My poem “absolute zero” is the featured “Poem of the Issue” in this week’s edition of The Austin Chronicle. This one has its origins in a journal entry from early 1989 which was forgotten and then rediscovered in October 2010 when I was working on the Iron Man Family Outtakes project. I can’t remember now in what state of completion this piece was when I found it, but I don’t think I had to do a whole lot of work to finish it.

I have extremely vivid memories of writing many of my poems: what was going on for me in that moment, the time, place, circumstances, etc. For others (like this one), I can’t recall much more than a general context and a time frame. Then there are those pieces, some of which are quite significant, for which I have no recollection whatsoever of the process of creation after some time has passed. Why I would remember writing some so well and others not at all has always been a mystery to me.

As I’ve been reading this one right now, it seems to me that it started with me feeling like I was too blocked to write anything (first two lines), which is kind of ironic in retrospect. I toss off a few lines in a journal, forget about them, and 22 years later I have a published poem. What a crazy, mysterious, unpredictable process this is.

rescue
twisted
ever
after

user
liar
bent
deceiver

root
trunk
branch
leaf

fall
leaf
branch
trunk

root
deceiver
bent
liar

user
after
ever
twisted

rescue
stranger
lover
phantom

mother.

(PDF version)

sooner or later
his life will run him down
and he will lose
what he holds most dear.

the one thing
that has kept him going
given him reason during the day
and comfort
during the hour of the wolf
will slip from his grasp.

no beacon
no safe harbor
dead-eyed stranger in the mirror
old fool ground down by the days
slack skin staring into black
night after sleepless night
alone and drowning
in the far end of the pool.

(PDF version)

Creating a linear narrative with a list of accomplishments in the classic obituary format didn’t work for me either. As an alternative, I decided to approach the exercise as if my life had ended that very day and simply write whatever came to me in response to the event. Here is the result:

obituary 12-11-11

he was a horse of a different color
he was an army of one
he was a stone on a river bottom
he was a bird that fell out of the nest.

he was an A student
he was the smartest guy in the class
he was a tax deduction
he was a paycheck.

he was a castaway
a fugitive
a superhero
a cowboy
a jet pilot
a soldier
a time traveler
a family of astronauts
a secret identity.

he was an alien from another planet
who fell to earth.

he felt confused a lot
he felt like he didn’t belong
he felt like something was missing
he couldn’t wait to grow up
even after he grew up.

he fell in love with women
who didn’t love him back
he fell in love with women
who lied to him
he fell in love with women
who cheated on him
he fell in love with women
who didn’t appreciate him
he fell in love with women
who couldn’t see him
or let him be who he was.

he lived for 15 years without loving anyone at all
(he never saw that one coming)
he kept trying
he got tired of trying
and sometimes he stopped trying
but he never stopped looking.

he wanted to help
he wanted to make a difference
he wanted everything to be better
for everybody
he couldn’t understand why people lied
so much and so often
when it took so little effort
to tell the truth
he couldn’t understand why people were
so mean to one another
when it took so little effort
to be kind.

he was a prisoner
he was a punching bag
he was a scapegoat
he was an exile.

he was a flower in a jar
a damaged romance
a beast in the night
a cave full of bats.

he put it all on the line
he gave everything he had
to everything he did
he lived at the edges of his edges
he fell many times
and was broken many times
in many ways
but he always got back up.

he was a sand castle in a tsunami
a beam of moonlight landing on a blade of grass
an erupting volcano
a still mountain stream
a quiet moment that passed
in the twilight.

now the wave that brought him here
has taken him back
he was ahead of his time
he was ahead of the pack
he was never sure he mattered at all
but he did.

(PDF version)

For reasons I can’t fully articulate or even understand, this poem feels incredibly personal to me and I feel incredibly vulnerable, almost naked, sharing it. I declined to share it in the men’s group the first time we brought our obituaries in for discussion, saying I was unhappy with mine and planned to rewrite it. However, there was no rewrite because when I sat with the task, nothing else ever came through, and I finally decided that what I’d written must be what I was supposed to write at this time.

