Tag: past

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)

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)

Reflecting and Rebuilding

Considering
refurbishing
childhood home

Unrecognizable now
numerous makeovers
and even re-purposing

But my heart is invested
and well, I can see potential
and, oh…I know it will take work

All the walls I’ve torn down
and the excess furniture
and how I’ve imagined duplicity

Is this folly on my part
this revisionist thinking
see…I’m sure there is treasure

hidden amongst the forgotten
buried perhaps in the attic
or other overlooked nook

And as I remember it,
the backyard is an oasis –
Yes! I think I’ll do it!

Reflection and a good dose
of elbow grease, and I’m in!
Recreating an upbringing.

(for Eugi’s Weekly Prompt: reflection. Image my own.)

Rainbows

Nostalgia casts rainbows
over stormy passages
Why is darkness so alluring?

I breathe passion into losses
soul revolting against the light
committed to seduction of perhaps

Where is the wisdom in this brooding?
Naïve rumination seldom begets the gold
best to look away when rainbows appear.

(For Eugi’s Weekly Challenge: rainbows. Image my own.)

Treading Trauma

Treading water
where barracudas swarm,
inject a drop of kindness
incite a ravenous threat

Quick the decision to bail,
shed contamination,
resulting terror –
shame exposed.

Now tread slough
longing floored
robed in foreboding
trembling in shadows.

(I have made poor choices in my life, which still haunt my dreams.  My therapist says to focus on the “quick departure”, honour myself for making the right decision in the moment.  Still, guilt lives on.  Such is the nature of trauma.  It lingers in our psyche.  Image from personal collection.)

 

Unfair

Sporting crisply pressed regrets
and tight-assed judgments,
the past happened upon me,
caught me mid-mediocracy,
eye-balled me with a sneer,
and then strolled on by as if
I wasn’t even worth a ‘hello’.

Wait a minute, I cried out
trying to pull myself together,
noting too late, my lack of
grooming, how unfairly
I’d been caught off guard –
Wait!  I’ve been wanting
to tell you…I mean… I was
just too young…

All in vain, he’d vanished,
left me gaping and rattled –
damned he looked good –
foolishly pining after
righteousness, imagining
the past as something
tangible, curable….