Tag Archives: feelings

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

Some think they know her

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She is a beauty.

Full of humor, wit and sarcasm with

a laughing smile that compels you to

smile in return.

When she invites you in she holds you close to her heart.

Her passion enthralls you, her empathy calls to you.

But do you know her like I do?

Do you see her open wounds

laid plainly on the table for all to see,

for ever has she been an open book

Stories of many a woe wound through her

various lives and lands she has traveled.

Read her story. See her.

Think her veneer made of steel, impervious

to your blows, constant and unrelenting?

She is fragile as any other soul in this world.

What battle is so important to be won that you

would scourge the field of her feelings til nary a blade

of grass stands underfoot.

Be warned, she is but a calm tempest

held at bay on the horizon that you invite in

with your callous words you sling so blindly.

I fear you would not survive her storm.

by Philip Wardlow January 16th, 2023

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

The, I am Rights

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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.

by Philip Wardlow – August 2020

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

Unprocessed

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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.

by Philip Wardlow 2018

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

The Feels

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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.

 

 

By Philip Wardlow 2017