Always Your Hope

You write. Each day you write.
Much of it in the black journal,
a relic of another age, handwritten,
a more direct connection to brain and heart
than the expeditious typing of keys,
a slow truth, a dance of the seven veils
of your own emotions.
It frustrates you, the slowness.
You are a product of your era,
a bit too digital for your own good,
and so you force yourself to slow down,
to take the pen in your awkward fingers
and write. Often badly, without editing,
word after slow word. Pain and confusion
in dribs and drabs, thin stick man lines,
a poor man’s hieroglyphics.
Words with stories embedded. Secret stories
mostly. Tales of madness and lusts and confusion.
Silent prayers. Lots of those.
You worry about writing it down. About leaving
your aberrations on a shelf where others might read them,
now or after you are gone,
exposing your therapy with God,
with yourself, with the empty line,
filling them all so you may be empty once more,
ready to be filled again, hopefully better.
Always, that is your hope as you sit at the table
and write.

About this poem.

I journal. At times on the computer. At times in stray notebooks. Doing it in notebooks is probably more therapeutic. The computer is more private.

Tom