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Open Poetry #48
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Michael
Moderator
Member Rara Avis
since 1999-08-13
Posts 7666
California

0 posted 2013-11-02 01:19 AM



The Stand


...And so I vow to need no one,
On this I take my stand.
Still I can't help but wish someone
Out there could understand
The misery that spins my head
Leaves little room for thought,
As I lie on this empty bed
Of emotion untaught.

I can mimic love or happiness,
Yet feel nothing at all;
While alienation's the abyss
Through which I daily fall.
Well polished words— well practised smile,
The puppet playes his part.
A gleaming portrait of denial
Taken to a fine art.

I might swear I were narcissistic,
But can barely pronounce that;
With self-loathing too dramatic
To be under the same hat.
And I spurn all the attention
A narcissist might live for,
To cry of no intervention
As I slam another door!

And it daily feeds the riddle
Of the man that I've become;
Pendulum caught in the middle
Of insatiable and numb.
Too damned aware of all I've done—
Pain cause by my own hand;
And so I vow to need no one,
On this I take my stand!


Michael Anderson

© Copyright 2013 Michael Anderson - All Rights Reserved
Lori Grosser Rhoden
Member Patricius
since 2009-10-10
Posts 10202
Fair to middlin' of nowhere
1 posted 2013-11-02 09:20 AM


No man is an island, or so they say. And of those that you do not need, I wonder about the ones that might well need you...

Lori

Honeybunch
Member Rara Avis
since 2001-12-29
Posts 7115
South Africa
2 posted 2013-11-02 10:05 AM


"People need people".  Sometimes not a happy process to get to the point of knowing that but another's knowing is sadly not our own and ... the process awaits.  
paderewski
Member
since 2011-02-04
Posts 287
Louisiana, USA
3 posted 2013-11-02 04:26 PM


Oh I understand, Michael, I understand quite well. What you had once you didn't realize exactly what you'd had until you destroyed it all by yourself. You chastise yourself and take the blame completely, and NOW you understand what you had that you killed and it has eaten you alive. All the poetry, the "well polished words," have turned you inside out and you think you are putting yourself on an analysts' table and are dissecting what you have wrought. The thing you should do is dig deep and forgive yourself. You might say how can a man forgive himself. I know I said it one time. But the deal is you are not the same man you were back then, so if you aren't that same man then you can very well forgive the other man. Yes. You. Can. The healing will commence after you have made this decision.

~*~ Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes. ~*~

Gunslinger
Senior Member
since 1999-10-09
Posts 901
TX, USA
4 posted 2013-11-02 08:18 PM


Was line 8, verse 1 supposed to be "emotional onslaught", or am I super-imposing my own thoughts upon yours. Good pem, sir.
Michael
Moderator
Member Rara Avis
since 1999-08-13
Posts 7666
California
5 posted 2013-11-09 01:02 PM


Lori, wow... I could give a thousand replies to that comment, but I doubt any one of them could be truthfully justified.  I do recognize my children's need of me; but of course this poem wasn't inclusive of that type of relationship.  I just know the frustration I've experienced, and the heartache I've caused others over and over in my lack of feeling.  It's bitter to watch, and so for their sake, not mine; I choose to abstain.

Jer, it's more like what I always wanted to have— strove to have, but never really did though others were always more than willing to give it to me, and watching how it bled them of all the passions in life they once had in the process.  The more I think I care about someone, the more I know it's best for me to just walk the other way.

Honeybunch, and I gladly await it.  

Gunslinger, "emotional onslaught" would have been a much better line, and probably much easier understood by the masses, but alas, that is not what I was despairing over.  It's my utter inability to "feel" joy that I was referring to.  Try as I might for the whole of my life, it has eluded me.  Hoping I might grasp it if I mimicked other closely enough has proven a hapless fallacy.  So typically, my spectrum of feeling runs from emotional onslaught to feeling nothing at all, of which I gladly aspire to the former.

Michael

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