Your smile has no illumination,
no dancing twinkle draws the eyes.
What lies will you tell today, when someone
asks if everything is okay?
poem-preservation June 10, 2019
We need to be respectful
of tender psyches, mental illness,
all the agonies of existence.
We need to be respectful
of our own tenderness
and pained existence.
When being gentle of their tender troubles,
makes aches worse for ourselves,
who needs to respect whom?
Draw battle lines,
or at least find a bastion
against cries
calling you to your destruction,
dragging you to drown in the moat of their fragility.
Be respectful of your own precious sanity.
poem-wandering August 7, 2018
It is
It isn’t
Round and round
I can!
I can’t!
You do
You don’t
and trying
trying
trying
doesn’t make it easier
to pull your broken brain away
from turbulance
I don’t know you anymore
I don’t like you anymore
Loyalty keeps me doing
because I promised him
and you can’t help being broken
I know.
It is
It isn’t
Time ticks by
I try
I try
I try.
poem- looking October 5, 2017
I looked for you.
I peered deep into your eyes
searching.
You were not there,
the hollow globes blinked blankly,
soul flown,
arms embracing expectation
empty future.
I looked for you.
You were not there.
Tomorrow I will look
again.
poem-contemplating September 25, 2017
I’m wondering
about the tension between your eyes.
Those two deep, etched furrows
creased vertically above your nose
that appear when you smile
that tight lipped smile
below eyes that do not laugh.
You say,
you can’t help the furrows;
they happen every time,
and yet
look:
in the moments when your mouth is agape,
grinning widely,
when laughter is visible,
erupting from your face
see
the furrows are absent.
I wonder,
why you hold yourself back from laughter,
why your eyes show only tension,
that you plough into your forehead,
when you could be planting joy.
I wonder
what hurts.
I wonder
whether I can guide you back
to joy.
poem-cure May 26, 2017
The demons are hiding around corners
lurking in the shadows
watching you.
I know you feel the weight
of their gaze
hear the clink of their weapons
every day.
On the sunny days,
you outrun them
find smiles to return to those
around you
in their circles of care.
Other days,
smiles are barred growls,
the glow of sinister eyes pacing
around you,
squeezing life and hope
as their circle crushes in,
suffocating you.
Your demons on their unwitting backs
Your demons in their unwitting smiles
Your demons on their unwitting feet
Your demons in their expectations
Your incessant demons
invisible to others,
writhing,
circling,
just
there.
poem-just when May 25, 2017
Just when I think there’s been a change
Just when I think the brain’s been rearranged
Just when I think obstacles have been constrained
There’s a smash, crashing return to the old
The opening petals refuse to unfold
The rebirthing story will not be told
Just when I imagine, my hope’s short-changed.
Reality is bitterly cold.
My expectations are really what’s strange.
poem-point of view May 5, 2017
So often
what I think is a conversation about me
you think is a conversation about you.
My feelings
aren’t just feelings, they’re an attack.
But they’re not.
They belong to me
and they’re allowed to be
what they are.
I long for you to acknowledge
how I feel
what I wonder
what I want
isolated from your sense
of inadequacy.
I’m tired
tired
tired of your issue
always overshadowing
any of my concerns.
Mental illness
is annoyingly
narcissistic.
Please consider other points of view.
It isn’t always about you.
Really.
Sometimes it’s about me.
poem-valediction September 16, 2016
She wakes to the empty house
searching room by room for traces.
Has he gone?
But surely before such a journey
there would some formal leave taking?
A kiss?
A note?
He slipped away without a word,
and she is left bereft,
wondering why he finds it so easy to leave her,
wondering if she’s been devalued like Greek currency
or Bre-X stock.
No gold to mine after all.
Every couple crafts their own normal.
What’s familiar is what’s all right,
except when it’s not.
Being alone
Being lonely
There will always be too many cracks for
that broken pot to hold water;
it’s fine for bread,
though you
can’t live on bread alone.
Traces of something else,
gold veins of nourishment
are drawn with gestures
too easily forgotten,
so driving away is as simple a turning the key,
not as complicated as farewell.
poem-perhaps it is March 25, 2016
Perhaps it is
some sort of survivor’s guilt
that the fractured fragments
the twisted tableaux of warped memories
those bêtes noires barely contained within your brain,
burst in sullen silence, tremulous terror, or
most disturbing, that zombie calm
of a human automaton.
Perhaps it is
just chemistry asserting its superiority:
neuro-biology exposing itself
as a short-circuiting electric conduit
for daily conduct.
Perhaps it is
an allegory for transformation
or
perhaps it is
futility that demonstrates fallibility
and ultimately, profound humility.
Shawn L. Bird 