what my anxiety doesn’t know

Posted on by inktuition
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It doesn’t know boundaries.

It doesn’t understand when it’s appropriate

to flush my cheeks and inflame my chest.

It doesn’t know how to hold back

when my thoughts start spiralling

into a whirl of destructive what-ifs.

It doesn’t know it’s devouring me,

and all those around me,

with its catastrophic clauses.

It doesn’t know it’s not in charge

when it rages like a bull

in the china shop of my mind.

Even when the red rag starts fading,

it doesn’t know the exhausted angst

that still rampages my dreams.

For Day One of NaPoWriMo 2015: a poem about negation

what we learn from who we hate

Posted on by inktuition
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The person I hate

is like a piece of sellotape:

stuck to my fingers

and won’t let go.

A voicemail vitriol

is like an online vicious troll

even from a woman old

enough to know better.

My buttons pressed

I’m trying to guess:

is it what I resist

continuing to persist?

I fear that her tone,

all imperious and throne

is what I’m like when cross.

Hiding loneliness and loss?

my ambivalent feelings for snow

Posted on by inktuition
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inktuition snow

Oh, when you’re meant to be there

you don’t bother turning up:

(Christmas).

The whole world grinds to a halt

from two millimetres of you

(London).

You rock up when we don’t need you

and kids want to throw you around

(school run, 30 minutes late).

When you grow old and dark,

my heels and tyres slip warily on you

(icy reception).

Yet the fragility of your freshest flakes

makes the air a magic twinkle

(trees and fresh snowprints).

And being snowed in for days

while annoying, is freeing

(sound of your silence).

the deadness that lies beneath

Posted on by inktuition
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The deadness that lies beneath
any anxious, depressive days
is worse than any mayhem,
any stress or mild dismay.

It stinks beneath the floorboards
lurking like a snake
that slithers in insidious ways,
reminds me I’m a mistake.

I’d no idea what I was defending from
when I partied teenage nights,
or worked so hard and pushed myself
up those well-paid, giddy heights.

But the fall was swift and brutal
and it keeps on bashing me blue.
There’s no respite from relentlessness,
just many more reasons to rue.

And so I’ve looked into that abyss
when I’ve felt I’ve had enough.
Weighing how I’ll escape it all.
How, finally, I’ll be snuffed.

discovering the point of me

Posted on by inktuition
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inktuition the point of me

I’ve been apologising for oh so long,

as I explain and cringe my choices,

that I lost the point of me.

Born, I was too much crying,

too many nappies, too much bother

to feel there was a point to me.

A child, I was told I was far too messy,

warned to be good and stay quiet.

There was no point to me.

Teenaged, I was never allowed my style,

was asked did I think I looked good in that.

I cried and searched the point to me.

Studied, I gained diplomas, degrees,

which I thought would make me whole.

Looking back, I wonder the point in that.

Grown up, and business gave me power

to manage, to lead, to create.

My star waned: what was the point of me.

A mother, a new life with other fertile ones

I thought would give me meaning.

Playground bitches destroyed the point of me.

Stressed, I feel the yawn of my heart.

Pleasing others from dawn to dusk:

who would ever make a point of that?

Broken, a life with a faded façade

and scaffolding all torn away.

I start to vision the death of me.

Darkened, I think of ways to loosen

my grip on this mortal soil.

What the **** was the point of me?

Soul-bound, I’m saved from today’s maudlin.

Tomorrow I’m not so sure.

What’s the point of staying here?

Awakening, I take a daily breath

that surprises me each morning.

The only thing that keeps me alive

is the point one day I’ll believe in.

the pain of my undefended self

Posted on by inktuition
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Party girl persona no longer protects

the sad, lonely being within.

Lipstick helps to fake a smile

that brightly distracts my suffering.

Mask of success no longer serves

to boost my life-weary ways.

What are accomplishments anyway?

Not as if you can take them to the grave.

Extravert energy no longer helps

when I want to retreat from the world.

People just jeer at my fistful of faults

as into a ball of shame I curl.

Being just me is never enough.

That’s why I look ever outside.

Within my walls is a dark, blank hole

that is waiting for me to die.

inktuition black hole

(image courtesy of Kheat/freedigitalphotos.net)

 

in the grip of my saboteur

Posted on by inktuition
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inktuition ballerina

My saboteur grips his fist

around my waist

and shakes me.

I’m a ballerina to his giant,

his fingers and thumbs

all flesh and fear.

My head becomes his,

my voice his own,

with an added twist of rage.

As he flings me round

I’m dazed and thrown

his wrath has been uncaged.

What wakes him up

is a critical word,

a sigh, a lie, a frown.

He will crush what isn’t liked.

Work smashed, hopes burned,

darlings end up drowned.

He makes me collude

in destroying

all I have created.

Every rhyme, every verse,

every colourful phrase

he shreds until he’s sated.

My ballerina frills

are ripped and sad,

The dance is forever seated.

My pointes won’t twirl,

my spins won’t charm,

my life force feels defeated.

My saboteur thinks he’s saved me

from the shame

of mocking failure

But as I sit amidst the harm he’s done

I begin to wonder

what he’s there for.

(image courtesy of sattva/freedigitalphotos.net)