When I was kid, I soaked up the world like a sponge, I lived and loved life like it was breathing into me, from building a fort, riding my bike, daydreaming on the grass while figuring out what was in the clouds, hiking in the woods with my brothers, making discovery upon discovery, with my family even when it was at its hardest. I felt it all, the joy, the anger, the rage, the sorrow, the fear all the certainties of a day. I felt it There was no ambiguity about it. I was in it and it was glorious! Head down, I strode forth into it. from school, to my first girlfriend, to lost girlfriends, to family dysfunction piling upon the pile that had already been there, to marriage, to birth, to divorce, to remarriage, to new joys, to new stresses. I road it all like a surfer catching a wave, I was cheered and revered at my feats of strength, my charms, and my worth at being such a great man. Somewhere along the way through all that I became afraid of reaching, feeling, seeing, breathing, knowing, discovering, engaging. I want that wonder back. A part of me won't venture there, for whatever fear that dwells in me sees it is a perilous path, a wish that is fraught with failures not wanting to be found I still love and notice the all seeming magic that is life, whether tangible in a kiss or a touch, or a breeze rushing over you at just the right time on a sunny day. I do still feel it but a majority of that magic has been muted perhaps forever more for me.
I have met them,
The, I am Rights,
They give you a sidelong
glance and a chuckle
as you present
the realness
of you and of them,
of feelings simply
felt with no malice.
Yet they seem to be
able not to respond
with a kind word, but
they instead double down
in their derision.
It’s as if they have
already made up
their mind of what they
will say before you
ever uttered a word.
I am sorry the world
broke you.
I am sorry life can’t
be a perfect scenario.
I am not your keeper
I can’t heal what is
broken in you.
That’s on you.
I can listen though, I can learn
I can open my own heart
So I in turn can
see the rights and wrongs
of it all in your world
and you can perhaps see mine
too.
I learned long ago
to bury my feelings in every
day life
the highs and the lows.
Why be happy when its just going to be
taken away in an instant.
And why show you are sad when you will
just bring every one down and they
really don’t care anyways.
So I smile. I joke.
I say I’m good, how about you,
to turn the conversation
away from me.
I have always been good at that.
But it builds in me
This tension.
Stresses of the day, anger at people, fears in life, continued failures.
I hold it.
I do much better inside when I let it out.
And I do.
Like reading a book, or watching a movie
I fall away from the world and I am just am.
Pushing my body in a work out, hard, really hard.
Having good sex, really good sex.
A good stiff drink.
Retreating.
But I’m working up to a better version of attack.
Talking to someone I trust to find
the feelings I can’t express or bring to
focus to what’s inside me that hides there even from me.
Like why I feel anxiety about seemingly stupid things I
shouldn’t.
Unresolved anger that I say doesn’t bother
me but does.
Why I fear a future I should love to imagine.
Hitting a punching bag helps,
riding my bike, free, unfettered
in the sun, in the wind
Away from the world.
Helps
But engaging really is the key.
I am releasing that need to
keep that wall sustained
I think it has hurt me way more
than it has ever helped
I want my melancholy to melt
I want my mind to connect
and my smile to flourish
in every possible way.
People either embrace the feels
or they fight against it.
Neither is wrong, and neither is
right.
It’s all just timing and circumstance.
Want or Need. Fight or Flight.
There is a glitch in us, for or
against, for whatever reason
we deem important in that slice
of time that it demands it of us.
We move mountains to attain it
or disengage from even the remoteness
of it happening in a flicker of an eyelash.
Fear and anxiety wells up within us
or an earnestness and compulsion
pulls us like a loadstone to the beautiful source
I have seen it in others…I have felt it from others
I have felt it in me.
You can do nothing to fight it.
Simple avoid or engage.
Yet, you need the feels in either aspect, in
the positive or the negative
in order to engage in life,
to be functional
You need that connection to the what-if
of the word or the now of it.
That connection no matter how
tenuous or deep meaning.
You choose your poison in the
dosage you yourself dole out.
I will choose my own and perhaps
we will in a future time
where both
our wills coincide.
Finally meet.
Ain't no rest for the Wicked - Philip Wardlow - The real and the sensual sides to life in all its facets.. 