i can’t see where i’m going
the path ahead of me
is dark
and i brought no flashlight
but i gotta keep walking
i gotta keep walking
metaphor
April 23, 2023
usually
i use morning page time
to write what’s bouncing around in my mind
and smooth out the edges
of the frantic thoughts and premises
and write for an audience
once i’m done
parsing
ponderings
but this morning
i’m just continually
digging through
my mind’s soil
and seeing what might grow
and i don’t know
if any of my work is readable
much less digestible
but better to let indigestion take hold
than not have anything to show
from such a
productive
pensive
morning
right?
April 6, 2023
i can remember
being seven-years-old
and having such a hard time
swallowing one big multi-vitamin
while on our trip to florida
(so i wouldn’t get stick or anemic or something of the sort)
i have a visceral memory
of knowing it was good for me
but having the pill get caught in my throat
and no amount of water could ease the discomfort
that continued on down my chest
for nearly an hour afterwards
i probably cried
(i did a lot at that time)
and every day that pill seemed bigger
and the water less helpful
and i struggled and struggled and struggled.
today, i can easily take
one multivitamin,
five spiro pills,
a zyrtec,
a wellbutrin,
and a couple of other things, if needed
in one swallow and gulp of water
and nearly every time it easily goes down
i ponder what was wrong with me
at age seven
to not be able to take
one simple
pill
alone.
but this story seems to be lacking
an awareness of where i was at the time
both physically
and practice-wise:
not only was i starting from zero experience
of how to swallow anything whole,
i also had the average-sized throat
of an average-sized seven-year-old,
and i cannot go on
judging my yesteryear self
based on today’s standards…
but i know that’s what i’m doing
when i judge my past self
for putting on these coping mechanisms
that have grown with me as i’ve aged
and, more often than not, gotten in my way
but i was working with very little knowledge,
less stable hormonal levels,
and no real parental [or societal] guidance
and i also know
that i shouldn’t judge my today self
for where i may be in future healing—-
i still have to dig through the muck
and learn and grow
in order to get where i think i’ll go
so i guess what i’m saying
(to my own self and to you
if you need to hear this today, too)
is that ‘be kind to yourself’ is not just some
lily-livered
social justice
pansy-assed
liberal
sweet talk
in order to have more compassion
for yourself as part of the human race,
it is also
simple
factual
that you cannot judge yourself
based
on what you don’t yet know
or
how you haven’t yet grown
and i hope that helps
both of us.
March 26, 2023
poetry
[for me]
is simply raining down
haphazard hail
at whatever can capture my words
and showing off this bouquet
of symbols making meaning of emotional existence
and asking if anyone at all enjoys
the fragrance
[and/or the mixed metaphors]
January 17, 2023
if we are to attack with metaphor
with analogy
with any sort of literary
device at our side
what would my depression be?
a shadow?
sounds too cliché
too perfect
but hear me out:
it’s always there
just sometimes i can’t see it
from my particular angle
and different environments
make it a different type
of shadow:
large and looming/
grounded and serene and looking just like me/
a tiny pool of darkness at my feet/
or not at all there
(but change one light
one type
of something
anything
in the room/place
and there it is again
and the question of
‘did it really leave
or was it just laying
in wait?’
and i’m unsure if we’re speaking
within the explanation or reality
within the metaphor or truly
just talking about my relationship
with my ever-constant frenemy
depression)
so if that darkness
is a shadow
what is my constant worry
of anxiety
what new analogy
could i find
for thee?
August 16, 2022
i should have known
that the answer wasn’t
‘both’
when asked if i liked to work more with
details
or
big picture
things,
simply based on my reaction to being presented with
either.
when asked to look at minute details
i feel like i’m being laid into a giant warm bed
that fits me perfectly
that itself cuddles back.
and when being presented with
the big picture
i’m overwhelmed to the point of
panic attack
~~~
this
computer
is on its last legs
(or its last keys)
the multiplying of vowels
has at least tripled
(except for the rare occasion
when a letter simply
doesn’t)
but now the delete button
and space bar
are on the fritz
and a few consonants
are also acting awry
and i
think should just bite the bullet
and let Kip transfer my things
over to the new [to me] laptop
but this machine is where i wrote a novel,
and this is where my Morning Poems started,
and i took all my zoom classes
here,
and it feels like
an end to an era
when it’s simply
upgrading to the next model
and i
need to stop worrying
about losing all my things–
Kip knows how to transfer
and i’ve saved in at least two different places
and i should trust technology
some day
(maybe today?)
