LYRIC O' THE DAY:
When routine bites hard, and ambitions are low
And resentment rides high, but emotions won't grow
And we're changing our ways, taking different roads
Love, love will tear us apart, again
--Love Will Tear Us Apart, Joy Division
I do not write poetry. I love to read it, but the closest I’ve been to actually writing the stuff was a blatant rip-off of “Twas the Night Before Christmas” in my holiday letters from 2005. I blame my high school English class; they voted to read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People in lieu of dissecting the works of Walt Whitman. I never recovered, and I forgot all those ways to make people like me anyway.
When I saw the Poetry Schmoetry blogfest via Summer Ross's blog, I realized that this was my chance for redemption. The power of rhyme compelled me.
The hardest part was settling on a subject. I’ve been a little discombobulated about life lately--at a crossroads some would say. So I chose to write about the anxiety that plagues me at times and trying to defeat it. I’m not sure if it made me a poet, but the process did force some raw introspection, which might be the point. Plus, it was pretty darn fun. So here you have it, my white wedding to poetry.
Feeding the fear
She is here, with her taste of metal and brackish stink.
My heart strains against sinewy confines but it won’t escape.
This I know, I studied the book and the white coats say it’s impossible.
Yet still I wonder.
Her touch not real, a product of my overloaded brain trying to organize, compartmentalize.
Rationalize.
Some days my swagger is impaired, the facade of calm ragged and I worry she will notice, she will finally claim me.
She taunts me. Hunts this poor white trash that got an education; drinks my claustrophobia in that coat decorated with serpent’s staff.
And she bloats larger.
Gorging on doubt and hot shame of failure to fulfill my different gypsy destiny.
The rush of blood in my neck drowns my stuttering pulse, the waves fill my throat to cease empty bartering for time wasted.
But I am of the air.
I rip myself from her sodden arms and suck the sweet taste of a blue sky. With caustic eye/I push her down, crush her larynx to silence her siren’s calls.
Mistress panic, you will go hungry today.
