Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Bipolar

You wrenched it away from me:
Shifty-eyed, Janus-faced brute,
To whom I spoke solemn vows,
To whom I pledged loyalty.

Inconstant, treacherous whore:
Thief of love, thief of life, thief -
Cutpurse, cutthroat, cut me down
Till my face faced the floor.

You ripped it away from me.
You left me nothing but you.
Alone with you I'm lonely;
Alone with you I'm rhymeless.

I stood upon Reason's bar
Amidst the deep of mourning
And watched the waters rise up.

Despair and doubt flooded me.
Sorrow rose above Reason,
Swirling in slow, sluggish turns.

Then I remembered that tree,
That strong hands created me,
And threw back my head and laughed.

And my laughter filled the world.

3 comments:

Jamie Dawn said...

Powerful poetry. That first one kinda scares me.

Unknown said...

Me too, Jamie. It seems a smidgeon on the angry side, if you ask me. It's funny because I just found these poems several days back and discovered I had written them on the same day. I'm not sure what the circumstances were surrounding them, but I imagine it was more of an exploration into emotion - specifically some of the emotions of anger and depression (and joy) that surrounded me at the time. In other words, I was still struggling profoundly through my unemployment, my firing, my self-worth, and my identity. I still do struggle through some of these issues, but the emotions sparked by the former struggles have dulled. The latter issues (self-worth and identity) still have their days - shoot I may have to do a whole post on this. : )

Anonymous said...

I've felt very similarly Scott--thanks for sharing your poetry. The beautiful thing about this post is that it shows how art can be used to respond to difficult things in life. Even in the midst of dealing with the junk of life, you were thinking about crafting something that was well-conceived and well-written. In the midst of some painful times, you were still creating, and creating with a high standard. I like that sort of juxtaposition--just in the act of writing poetry, you are rising above the "flood," or at least getting a few good, deep gulps of air.