Category: psychology

Is Optimism Enough?

“Are you happy?”

The question hits
my gut,
slingshots
down the hall
deadends
at optimism

“Of course,” I respond.

What else can I say…
Sure life needs tweaking…
I am learning to be better…
I can make this work…

Why?  What do see?
Thoughts unspoken
but the bell has been rung…

(I wrote this poem in 2020, in response to a prompt. It was inspired by an encounter with an old flame, whose question caught me off guard. I was not, in fact, happy at the time – my then marriage about to crumble. The thing is, this event happened almost 30 years ago, and yet remains in my mind. Funny how the psyche holds onto things. Image my own.)

Doctoring

Doctoring broken hearts –
my own legacy a training ground –
like an anesthesiologist

I keep the patient breathing,
asleep – muted by kindness,
unconscious and unable to react.

Why?

Because lulling others is more
effective than operating on self –
faux obligations such a balm

Administer lidocaine to the wounds
Numbness preferable to open-hearted
investigation…

no sutures strong enough
to remedy internal bleeding

(Art my own)

Stolen Identity

The woman currently abiding
within this costumed realm
is merely a lethargic version
of the once-vital, now oppressed
miss, whose identification
was stolen by means of
unsolicited adversity.

The focus of this recanting
is to invite a perspective
that not only restores, but
aids in the teaching of other
shadow-selves, that to reassert
original nature is more than fair.

(I’ve stolen Stolen Identity from an earlier post. Art my own)

Alice Knows

Betrayal hugs with enthusiasm
public displays of warmth
so charming

Betrayal clutches vials
and pockets the laundry money
and gives a cheeky wink

Betrayal taps the shoulder
and ducks before the reveal
grins like the Cheshire cat

Plays me like a top
spinning, spinning,
and toppling hard

till I’m bent over
head between my legs
glancing backward

Sure that I just saw
the white rabbit,
out of breath

Each word a pill
making me bigger
or smaller

Then off with my head
Betrayal has made me a pawn
till it tires of me and moves on….

(Image my own.)

Paralysis

Paralysis desecrates floorboards
leaves me suspended…
the skeletons of lost dreams
sprawled out beneath me…
disordered

I am powerless
against the nightly haunts:
a dispirited youth
a righteous mother,
that lonesome child…

Judgment has a long shadow
and slits for eyes…
I don blinders –
tunnelled between
guilt and loathing

This onslaught,
this psychic terrorism
mocks my immobility
forces me to mine
forgotten pith

Survival, instinctual,
steels against the assault
raises prayer
as antidote

An armless attempt
to assert will over fear –
hoping strength restores
vulnerability’s war cry.

(Image mine)

Stories

Trees have a story,
buried in their roots,
refined by seasonal passages,
etched in scarred bark

Birds know these stories
Sing their praise, unapologetic –
and we can hear them too,
if we only learn to listen

I have a story
birthed from parental lips
delineated by the jostling
of our many limbed life

It states that I am the good one,
the responsible, the brilliant,
the child of hope and valour…
this story is not mine

I am a tree, whose scars
suggest a history, whose roots
remain hidden, and whose voice
was lost in familial tempests

The birds know it, though
and carry my essence
on winged notes, back
to source, where I am written.

(Art my own)

The Answer

3:33 AM
Startled awake
The answer
there, on the brink

Of course I lose it
rising to answer another call
Oh, how it taunts

Try to recapture the moment
find the right twist of body
as if I’m a radio tuner
signal lost

And what answer would that be, anyway?
Now fully awake, pondering questions –
only one applies

This newly formed fear
I’ve dared not voice it –
it cuts deep

Is there an answer
and if so, do I want to hear it?

I fall back to sleep
awake hours later
mind blissfully empty.

(Image my own)