Vacant houses
Windows covered in paper
The bird no longer flies into the glass
Mistaking it for water
The purpose is clear,
Nature is not confused with what is here
The trees soar above wide open boughs and green
pumping oxygen into the air we breathe in
out
A woman taps into her phone
Her comrades are in similar preoccupation
One stares ahead
Longing for true conversation
A boat skims past
her eyes don’t move
Sunglasses drift down
She picks up her phone
And enters a world
bereft of meaning
*Trying to connect through bland posts, and careful texts. So much devastation in a sigh but no way in, to ask why. Friendships falter on rocks of assumption, the depths have become shallow. Habitual.
This is not the socially acceptable manner of my parent’s generation when everyone knew what the right platter was to bring to a party, and dresses matched in hem length. This is a different thing. There are no rules and yet everything is a rule. A mask, a reserve, an outpouring with no way to find the source of the leak.
If the bottle is uncorked the whole thing will blow.
So people quietly commit suicide by addiction and distraction.
Rather than be, just another platitude among many.
Now, more than at any other time in history, people are empowered to share their private pain, and secret shame, to seek help, connect with meaning. Still, anguish rots like acid soup in bowels, and guts as we watch others throw their lives on virtual placards and walls for the consumption of many. Comparison is more common than understanding. We are deafened by other people’s voices.
Yet we don’t hear them clearly, and cannot respond, as they are not delivered directly into our ears, but instead, via a medium which distributes and dilutes them to many platforms and channels.
Sharing more is not the answer
True connection is
It is not through the brain that our spirit lives. And certainly not the screen.
Our spirits leap when in the proximity of others, alight with laughter or touched and haunted by the perception of another person’s sadness, joined in camaraderie, united in purpose, restored in nature, sleeping peacefully with our special people, all safe and surrounding us.
So why do we bother to create anything of depth and meaning at all and then share it, such as with this blog?
So I went away for awhile
Perhaps I shouldn’t ask myself that question because it immediately stops me in my tracks and I don’t bother to be creative (other than journalling) with something I have written or am thinking about. The spark dies away and I go on with my day and don’t think in a way that inspires me anymore. I do normal things and slowly the beige trickles in from the margins. It becomes comfortable.
And comfort is corrosive to the creative spirit
I feel like my poetry both published and private over the last, almost decade, has been the ladder I constructed to climb out of a hole in which I had found myself. Then one day I found myself walking on the surface of my life, and I became very busy with it.
Poetry doesn’t always connect us with others but it never fails to connect me with myself. And other people’s words and stories don’t just connect me with them, but also, to something similar within my own experience. Which is to say – we are, despite our best intentions, sometimes very egocentric.
Communication, even when it is not shared with anyone other than yourself is cleansing, healing, and relieving. Sometimes we can’t define the difficult things, even to ourselves, so our soul reaches for a purple jacaranda flower, spiraling down against the backdrop of a clear blue sky. It sympathizes with the crushed bloom, the shedding tree, and finds a kindred spirit in the curious quirk of a lizard’s head. Almost as if the little reptile is listening. Somewhere in a head song of colliding metaphors, our situation is revealed more clearly, and we find consolation and resolution.
When things are going well we forget the importance of connection with self, others, nature, and the divine. Like a chain that anchors us to the nutrient-rich soil of our life – it is as necessary as water.
“My imagination is a monastery, and I am its monk”
John Keats
It’s good to see you back here. I was just thinking about you this week and wondered where you’d gone. Your post is very familiar to me and this right here is the reason I write. “Poetry doesn’t always connect us with others but it never fails to connect me with myself.” Connections with others never seem to last, but we always have ourselves.
Hi Michelle,
Lovely to hear from you. I often think of other writers I’ve met through WordPress, unfortunately last year was a year of disconnect to reconnect. It wasn’t down to my writing which I will always do, but rather, I can become too focused on blogging and the instant gratification of publishing every day, which impacts results in the real world. Hopefully this year I can proceed with a little more balance 😊
Well, I always love it when I find you here, and I hope you will find the balance you’re searching for. ❤️
I’m happy to see you back here. I enjoyed the poem and I agree that online connections aren’t the same as real life connections. Staring at a screen is a form of escape for many these days. However, like you also said poetry is often for us. It teaches us about ourselves, allows us to let go of certain emotional burdens or at least understand them better and it really does connect one with oneself.
Hi Pooja, I agree, poetry is the most personal sentiment we can both draw on for solace, as well as share with others, I love the way you described that process and it is certainly a wise teacher.
a sharp vignette of social isolation; yes, I find much solace and solidarity with my little tribe on WordPress, and the constant affirmation that blogging provides; not forgetting my other tribe, of course, family and friends; good to see you back 🙂
Thanks John, lovely to be back writing more often (and to a broader audience than my laptop) 😊
lol
Provocative!
Hi Monty 😊
🤗
So thought provoking and beautifully written.
Thanks Granny 😘
It’s always a pleasure to hear from you, Kate 🙂 So glad that you’re well <3 Great poetry has the power to change lives, even to uplift a country trapped in darkness.
Very true Rosaliene, and so lovely to hear from you, I hope you are well and still writing.
I’m still writing, but it has been a slow process.
we get where we are going in the end…If we keep going
So true.
Happy to read your comment earlier and your post here. Thank you, Kate. Your poem deserves a few readings to fully absorb the many layers of meaning and storytelling you’ve created. Bravo!
Thanks for taking the time to read my post Michelle, with so much online that can absorb our attention (not to mention offline), I truly appreciate it.
You are very welcome and thank you for the sincere gratitude. 🙏🏻
Devastating words, Kate, not only because they’re stark and evocative, but because they’re achingly true.
“suicide by addiction and distraction” stood out to me here. It takes really conscious effort to stop ourselves from allowing input in…. especially when we are gifted with opportunities for silence and reflection.
I’ve missed your reminders of such important things for all these months. Hoping to find more of it this year, though only with a frequency that’s healthy for you.
Welcome back 🙂.
Thankyou for that lovely welcome Yacoob. It’s nice to be back and I think, I hope, that I will be able to approach the blog with a little more balance this time round. Blogging can be a bit of an addiction too, something I had never thought about until I read “Hungry Ghosts” by Gabor Mate. I tend to be wary of anything I’m feeling obsessive about these days – it’s a sure sign I’m probably spending too much time out of the present moment. Difficult for the creative mind – we tend to be passionate about things and burn ourselves out.