HastyWords's Blog, page 18

DEVOURED BY BEATS

I love music. But I have to be careful with it. If I listen to sad music all day I’ll become sad. Angry music I’ll become angry. So why not always listen to happy music? Because you need balance. If you aren’t happy it could help or it could make you feel even more alone. Too much of anything can be harmful.

I know. I’m weird.

People who go through break ups invariably listen to break up songs. It feels like you have a comrade in arms. Someone going through it with you. You get the sense you are not alone.

I think depression , love, loneliness, anger, etc are the same. They all have songs. Songs that make you feel less alone.

I think there is a point though you have to be careful. A point where the music is no longer the fuel to connect but causes a type of disconnection from the world.

When I was depressed I started listening to songs that explained how I felt. They put words to feelings I had and I felt less alone. At first. There was a point where instead of helping me feel connected they made me feel more disconnected. More alone. More worthless. Because their voice WAS my voice. And there was no balance.

Words dance in the air

Music born of despair

Nothing more than fumes

A fairy Grimm burden

Waiting to be heard

Give me your weary

Your cut up and broken

Give me your holes

And the cracks untended

Give me your ghosts

Your transparent lonely

And we will dance

Until devoured

By the beats

Of another person’s soul

WHO HOLDS YOU UP

You’ve been seen as broken and vulnerable

As a burden, as emotional, as unreliable

As irrational, as unstable, as crazy

And all have been true… sometimes

But more often than not

And I mean far more often

You’ve been none of those things

People don’t see context

They don’t care about situation

They see you cry once you’re emotional

They see you pushed to the edge

Or see you barely hanging in

You’re weak and messy

They don’t see the manipulations

The gaslighting, the broken promises

They don’t see the blatant lies

Or the intentional inconsistencies

Meant to keep you off balance

They don’t see the wisdom you’ve gained

Or the growth to overcome

You’ll always be that person who once

Defined by past actions, grace withheld

The mess society has to endure

But you don’t have to listen

To take on their descriptions

You don’t have to prove yourself

Or to play in their puppet show

You can get up and breathe

You can work and play and dream

And be the good person

You consistently aim to be

And ask yourself

Who deserves your effort

Who holds you up

THE POINT OF NO POINT

I climbed so high

There were flags

I forgot mine

So nobody knew

Nobody actually cared

Why did I climb?

All that time

All that energy

All the effort and life

Climbing

For nothing but memory

And experience

And strength

And the passing of time

Onto the next mountain

More climbing I suppose

One step at a time

View after view

Until there is no life left

GOODNIGHT

There were olives in a bowl

Crickets outside the window

The dishwasher was washing

And my mind was ticking

To do lists making demands

Run on sentences colliding

Memories interrogated

Negotiating times and places

Thoughts flipping like pancakes

And emotions like cheese whiz

Melting under a big orange sun

I’m hungry and I’m tired

And the crickets are screaming

A monotonous bedtime song

THE EDGE OF NOTHING

I stepped away from the edge

I’d crept up to it for years

Wanting to jump or fly or vanish

I stopped wanting that at some point

But I still stood there… just in case

Sometimes the wind blows really hard

And I fear that wind

How it might do me in

And if it did whose fault would it be

The wind that does what wind does?

Or me for standing where danger lives?

I’ve known the answer

But that edge promotes itself

As freedom… as peace… as a way out

But it’s a liar. It’s a false advertiser.

It offers only a steep drop

And the end to what if

So at some point I turned away

Looked toward “what if” and took a chance

I’ll always be thankful for the chance

Even if it turns out I should have jumped

JURASSIC GRANDMOTHER’S LEFTOVERS

I inherited these genes from a dinosaur

A Jurassic holy Grandmother’s leftovers

Bile in my veins and worms in my brain

Scorched heels and a coat of lazy for days

Now my time is wasted in checkout lines

Decorated in eye rolls and smirks

I got a couple Snickers but they melted

From the heat of angry judgment

Fuck this. Stop the cargo. Let it all bleed.

As my 65 million year old 8-track screams

Blue colored ceramic swimming in the sink

When the sun falls low I’ll bury them

Next to a building old and broken

Next to concrete steps alive under vines

Then I’ll rest before I do it all again

I’ll let tornado anxieties swallow my day

Chasing the noise into NyQuil dreams

I’ll play a rotten tambourine into silk

And instead of a dinosaur I’ll be a spider

TRANSPARENCY

I can’t remember it

The hopeless struggle

The foul spirited dark

Nobody left to see

My sight in jeopardy

I can hear the speaking

Underneath the silence

In between the tugs

I can feel the pulls

Like thread through skin

Bloodless brutality

I am holding breath

I am purging

Transparent bodies

Curled up inside me

Thoughts like jellyfish

Stuck in the sand.

THE LASSO

The past is a cowboy with a lasso

It’s always the same

Sweet memories lead to sad ones

Lead to regret, lead to pain

Lead to what if’s and why’s

And then anger into depression

So I hide anchors in the present

Ways to thwart the lasso

Ways to fight back, to resist

The birds singing remind me of

The past slips in…

Waking up mornings…

Different time, different place

Anchor grabbed….

The birds are singing now

In this place

In this now

And they sound beautiful

And I am safe

I am stable

I am… in the present

Where I should be

COURTEOUS GOODWILL

I’ve had a few hard weeks. Sleep has been hard. My knee is kinda a wreck. I see hurting people everywhere and I hate that. I want the world to be healthier and happier. But sigh… it’s a naive hope.

It wasn’t too long ago though that I couldn’t see past my own pains. My own heartaches. My own traumas. I was too busy trying to stay alive not because the world was trying to kill me but because mental illness was.

I used to hit walls when I hurt. Burn myself. Drink too much. Take too much NyQuil. When I got sober I became healthier, steadier, calmer, more balanced. I say more because getting sober was just a first step.

I had worries and fears from unresolved traumas I didn’t even know I still had. Therapy helped. Writing helped. Finding new buddies helped.

Another thing that helped was giving myself the grace that I so freely give to other people.

Grace.

Courteous goodwill as a daily practice isn’t as easy as it sounds. Because consequences don’t always allow for it. But we can try. I think.

URGENT

Life won’t matter once it’s gone so it HAS to matter now.

I remember the exact moment it felt like everything in my life changed. It was like a strange shift. A falling through floors. As if destiny was reaching out urging me to take its hand. To be honest, that night was blurry as though I wasn’t in my right mind or had too much to drink. But I was sober. And I had the strangest sense of clarity as if what was about to happen was preordained.

I had an opportunity to become different than I was and I grabbed tight as gravity absorbed me into its belly and took me on a crazy ride before spitting me out… bruised and worn.

I’m not really superstitious. I don’t believe things happen for a reason. I believe we find reasons to move us in a direction that feels right. I believe we have the power to create good from bad.

I changed because life demanded it. I sought because my soul was burnt. Instead of standing still I’ve chosen to run forward fast and hard. Because I know a thing or two about loss. I know it hurts. I know it angers. I know it survives the physical passing and evolves very much like an invisible feeling that grows into action.

No matter where my life goes from here I know that such loss and heartbreak will only serve to carry me through the troubles of tomorrow. That I will be more complete in my wisdom because of those I’ve chosen to get to know. That life won’t matter much once it’s gone so it has to matter now because that’s what we have.