~~~
my body
and brain
just want to go back to
adjusting every little date
on my transfer
from goodreads to storygraph
because tiny details
and mindless tasks
feed my soul
like pudding;
filling it with empty calories
that i know should go
after a full meal
(of poetry-writing, perhaps?)
but i secretly just want
to eat sweets
and do teensy tasks
whenever i feel
any kind of
hunger
May 3, 2022
it is
very
hard to concentrate this morning
and i don’t know if it’s from
the stress of last night
or
the vividness of the dreams
or
the sadness of this morning
or
the lack of coffee in my bloodstream
or what
but
it is
very
extremely
extraordinarily
bizarrely
quite
hard to concentrate this morning.
~~~
i feel like i’m getting a better handle
on what makes my poetry
my poetry
(but i really have
absolutely
no idea
still
about what makes any poetry
‘good poetry’)
~~~
i would like to write
another
slam poem;
start a flow
and just go,
balance out the rhythm and rhyme
with internal structure,
alliteration,
and find
the transitions,
the cues,
from one section
to anther,
playing with words
and meaning
and framing
the repeating
as metaphor
as a tool
as a lock to turn the key
and find out something new
about me,
about life,
about our home planet earth,
and our collective strife
to stay alive
when all we want
is eternal sleep
(not necessarily because
death is the answer we’re looking for,
but because all these
isms
and power structures
and so-ingrained made up concepts
keep us so wide awake
that sleep seems a necessity
we never get to get
[when was the last time you had
an actual
honest to goodness
no stress
very good
night’s sleep?]
so i guess
that’s what this poem’s about:
the collective trauma
that is
white supremacy/capitalism/america
and how the one thing
that could give us
the fight
we need
to dismantle it
is the the thing
it keeps us
from doing
every
single
night.
(and are my daytime naps
my making up
for this lack,
or is that just a symptom
of the depression
my awareness
of these systems
gives me?)
((or is that a subject
for another poem
for another day?))
March 10, 2022
emotions
swirling
around
scattered and unfounded
(at least half of them)
~~~
do i want to
do work
then
be creative,
or can i
somehow
find the creativity
inside the work?
~~~
all the possibilities
and none of the
decision-making confidence.
~~~
all?
or none?
or some?
now?
or later?
or combine?
or alone?
or is it even worth it?
~~~
i wish i remembered what it was like
to find my path of thought
through
the poetry at my fingertips
instead of
halting
phrases
catching
words
tiny poems
barely scratching the surface
of all that’s underneath
this rainbow hair…
~~~
if i trace the keyboard
gently
will it make the words come easier?
will the emotions be quantifiable
and able to be categorized
and boxed up
and shipped out
to future me
to deal with
in a different [head]space?
February 10, 2022
i’m so sad
too sad
the sad that doesn’t go away
the sad where the minute you think you’ve made progress
you’ve figured out that feelings are all meaningless
and will pass any moment now
into a new feeling
you are reminded of some way you are
objectively
awful
(forgotten appointments/
late projects/
letting people down/
not good enough for your own standards/
etc./etc./etc./)
and you fall into that pit
once more
(not that you’d gotten out
you had just climbed far enough
to at least see the light,
but here you are
[rock]bottom of the pit of despair
)
(…but you know
this could all be a trap
that pit could have a trick floor
a trap door
and you could be pulled
even more
even further
even farther
down.)
October 18, 2021
just atop a grain of rice
it makes my laptop all
wibbly-wobbly.
and something so small
that affects so much
has to be a metaphor (right?)
(ok, granted, my laptop is far closer to the size of the grain of rice
than say
myself
or
the universe
but still,
size-wise
it is quite
small.)
so
what great insight can i gain from this
“rice under the laptop”
experience?
perhaps to always look for the root cause of an issue
and to not judge too harshly
if the core issue seems
“too small”
to affect that much.
or maybe the lesson here is to simply
clean off the table
between meals and morning pages.
kipventures 