Tag Archives: Poetry

Journal -minimalism vs hoarders

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I’ve been taking time off work and clearing out my back room, previously the place for crap, soon to be reborn as a cute office. Looks like I’m not so good at the updating when my schedule breaks down. But I’ll learn how to keep up… eventually…

 

 

Cleaning up my room

Eliminating excess

Why does it feel so good

To get rid of stuff

And why do so many people not feel the same way?

Here is an item

Every time I saw it

I thought how ugly it was

A relief to not have it polluting my sight.

This thing

Itchy, uncomfortable

Thank God it’s being given away.

And here

A depressing reminder of abandoned ambitions

There

Grief-inducing mementos of lost loved ones

Old magazines? Guess what? I’m off the hook

I don’t have to read them.

They’re full of garbage and I can live without that data in my head.

I’m never using this warranty

I don’t like that photo

This drawing always bothered me

Who am I keeping it for? Posterity?

Nobody gives a shit about this shit painting.

I shouldn’t curse the future with such light-lacking things.

Nobody wants my garbage

Even I don’t want it.

 

How can anyone delight in having so much stuff?

They fill their houses with it

They get bigger houses so they can make room for more stuff

They are afraid to part with a single item

And if they do

They don’t forget about it

They really regret it forever.

Perhaps they are so beholden to their own identities

So shackled by the past

They cannot release a single newspaper.

The thing that makes me feel so free

Makes them feel unstable, lost

Freedom is instability

I suppose they can’t handle freedom

Because they have no faith in their own ability to handle it.

I don’t know much about hoarding

I’m a reverse hoarder

I’m a minimalist.

But I have a strong support network

And I have confidence

And I am lucky to not have

Such consuming fears.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earthworms

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Earth elemental

Fleshy segments

Burrow through the power of patience, appetite, numbers

Tiny grains of life

 

Life devours lower life

So things which creep close to the ground

Fishes, snakes, toads

Things which live under rocks

And have gaping senseless maws

Prey upon earthworms.

Nothing lives lower than a worm

But everything relies

On the foundation they lay

With their mindless, relentless drive

To consume earth

Pass earth

Be earth

 

They are blanks

Dirt passes through them

Moistened black

Richer for their contact

They gulp, gulp

Like vacuums

Like straws

Pulsing their way up and down the avenues they have created

A megalopolis underground

Utterly vast

Interconnected

 

Sometimes, being too blind to see

And too empty to resist

The vital impetus

Pushes them through the soil

Beyond the boundaries of their amniotic grit

Into the open air

Where, cut from contact with their animator,

The little golems shrivel

Into a line of dust

A memory of things

which should not touch light.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Journal – On Overcoming Fears

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When I was a kid

I was afraid of the dark.

I used to make myself walk down the hallways in the dead of night

With the lights off

Just to prove … I don’t remember what

Maybe it was pride.

Maybe I despised my own cowardice.

So I just looked at the light switch

Then stared down the demons in the dark.

 

I hadn’t gone to the dentist in eight years

A lost filling finally drove me to the waiting room

Where I sat, my stomach knotty with fear.

After that I kept up with my dentist visits

Through crowns and drills and fillings lost and gained

And stainless steel needles the size of Montana

Culminating in my most recent visit

A small filling restored with,

By my own request,

No numbing agent.

I found it was nothing I couldn’t handle.

Now when I go, I marvel

At my lack of fear.

 

I never allowed myself the luxury of feelings

Afraid that they would hurt others.

This has been the worst fear to overcome.

I have progressed from exploring my emotions,

To writing them out,

To showing them to the world

My family

And hardest of all, my dad.

Because I loved him the most

I hid the most from him.

Protecting him from my unhappiness

Afraid he would blame himself

Or worry about me.

Today he called me

Asked if I was feeling okay

He’d read my bleak poem

And worried.

I reassured him, the poem was old.

When I hung up the phone

I wondered

At my stability in the face

Of what had just happened.

Dad had seen one of my darkest pieces.

And he had worried.

But things are different now.

I can be honest with him.

His humanity doesn’t break me.

My own humanity doesn’t break me.

The self-loathing spiral

Never came.

 

Now I have to keep posting

As if I didn’t know he was keeping up on the blog.

Or rather, I know that he is,

But I am able to be honest now.

Sometimes I want to die

Sometimes I want to stab something

But mostly I love my life

And although I still cherish my family,

I no longer idolize them,

Or feel the need to protect them.

 

I have always considered myself uncommonly lucky

In family and friends.

Today I can feel lucky

And not feel guilty too.

I can feel grief and pain

Just as easily as I can feel love.

 

But most of all,

I can feel.

 

And I feel grateful.

And I feel free.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bleakness

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When there’s something you can’t hold

When what you are is not allowed

When the people you know best aren’t real

While the real people don’t know you at all

When your soul has gone off

Like a brown avocado

And the only thing in this world that feels right

Is the knife in your hand

Breaking the rules

Unleashing hell

Blade scrapes bone.

By another’s death

You acknowledge your own existence

You are alive

For a moment.

But what is left to fill

The countless minutes between stabbings

Except bleakness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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