The Words

Early in the morning. The light is sharp.
Your mind is not.
It is mushy and feverish and uncertain,
ready for bed as soon as it wakes,
even after being fed coffee and coffee
and coffee again.

You are spending too much time staring into space,
daydreaming and waiting at the same time,
letting words tumble out, sure
they have more insight into what you are feeling
than you alone might have, trusting
them to spill out some kind of wisdom
or love story or something dark and foreboding.
Something, maybe, worth reading, worth the effort
of writing, worth something to someone.

There’s no way of knowing. What matters
to whom. You just write the stuff,
Let yourself bleed on the page,
like talking to your therapist,
only the therapist has questions
and you do not even have the questions to ask.

Floundering comes naturally now.
You do not fret over it. accepting finally of yourself
as well as you have always accepted others.
That is no small feat, growing past the dark places,
growing past the lies in your head,
other people’s voices, and finding your own.
Hard work, at least for you. Hard work
and worth the effort.

Not that it changes the dark moments.
The moments where you sit and stare
into space, waiting for words,
for an explanation of what feelings are backlogged
in your betrayed brain. Discipline, not in the doing,
but in the opening of doors
to let the madness
out.

About this poem

Not everything in life makes sense. I am good with that now.

I often link my writing to therapy.

Tom