I would still like to write that rosy “dreams fulfilled late in life” obit, and maybe I will at some point, but I guess I had to write this one first.

the windows are dirty
the doors are locked tight
the altars are built
of barbed wire and bones.

the wind blows through
the rain pours in
the bells don’t ring
the dead don’t die.

the child in the corner
looks for his shadow
his eyes are frozen
he cannot cry.

(PDF version)

I’ll be honest. Up until a day or so ago, I really hadn’t been paying close attention to the Penn State story. As an adult survivor of childhood abuse, I’m living and dealing with my own story every day. I don’t have to look to media for more.

I’ll be honest about something else, too. Just 24 hours ago, I’d never heard of Jon Ritchie. Then, yesterday afternoon, I happened to be channel flipping and ran across his conversation above with Bob Ley on the ESPN show Outside the Lines. Now Jon Ritchie is one of my favorite men. If you watch the video above, I think you’ll see why.

Jon speaks of his long history with Jerry Sandusky, a man he regarded as a role model, friend, and mentor from the time of their first meeting when Ritchie was 14 and Sandusky was recruiting him for the Penn State football program. Speaking about Sandusky, Jon says:

“I just felt like this man was so selfless, and so egoless, that he was what I aspired to be someday. And now, that foundation of what I thought was credible, and what I thought was important, and what I thought was good has crumbled. It’s decimated and it’s caused me to just reevaluate everything around me.”

A bit later, he says, “My whole lens has cracked.”

I understand exactly what Jon is saying because I’ve had a similar experience. Several years ago, I learned that an older man I’d known and admired my entire life, someone I’d loved and respected, someone with whom I’d spent countless hours as a child, had systematically sexually abused at least a dozen children over a period of around 25 years.

I was completely blindsided. I felt as if my entire world had been turned upside down. I’d never had any indication, not as a child and not as an adult, that anything so hideous was going on. He was, in my perception, one of the safest adults I knew as a child. I’d never received any inappropriate attention from him or heard of anyone else who had.

Shock is far, far too mild a word for what I felt and experienced in response to these revelations. As Jon says in the video, what I’d learned caused me to reevaluate everything. Not just my relationship with this man I’d trusted so much, my memories of my time with him, and my feelings about him, but everything. My sense of what I thought I knew and who I thought I could trust was ruptured down to the very root.

I was horribly disoriented for weeks, and it took a long time for me to come to terms with what I’d learned and to right myself again. Furthermore, I was unprepared to find that someone else I’d known and trusted all my life would do anything to protect this serial abuser’s reputation as a “great man”, to deny, to cover up, and to press his victims to keep the secret. This, to me, has been as appalling as the abuse itself, and has poisoned my relationship with that person as well.

Perhaps that’s why I’m so impressed with Jon Ritchie today. He could’ve taken the route of protecting, denying, and rationalizing on behalf of his long-time hero, or he could’ve simply stayed out of sight and kept quiet until things settled down. Instead he’s chosen to take the path of honor and integrity, to allow others to witness his walk through the flames.

I can see the deep pain in his eyes as he speaks, and I know it all too well. He’s obviously been shaken to the core. It’s not easy to accept that someone so close and so admired has done such awful things, much less to speak publicly about it so soon after finding out. Jon is sharing what is surely one of the most devastating experiences of his life in real time and in an incredibly transparent way.

The children who were molested and assaulted are the primary victims here, and that is where, as Jon says, the focus belongs. But Jon and others like him, who were close with Jerry Sandusky and saw him as a mentor, a hero, a role model, and a good man, are part of the collateral damage, secondary victims who’ve been deeply wounded by a horrific betrayal of trust and confidence that cuts to the bone and warps one’s sense of reality.

