an examined life
We tell stories to ourselves
to make sense of our lives.
The irony is those tales are
a work of fiction.
Hidden meanings behind
our most baffling behaviour?
More like moulding putty
a sphere to fit the shape
of a stretched narrative
for any casual viewer to accept.
My own self-examination
constructs statement scaffolding
sharp edges ripping into my chest
with a visceral immediacy and possession
as if there was no flesh or bone
to penetrate at all.
Purging pain into puzzle pieces,
words to silence the emotions.
Flat out denial of punctured psyches
of fractured losses.
Mistakes made in youth
recycle and replay.
The niggling doubts the story remains the same
even with the passage of time and experience.
Self-sabotage?
Rinse. Repeat.
Hiding who we believe we are.
Fearing if we are seen
a flawed measure of our true self
we would be judged as dirty
damaged and broken.
Unlovable.
But find a person who does not see
themselves as defective,
this will be the unicorn discovered
and finally proven to be real.
Waiting, anxious, wanting to change.
Standing around — for what?
Slow to seek and embrace.
Converting setbacks to opportunities.
Delicate tortoise baby-steps when a
rabbit racing persona is needed
to set ablaze fires from floating embers.
Razed for surging heat.
Instead of being something lost,
someone forgotten.
A heaving breast of disinterest
stretches of time spent alone.
Days when I long for the silence.
Days lost and completely adrift.
Glimpses of happiness and sadness
wrapped together in one neat bow.
There but not. Absent.
Clocks ticking, activity swirling.
Happening
with or without me.
Let the past go.
Live in the moment.
Really connect.
With this minute in time.
A holiday without a camera
with some way of medicinally preventing
any memory past or present
from holding me back
from doing whatever
I might choose to do.
What would my life be
if I lived outside of myself?
Cut the invisible strings of the past.
The chords that bind me tight.
Whether to dream,
or to lie awake
somewhere to someone
the museum of my thoughts
will take an infinite time
to crumble to dust.
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