Push

No, I do not feel like writing. I do not feel like
lifting anyone up, not even myself.
I am mired in dreams, struggling to get out,
struggling to define them better,
to decide whether they are prophecies or laments,
why they still have hold on me hours later,
and why the morning is a push to move,
just that, to move past the haze of realness
I left behind in my bed in the morning light,
a push to move aside the lying demons
who seem to have more energy than I do.

Never mind. Don’t overthink it. Push.
Push past. Claim the hard-won truth of your worst days,
an utter lack of glamour, simple work, pushing
past my own limitations. It is simple.
Not easy. Simple Hard. It takes a certain brutality
to do it, day after day, aspire to normalcy,
or at least a semblance, enough to pass and be left
alone, alone enough to heal. To strengthen.

It is a measure of the wound that time heals
only so much, and the scars themselves weep
what is left. I am glad for the magic I can,
with work, always work, finally see;
the songs that make me dance like a teenager
with old bones; magic that makes the heart beat
faster and gives me what I need, and just enough of it,
to push.

About this poem.

What comes out when you are not feeling inspired and just write, despite yourself, pushing words out when you have no stories to tell, when your dreams were too vivid, when you are determined to function better than you feel.

The picture is from a train graveyard in Bellows Falls, VT.

Tom