These men are in crisis, too. They’re feeling crazy, wondering how they could’ve been so thoroughly fooled for so long, and worrying that they somehow failed to pay sufficient attention to realize what was going on and stop it. They’re searching their own memories, wondering if maybe something happened to them as well, something they’ve somehow blocked out or rationalized away. Some are thinking they’re damn lucky it wasn’t them, and feeling guilty about the relief that comes with that. They’ve all been damaged and injured, too, certainly not in the same ways or to the same degree as the children who were molested and assaulted, but in ways that still matter deeply, and they’re going to need compassion, understanding, and time to heal as well.

If I could thank Jon in person for this brave, honest, articulate, and very moving interview, I would. I hope it’s widely seen and discussed. It’s an incredibly helpful, vital part of the conversation for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that, even in what must be one of the darkest moments of his life, Jon Ritchie is still showing us what it means to be a good man.

This post originally appeared on 11/12/11 on the Good Men Project website.

too far gone
I can’t go home
poisonous feast of
fingers and tongues.

empty universe
primal isolation
I can’t find love
so I settle for meat.

strange meat in my mouth
my meat in strange hands
she is meat
I am meat
we are meat.

I feed on her
she feeds on me
I feed on myself
I violate myself.

I strangle myself
I choke on dark flesh
hungry and sick
killing my soul
trading my life
throwing myself away
over and over
for meat.

(PDF version)

* My video poem “secret children”.

* My video poem “falling though” with my accompanying written commentary about my fear of feeling and expressing grief and sadness.

* My poem “use everything” (video version is available here).

For a complete listing of all of my work on the Good Men Project site, you can visit my author page at http://goodmenproject.com/author/rick-belden.

Sadness scares me. Grief, the experience of grief and grieving, scares me. But I also know that grieving, that being with grief and sadness, is one of the most powerful and effective ways of being with and transforming pain. When I let my grief and my sadness speak, when I allow those energies to stir in my belly and my chest, to move up through my heart and my throat, to enter the world as tears and moans and sobbing and wailing, I am cleansed. I am lifted. I can see again. I feel real again. Human.

But entering that process is challenging for me. It’s tricky. Sensitive. I almost have to be taken by surprise. Like so many men, I’ve been conditioned not to feel such things (not directly anyway) and certainly not to express them, not even privately. The messages are clear: “Be a real man. Take charge. Control yourself. Don’t cry. Be tough. Don’t be a wimp.” If you are a man who is suffering, keep it to yourself. If you have to feel something, feel angry. Anger is manly and therefore safe to feel. Grief and sadness are not.

Grief work is hard for many of us as men, and so much has to be learned (and unlearned) in order to do it. You have to be tough and soft at the same time, and you have to be present with what you’re feeling without losing yourself in the intensity of it. It’s not easy. Healing is not for wimps. The real tough guys are the ones who can do the work …

You can read the full article at:

http://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/healing-is-not-for-wimps

Many of the insights offered about the process of creating a photograph echoed my own experience as a writer and poet. Leverant speaks of photography as “an art of waiting” and “an art of listening.” If the photographer listens well enough, if he has developed sufficient discipline, the photo takes itself. I’ve often told others that I feel as if my poems write themselves, but this only happens when I’m able to give them the time and space they need to emerge.

The processes and philosophy in this book may be specific to photography, but I believe that anyone engaged in creative activity who reads it can gain some valuable insights into the value of waiting, listening, and allowing art, whatever the chosen medium, to find its own path.

WAKING UP: Men Reclaiming Our Inspiration

Would the boy you once were be inspired by the man you’ve become? – Nic Askew

This 12-meeting study and process group for men will explore the pathway to discovering our masculine gifts, and offering those gifts through our relationships, families, friendships and work. The group will be a place of refuge, challenge and acceptance where members will engage with new ideas about relating to ourselves, our partners and families, and our work in the world. As a process group, we will look at our interactions within the group as a reflection of our interactions with the world. As a working group, we will support each other in identifying and working through the challenges which keep us from living our lives more fully.

