Why is it Repeating?

Time is not elapsing

Feels like I’m relapsing

Synapses misfiring

Cold sweat I’m perspiring

Dark thoughts are beckoning

Lost notes I’m reckoning

Defenses shattering

Self-doubts I’m battering

Neglect is defeating

Alone I’m retreating

Something keeps repeating…

Author’s Note: Sometimes you feel like you’re making progress, moving on from some things that made you feel sad. Then you can feel like you’re getting stuck, or even going backwards towards those feelings you wish you never had. It’s a strange thing, to not feel like you’re in control of your emotions, to feel sad and alone when you know you shouldn’t be feeling those things. Maybe you felt a need to talk to one specific person, but they were busy, and it somehow feels like the entire world has left you. This is about exploring those kinds of feelings.

Struggle

I spend each day

Trying to hold them at bay

Unwanted voices,

Chorus of despair,

Intonations of doubt,

Arias about abandonment.

They suggest a way out,

A way to leave all these

Painful trappings behind.

I deny them once more,

I cannot surrender,

Though the darkness may be

Omnipresent.

Focusing on my plight,

Is this my crucible?

Will I emerge on the other side

Enhanced alloy,

Or slag and soot?

For now all I know is

I will not surrender,

Another day beckons.

Author’s Note: This is a merging of two incomplete thoughts, one rather downtrodden and another more optimistic, both dealing with depression and the difficulties of overcoming it. It’s certainly quite a battle. These fragments suddenly felt as though they were two pieces from the same puzzle, so combining them felt quite cathartic indeed.

Is it a Gift?

My old life is
Crumbling,
Falling away.
Spent so long trying to replace
My lost companion,
But perhaps I am truly
Destined to be
Alone.
Could it be my knowledge of
Sadness,
Fear,
Frustration,
Heartbreak,
Loneliness,
Loss…
Is it a gift?
Some means to help others
Comprehend their challenges,
Overcome their troubles,
Whereas my own life,
My troubled existence,
Will never know
True peace?

Author’s Note: When things are changing in life and not in the way we want, sometimes we wonder if there’s some meaning hidden in all the unwanted experiences. These words are a few thoughts on that feeling.

Standing Up

For the first time in a long time,

I knew exactly where I was.

Not lost in the shrouded fog,

Which overtook me when you left.

Not dangling from the precipice,

Where I trapped myself searching for you.

Not adrift on harsher tides,

Within my own self-doubt and regret.

Not in the darkness of my own making,

But standing tall in the light.

Author’s Note: It was extremely foggy today where I live, which must have been part of the inspiration for this. I stood up from doing something else and this just started writing itself in my head, images of challenges in nature contrasted with some feelings of loss, but ending on that resolute note.

Sad Songs

Each song, every word

Reminders of lost lovers

Don’t hide it away

Author’s Note: I heard a few songs today that reminded me of people who had been and others who continue to be important in my life. Although using the word “lovers” fit better than that phrase… The final line is inspired by or perhaps a reaction to The Beatles’ song “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” as perhaps better outcomes can be reached in life when one does not hide love.

Drifting

Fewer words exchanged

Made up conversations crash

In silence, fears abound

Author’s Note: This is a quick result of a few thoughts on the fears and insecurities that can emerge when you start to hear less from the people you care about. You might imagine the conversations you’d like to have with them, but as life goes on perhaps you drift apart somewhat and those conversations don’t happen. The quiet brings with it fear of losing connections forever, but there might be chances that remain.

illusion

ever wonder if this life is an illusion

you’re the only real person in the world

all your hopes and dreams came true

but you can’t wake up to find them

no one knows the truth but you

and there is nothing you can do

to make the world match your inner sight

but one day… you hope it might

Author’s Note: Sometimes I wonder if this life is real, when unexpected things come up, whether they’re positive or negative. More often than seems plausible, I find myself thinking thoughts like “wouldn’t it be wild if XYZ happened to me” and then somehow that thing happens, as if I were the narrator of my own waking dreams. A couple lines of this were a fragment of an idea for a poem I had a while back, then recently I watched two Star Trek reruns that happened to feature scenarios where a character thought they were in the real world but it turned out that everything happening in the episode was an illusion. I made a connection back to this and finished it off.

Red Balloon

heart feels so heavy

pulling spirits down to earth

where’s my red balloon?

Author’s Note: This is a haiku I wrote when feeling down sometime back. I think the first line is kind of self-explanatory, like when you feel so sad it’s like you can’t even muster the energy to get up. At the time it also seemed like everything that might normally get my spirit rising was also getting held down with me. I once saw somewhere that one of the original aspects of haiku is the idea of having a juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated ideas, sort of an abrupt transition. The final line probably seems somewhat unrelated to the sadder feelings of the first two, although one might think a balloon could help (literally) lift someone’s spirits. In fact I had recently watched the Disney movie “Christopher Robin,” in which a red balloon was a rather important symbol. Both Christopher Robin’s childhood “friends” and his daughter held the balloon, which brought them such happiness and joy, but Christopher Robin was so mired in his unhappy life that he was completely unfazed by the balloon. Fortunately that changed in the end of the movie, so finding that metaphorical red balloon here would hopefully relieve the sadness expressed in the first two lines.

PS Apparently my notes on haiku are going to be much longer than the poems themselves!