Category: aging

Nightmare

This malaise
this undeniable melancholy
product of isolation…
of an unreliable mind

What shadows awaken me?
a flash of car beams
or something more sinister?

Illness heightens sensitivity
I am set on ‘wired’ –
Internally running,
externally frozen

Sleep will not return
I don bravado
call out the ghosts
“Show yourself!”

Nothing.
Now I am raging –
“Who dares to disrupt slumber
then cowers in corners?”

Shadows grow eyes
and the walls undulate
a figure emerges
self in negative

I cower
pray I am delusional
mirrored self points downward
where floorboards recede

Skeletal remains
fill the earthen pit
nonsensical bones
of immortal pasts

Danger lurking
and I am not immune
the time has come
to submit…

(Image my own)

Neglect?

Was it neglect
that rendered us
so useless?
joints collapsing,
minds scattering
movement minimal…

That which we no longer tend to
loses lustre – less profit to reap

When we store our dreams in corners –
time usurping promises,
visions asleep –
the fallout is too steep

Cherishment is what is needed
for self, for hopes, for all life.

(Image my own)

Dear Dad

I miss your wisdom;
could use some about now,
confidence lacking

Life’s what you make of it,
you’d say, and
You’re doing a good job…

Truth is, I’ve made a lot of mistakes –
call it stubbornness or stupidity-
but I failed to plan, Dad

Not bemoaning life
It’s been really good
and I know you did the same

I’m just tired of doubting my self
Watching the rest of the world
reach their goals and then retire

While I can never tell –
am I doing a good job
am I even appreciated?

Remember the day my marriage died
and I came to you, crumpled
spewing anger, defeated…

And you cried with me
raging on my behalf, said:
Goddamn it, you deserve better than this!

Funny that through all the pain
your walls, my walls
you, alone could see me

Tragic how I only understand that now
death and years separating us –
my need for you still raw.

(Image my own – cut and paste with AI)

Labour

Extract the miracle
from the celebrated

Each story is lifeless
until told – its patterns

Stubborn, are innate –
We all crave renewal

I crave renewal
arms extended
fists unfolded

Believe in will –
the power to breathe life
into inert corners

Does not life support us?
Is not consciousness infinite?
and the divine patient?

Yesterday, I gave up
resigned myself to failure
(It’s a joke I play on myself)

This soul labours to find meaning
and I will breathe life into form
until quitting time finds me cleansed.

(Art my own)

Hiss

Wrapped in reptilian attire, change
climbs aboard my well-intentioned scheme
like a boa constrictor – disarming me

I am more inconvenienced than repulsed –
after all, snake is my power animal,
Or so the seer said…many years ago

Days when I would wear the scaly
comportment of power – invite
transformation- my essence a seeker

But I am trying to settle here –
embrace age and its complications
and yet the serpent persists

Sibilance insisting on co-navigation-
and what will be the outcome, I wonder
if I were to surrender to such a calling?

Change does not heed our fears,
our ego-driven agendas…
It bears its fangs and taunts

I exaggerate the threat, of course-
imagine being consumed or suffocated –
disregard the potential for healing

Have no time for reflection or pause –
the course is already set –
I hold on and feign control

(Art my own)

Slanted Orange

Essence is essence
and flat as I might feel
shadow reveals otherwise;
such is the mystery of life

Orange is my essence –
the promise of sunshine
and creativity, and… I envy
blue its expansiveness

Constrained as I am
by conformity –
this silver-framed
existence a settling

But shadows don’t settle
they stretch and bend
and exclaim rebellion
savagely defending essence.

(Slanted Orange was written in 2022 as a collaborative effort with a local photographer. The efforts of our poetry group are published in a book called the Minimalist Eye. Click here to see the whole collection as well as the photographs that inspired each poem. I’ve used my own art for this post.)

Sheltered

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.” – William Blake

Weathered the would that frames this perception,

once painted with optimism, long worn.


How bright the ideals of youth, now blurred,

colours stripped, raw intention bared –

Life mocks these aged perspectives

old structures fail, light dims with neglect

Still the heart beats solid, hope like putty

sticking to the sills, solidifying half-truths.

How deluded am I, trapped within walls

defined by out of focus panes, separated

From a reality that would behold me

fragmented or whole, and who will ever know

Have not the wherewithal to strip back

old mindsets, repaint the trimmings

Am content to dwell behind screens

of my own making, distorted but secure.

(Image my own)