The primary work in meetings will be the focus on consciously finding our right relationship with ourselves, our lives, and each other. We will look at physical, spiritual, emotional, sexual, and psychological ways of offering our gifts to the world, and pathways to doing that. The group will do a small amount of reading each week from writings by David Deida, Rick Belden, Chogyam Trungpa and others to open up new areas for exploration of our full role in the world. We will explore mindfulness, and use this skill to explore barriers to true engagement with ourselves and our world.

This group will be comprised of six members and two leaders. All members will commit for the duration of the group. (It is understood that absences are unavoidable at times.) During the group, the leaders will offer experiential training on what is needed to develop and maintain an effective on-going, self-sustaining group. If there is interest, the foundation of this subsequent group will be established from interested men in the group with the support and consultation of the group leaders. After the initial stages of the new group, leaders will be available in a consultative capacity as needed.

Details
When: 5:30 – 7:00pm on Wednesdays beginning August 31 and ending November 16
Where: Sol Associates, 3400 Kerbey Lane
Group leaders: Steve Milan, LCSW and Rupesh Chhagan, LAc
Cost: $50 per session payable at the start of each month. Discount available if paid in full in advance. If finances are the only barrier to joining, please contact us to discuss accommodations based on need.

Please call Steve at 589-5164 or Rupesh at 917-3404 to sign up or to get more information.

Signing Up: Anyone interested in participating must meet with Steve or Rupesh once before the group starts to assure that the goals of the group are clear, and that this group is an appropriate venue for this work. There is no cost for this meeting.

This is a great opportunity for men in the Austin area who are ready to explore the possibilities of deeper relationship with self and others in a safe, supportive environment, and I’m honored that some of my work will be included as a resource.

In a chapter called “Being Your Own Man” from his previous book, Matters for Men: Staying Healthy and Keeping Life on Track, Dr. Ashfield wrote:

Father and son relationships are often fraught with tension and conflict, because of a failure to understand that a son must chart his own course, and must best his father in some way, in order to become a self-respecting equal with him in the world of men. Sons must not only be snatched away from mother’s apron strings, but must also decisively cease their dependence on or acquiescence to father. Many men, even in middle age, experience the continuing inertia of unrealized manhood because they are still preoccupied – often unknowingly, with lamenting an absent (or less than ideal) father, or living in their father’s shadow. There may be no simple formula for success in life, but there is a simple formula for failure: to betray and abandon the person we could become, and the life that we could have, in order to placate and please other people.

The decision to be ourselves and to be responsible for ourselves – to shape our own destiny, rather than living on the leftovers of someone else’s, is no small matter. It can be a frightening thing to take the first few steps into a future governed by our own volition and choices. But no other option can give us the dignity or manliness of a life that is, for better or for worse, uniquely and satisfyingly ours and ours alone.

Dr. Ashfield’s comments remind me of one of my favorite quotes, attibuted to Rudyard Kipling:

To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

I’ve found, as Dr. Ashfield has written, that separating from my father, from both the man he was and the man I needed him to be, has been crucial to my coming into my own life as a mature man. It’s been a long process, a “hard business” as Kipling put it. It’s also been both necessary and well worth the time and the effort. I know there’s more work to do (there will always be more), but nearly 35 years after taking my first conscious steps out of my father’s life and into my own, I’m finally beginning to feel, in ways I never have before, that I am becoming a man at last.

Still I am, as Kipling said, “lonely often, and sometimes frightened,” frequently more so than I would prefer or care to admit, but I also have a tolerance and an acceptance of both of these states that I didn’t have even a few years ago. I understand now that standing up as a man in this world doesn’t guarantee me anything – not love, not success, not companionship, not fidelity, not health, not safety – and this understanding has liberated me, not from wanting all of those things, but from expecting them as some sort of reward for doing what I believe is right.

It is only by standing firm in my own authenticity and integrity that I can truly be fully present in this world and in my own life, with all of the inevitable pain, confusion, and disappointment that come to each one of us who lives. This is a lesson my father could not teach me, having never learned it himself, and I could only learn it by stepping out from the long, angry shadow he cast over my life as a child, a shadow that covered me like a second skin and nearly obliterated my life as a man.

