Category: psychology

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)

Undeserving

Guide me to source
offer all that I ask, but  
I have no voice…

Desire cut off in formative years
a product of dysfunctional loyalty
I am tethered to other
submissive by conditioning

Have forgotten my primal roots
my lupine instinct numbed
by domestication

Lead me to riches
and I will balk at the door
wander off distracted

It is not indifference
but an inability to relate

the concept of deserving
beyond my reach.

(Image my creation)

If I Could Only Breathe

So much I want to say,
yet the oppression of opposition
stomps heavily on my airways
cutting off the flow

Daughter of a trans father
mother contemplating MAiD –
embroiled in controversy,
I see only injustice

Cannot fathom the hatred
the railing against books
and glamour, and science,
misappropriation of christianity

How am I supposed to grieve;
take up arms for those I love,
when I am silenced before I speak
judgments cast without a thought?

If I could have a word,
if anyone would listen
I would share, perhaps insight
into the lives of secrets held

Describe how hearts wilt
beneath cruelty of suppression
how torn apart we become
ignorance voiding authenticity

I would tell you of the horrors
that dwelt within our homes
the fear of discovery, of rejection
how ugly it all felt….until

Education offered explanation
and in that opening
we saw potential to climb out
from our shadowy existence

embrace a life in which our love
is neither tainted nor deviant
and tell me please, as I try to listen
how such hopefulness is sin, after all.


(Image my own)


The Car Crash

That time, playing in the muck,
foot emerging without a boot,
hopping and laughing
all the way home…

Then, later, on the bus
the impact of the car
the windshield cracking
like a giant spider
blood all over
the dead lady’s face

All in the past –
sunroof open
kids riding along,
music blaring

But trauma is a spider
Arachne reaching into happy places
and as much as I speed up
to avoid her,
fight to disable
her attack;
she weaves herself new limbs,
begins the onslaught anew

And I am stuck in the mud again
no longer limber enough
to dance my way home in the rain.

(The Car Crash first appeared here in March of 2020. Edited for this version. Image my own.)