddled through lily pads, hunting frogs I would not eat. In love, no one felt my adoration. Still, I survived and thrived.
Doggedly, I record signs of the coming light.
Now, an alien, uncommon darkness isolates me in sunlit beauty while down the hill, a person drowns in cascades of antibodies every half hour. My outrage ill-conceals the impotence I feel against a disease that mushrooms from indifference towards our faltering ecobalance. Doggedly, I record signs of the coming light.
— Retroflash
Charles DegelmanWriter, editor, and educator based in Los Angeles. He's also played a lot of music. Degelman teaches writing at California State University, Los Angeles.
Degelman lives in the hills of Hollywood with his companion on the road of life, four cats, assorted dogs, and a coterie of communard brothers and sisters.
Characterizations:
moving, well written
Prose poetry! I was going to point out which phrases I particularly liked, but then realized . . . it was all of it. Thank you for this beautiful Retroflash.
Thanks, Suzy. I felt moved to talk about our current darkness but, as with solstice celebrations, I also wanted to celebrate the coming light. I hope I got that urgent element across!
Wow, one long oxymoron. Beautifully done, Charles. I have yet tackle the form; there are so many worthy offerings this week.
Hey, Betsy! Who are you calling an oxymoron?! And yes, this prompt seems to have inspired many.
Very powerful, Charles. We need to celebrate the coming light and believe the pandemic will end, we will take steps to help the environmental mess we are in, and sanity will return to our government.
I think we’ll find that once the baby is pulled from the sandbox, arms still folded, lower lip protruding, pants soiled, that we will move forward into a time of great social progress and good will. It’s in the planets!
Love all the contrasts and final message of hope here, Charles. We all are challenged to find any light how and where we can.
Mulling over your words as I often do Charles , I sense we’re crawling out of that murky swamp and slouching toward some promised light.
I’ll take that.
Wow! “Slouching toward some promised light.” Reminded me of Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming,” which ends with “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” Yeats wrote that while his pregnant wife was seriously ill with flu during the 1918 pandemic. Circles and cycles, Dana.
And in turn Joan Didion took Yeats’ line “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” as the title of her 1960 collection of essays about life in – you guessed it – California!
Yeah, I’ve read some of Didion’s California essays and even used one in my writing class one semester. Yeat’s Slouch is an often-quoted poem. It was quoted about a million times at the beginning of Brexit and Trump.
Reading Yeats is on my bucket list, sorry to say I haven’t read him altho love Irish lit, years ago spent best time in Dublin at James Joyce summer school, heaven!
James Joyce in Dublin. You and “stately plump Buck Mulligan…”
Yes yes yes
Wading through the long darkness, you conjure hope for regeneration. Very nice!
Odd time to feel optimistic, Barbara, but I’m nurturing a vision of Trumpo sinking into quicksand. It should only take a few hours after he leaves the White House, before the entire world begins to feel better. That’s the way I see it :-)!