House Rules

Sit up straight don’t slouch.
Stop crying I will give you something to cry for.
Don’t answer back.
Pull yourself together.
Do as I say pay attention.
Don’t fidget sit still.

Those who ask don’t get.
Those who don’t ask don’t want.
If the wind changes your face will stay like that.
Speak when you are spoken to.
Little girls should be seen and not heard.
You must make the best of yourself.

If you don’t abide by my rules you can leave.

Don’t stare it’s rude to stare.
Stop that now rude girl.

I am not staring I am looking.
I am searching I am yearning.

Where are you?

Kathleen Freeman

Choosing one poem from among the many fine pieces Kathleen has written so far was a rather hard decision. You can see more of her work and keep up with her latest posts at http://kathylambie.blog.com.

My poem “reverie” is the featured “Poem of the Issue” in this week’s edition of The Austin Chronicle. This one is just about a month old, although I actually started it in January 2010. Started it, got stuck, forgot about it, and then picked it back up and finished it about 18 months later. Very unusual for me to do that. Usually, if I don’t wrap ‘em up within a day or two, the moment passes and that’s the end of it.

I’ve been thinking recently about the deficiency of appropriate, effective male mentoring in my life and how it’s affected me. I’m 52 and it’s still affecting me, just as it’s affected me at every stage of my life. There’s a huge hole in my life where my father should have been (and still should be), but as big as that hole is, it’s merely the center of a much larger hole, the product of a male culture that is woefully inadequate to meet the true needs of men and boys …

The link for the article is:

http://mankindprojectjournal.org/2011/06/5779

A second article of mine entitled “My Life with Iron Man” was also published on The ManKind Project Journal website last month. The article is located at:

http://mankindprojectjournal.org/2011/06/my-life-with-iron-man

“My Life with Iron Man” was originally published on the Masculinity Movies website in October 2010 in conjunction with my review of the movie Iron Man.

http://goodmenproject.com/fathers-day/broken-bones-and-the-father-wound

This article is an updated version of a blog post I originally wrote in November 2009 while recuperating from a broken shoulder and wrist. Many thanks to the folks at the Good Men Project for including it in their Father’s Day 2011 series.

I wrote “secret children” just about 20 years ago and knew I had something of universal significance in my hands, but I couldn’t get anybody to look at it. I really couldn’t get anyone to look at anything I’d written at that point. Discouraged, I put “secret children” away and more or less forgot about it until I started writing again in 2008. Quite a long wait, to be sure, but it’s finally getting out there.

forgotten animals
speak to me
in forgotten languages
forever preserved
in forgotten dreams.

(PDF version)

Disowned Male Rage and Its Impact on Society

Disowned male rage is pervasive. It is reflected in the violence in our streets and in the wars we wage, the many battered women and children behind the closed doors of both our tenements and picturesque white picket fenced homes, the many homeless aimlessly wandering our city streets. It is even reflected in the function of our government; on a deep psychological level, our public policies are created and implemented to create separation and to support the denial of one’s (especially men in position of power) own destructive capacity.

We all suffer (disease, depression, addiction, violence) when we, as men, do not identify and take responsibility for the rage we are taught and develop from various childhood traumas.

Origins
Male rage is passed down and is a response to the environment. The parent who fails to deal with his (or her) own childhood rage either shuts down or attacks his own son, simultaneously passing on rage and teaching him that rage is dangerous and is to be feared. The absence of fathers in boys’ lives is an epidemic. Partially as a result, many men are still attached to their mothers, continuing to try to win their love (with their girlfriends and wives) while simultaneously being enraged about the resulting lack of personal freedom. For many, public policies and violent suppression of one group of people over another contributes to the existence of rage. The origins of rage, much of which has not been mentioned here, are both personal and societal.

