Climbing Out

Bottomed out
sanity failing
nerves MIA
mind akimbo

Ladder building
walls of abyss
lack footholds
airless desperation

Rung one: faith
believe in God
believing in me
climbing blindfolded

Rung two: children
a reason for living
grasping strength
carving a path

Rung three: writing
ink bleeding pain
expunging futility
clawing for purpose

Rung four: friends
holding space
remembering self
blotted forgotten

Setting goals –
minimize focus
count progress
millimetre milestones

Surviving:
knuckles scraped
ego bruised
perspective altered

All This Nonsense

The Queen is in the swimming pool –
oversized stuffy with a crown
The well is overflowing
and I’m afraid I’m going to drown

Children in the backyard
Stay away from all that’s wet!
The baby is a-coming
and I’m not ready yet!

Please feed the offspring
while I scurry hurriedly about
back and forth to University
trying to gain some clout

Today is my birthday
although you’d never know
I’m so busy skirting circles
with no real place to go

Never have I been so rushed
to get to I know not where
perhaps if I could sit awhile
I’d get from here to there

The Queen is floating upside down
her cardboard crown deflating
It’s time I called off the charade
give this routine an updating

(Image mine. Nonsense poem inspired by a recent dream – sums things up pretty well, I’d say. Not my birthday.)

Spinning

Circling,
dancing,
caught between
idealism of expectation
and harshness of reality –
one has lofty goals,
the other invites limitation

I’ve excuses aplenty –
none that assuage ambition
Incomplete work dangles
from spider web threads
waiting for rescue

Talking to myself
unavailing – best
step out of this dichotomy
stop the whirling

(Sketch my own)