oregonnerd: differing views

shadows

November 11, 2018 at 5:25 pm Leave a comment

shadows

i have addressed you
too often, unable
to not recall, scribbling

line upon line to
page upon page, knowing
they couldn’t be sent:

we parted some years
and miles away. you’ve
wintered, i suppose (i
don’t really know, haven’t

asked or cared to know)
with that same lover
successfully. But really,
it hardly matters:

though now and again
i must pen lines in your
name, to be discarded
or perched in some

dusty file: one grows
or one dies slowly. and
i have grown to know

all the shadows of
my self in the reflection
of the image i knew as you.

_________________________________________________

Yet another example of how I’ve openly hated myself since Vietnam.  And, it seems, every time I’ve ever ‘opened up’ [okay, so there are things that would ‘just have to be repeated’ and which you don’t say, aside from the fact there’s only one possible source and which galls like flesh worn raw in the summer and then burning from the sweat]–every time I have talked more than usual, there’s been immediate reason to regret it.

I don’t remember what her name was.  Perhaps it was [name redacted; she’s a devout Christian Reformed [Calvinist] matron who was merely a convenient excuse.  I found other people progressively more boring since second year of kindergarten except ones who were mainly non-academic.  It looks now like I should just have had more patience or even went to the wrong school.  But then I had the bad taste to acquire PTSD as well.

Entry filed under: Ancient Poetry, social psychology, voices. Tags: poetry from voices, shadows.