Resulting Psychology
As a result, men internalize this original relationship to caretakers and the emotion of rage. Many hide from their own rage, repress it, fear it, find any substance or activity they can to distract themselves from it, while others act out, expressing rage violently. Depression is an epidemic in our culture, partially due to the unconscious repression of rage. Despite these efforts, we see the subtle and blatant evidence that male rage cannot be fully contained: car fatalities, school shootings, rape, beatings, gang violence. Instead of acknowledging and being with the truth of their own rage, many men deny it and project it onto others and then distance themselves from, and vilifying the other, while exalting themselves.

Domestic Policies Reflect Disowned Male Rage
The dynamic of denying male rage is reflected in our domestic policies. Our economic, health and education policies empower one segment of society while disempowering others in order for those disempowered others to serve as receptacles for others’ rage. For instance, the credit system (as part of modern day capitalism) as currently constituted is a spiraling downward trap for the non-wealthy. Meanwhile, as stress levels increase, access to health care is diminished and children are expected to learn to be (and are labeled if they cannot be) compliant, focused, and well behaved in school so they can grow up to be compliant, well behaved, “adult” consumers. These policies are developed to create a perpetual collective psychological split, where the Haves can live a serene life devoid of discomfort while the Have-nots live with the chaos of the collective male rage.

Societal Implications
We all are suffering from the imbalance from disowned male rage. No one is immune from the affliction that men are experiencing today. Women are treated violently and/or are neglected and dishonored. Pervasive depression, disillusionment, nervous breakdowns, sexual dysfunction and cancer are the consequences of disowned male rage just as the bullet wounds, overdoses and heart attacks are. We over-consume to not feel our rage, destroy our environment, hoping that the newest technology will protect us from our raging selves. We are out of balance with a part of the collective male psyche. The destructiveness of this imbalance is more evident every day.

What Can Be Done?
All men are responsible for acknowledging their own rage and finding the support to understand and change their relationship to it.

There are resources out there to help men. Individual, one-on-one psychotherapy, with a therapist can be quite effective. There are a variety of other modalities (acupuncture, energy work, body work) out there that can be of help as well. Men’s group work is often a powerful method of understanding not only one’s own rage but of the collective male rage that exists. There is a desperate need within each man to gather together with other men and talk about this with each other, to support, listen, advise, particularly around rage.

I am drawn to working with men around their relationship to rage, because there is a tremendous amount of creative, sexual, alive energy freed up when we acknowledge and accept rage. My approach is to help men become of aware of how they relate to rage, by either hiding from or attacking blindly. This awareness allows for deeper self-acceptance and vast opportunities for personal growth and expression.

I think Ben makes a lot of very useful points in this piece, not the least of which is this one (emphasis mine):

“All men are responsible for acknowledging their own rage and finding the support to understand and change their relationship to it.”

For me, the statement Ben is making here is particularly important. I’ve seen some very disturbing information on the web recently, information written by men and aimed at men, that asserts that for a man to be conscious, he must apologize (i.e., take responsibility) for every bad thing that every other man who’s ever existed has done. That is wrong, toxic, and harmful for all sorts of reasons that I’m not going to go into here.

But Ben, in his statement above, gets it right. If we are truly honest with ourselves, we know that we can only take responsibility for our own feelings, our own actions, our own behaviors, and our own wounds. For most of us, that is more than enough to handle in one lifetime.

I also like Ben’s emphasis on the importance of group work for men. I just finished a 10-week men’s group and it was a great experience for me. It wasn’t my first men’s group, but it was my first in a long time. I may share more about that in a future post, but for now I’ll just say that my personal experience over many years confirms Ben’s statements about the need and the unique benefits of group work for men.

To learn more about Ben and his work, visit his website at benringler.com.

drawing reflected
myself back to me
right before heading
back into the cage
the other morning.

one more
harried hurried
hunted hunch-shouldered
hungry running rabbit
trapped in the
flying to pieces
stressed for success
balls out
non-stop
all or nothing
everything
all the time
twenty-four-seven
faster and faster
more and more
mandatory
retaliatory
predatory
purgatory
world-eating
gut-busting
soul-crushing
american dream.

now it’s just about
time to start another
week of it.

I feel
like a rat
on a wheel.

(PDF version)