"When I am writing, I am trying to find out who I am…" –Maya Angelou
Nothing’s tighter than the air between us
Your anger wrapped around my throat
It’s not for me, yet everything
Revolves around the things that make you choke
The rest of us are merely traitors
Stupid bitches on the sidelines
Wish I could say you’re wrong, but
We simply walk the edge of all you despise.
I am caught up in the whirlwind
Of the storm surrounding me
Every word that goes unnoticed
All the cruel, unspoken things
There’s a thousand and one reasons
For me to set this anger free
Where it doesn’t mangle feelings
Destroying all but tragedy
Yet it’s made its home inside me
And it dances round me, writhing
And every thought is justifying
What I most want not to be.
I am deaf when you speak
Because all I hear is tension
And I am dumb when you judge me meek
Because some things aren’t worth the mention
I am cold because my heat
Has potential to cause harm
And if you think me chaff and you the wheat
Then why do you demand — and scorn — alarm?
Everything I try to write
Feels written somewhere before
And everything I think to do
Is the beginning of another war
Everything I almost hear
Bears the sound of slamming doors
And all the feelings we hold near
Are a poison making us its shores.
Everything that I should know
I know is something past my years
And everything that I could ask
I don’t believe is worth the tears
So everything that I could say
Rarely will I dare to whisper
And everything I must or may
Only comes out as a whimper.
It’s better than it was before:
Laughter drifts through open doors;
So why does my chest tighten,
And my heart so quickly frighten,
At every hint of sounds like slamming doors?
Is it my unpainted fears
On the wall, downstairs?
Or the memory of a child,
Imagination running wild,
Listening to the yelling coming from upstairs?
Is it a weakness that is beautiful?
Or a strength to shield my weary soul?
Or a laughter in my mind,
That says to treat in kind,
And insists that in the end, no one’s really saveable?
Or maybe it’s the path I choose
At the crossroads of lose-lose;
And maybe if I try enough
At the game of never giving up,
I’ll find that there’s a prize that even on that road, I cannot lose.
It reaches in with iron claws —
Can’t you feel the chill?
The constricting of their jaws,
And now my heart has had its fill.
The latter’s thick with certainty,
And shrunk like in the Grinch;
Two sizes too small for me,
Though it’s just fine in a pinch.
But I find that there’s a difference
Between a pinch and a need;
For when I need it now, for this,
I find all it does is bleed.
What is it that I hear?
Is it the TV through the wall?
Or is it yelling from upstairs,
The sound that I fear most of all?
Things are set in motion:
I expect another fight.
Will it sleep until tomorrow,
Or will it come to us tonight?
Writer In Retrospect 