the mountain, self doubt

for Janet Mock

 

 

 

I am sure there are some, humans no doubt, who have overcome it. Yet of that group, thankfully

none were poets, save just a few who wore "breeches of brown doe skin". Who were bold enough

to knock loudly on the door of a protective father, to see a girl with long red hair. All the others (me included)

sit by windows or lake beds or in substance abuse clinics asking God whether self worth is a habit

you shake once you're hooked on it, a detritivore that feeds on decomposing organic matter

like poems of heartbreak written in blood; a trill you can put in your little hat with the other

patterns of castles, or chariots, or stars waiting patiently for the sweet fabric,

the quilt loves.

 

I woke this morning to what sounded like a real spring rain in July, hot as hallowness. Wide as

hypocrisy, feigned so tenderly but having such poor quality as to seem false. Or safe, which is

the way the spring rain makes me feel, but cold as the absence of good loving. Who writes a poem

about self doubt in bikini weather but a crazy man? The same man who locks the car door

then spends the next two hours shaking down the house for the keys. Forgetfulness, they say,

 

drains the past of bathos so all sudden strange things play a small part in what my mother  calls "good mornings". And are to be treated the way one does sunsets, so better felt

than praised, yet better praised than sounded out and it's funny how easily spring time

takes the lake,

 

calms the wounded into accepting

all convenient explanations. Every humility is not a damaged soul.

Not when hypothetical lovers can

take us through the night.

Reviews

[Cool Handless Luke]

I imagine this as something you woke up to in one of those "good mornings" that just had to be put to ink, as it were. Observations and perceptions flooding the senses from the heart and mine of someone who just exudes beautiful and quality work. I know it's good because I had to read it aloud. And when I find myself reading something and it just beckons to be given a voice and heard I know I am into something relevant and powerful even in it's seeming mental self-introspection. "asking god if self worth is a habit you shake once you're hooked on it...." There is power in your poetic voice my friend. May your toast always land butter side up!

[emmajoy]

Perhaps excessive heat crisps the edges of thought. Makes it more pronounced so that even self doubt - though fluently, imaginatively written. becomes focussed in some form of solution? Even the specks of living make it through the door, the lightness of rain, the ripple of paper bending.. tis part of the minor flaws and favours of being human, whatever, wherever. Perhaps?