POETRY

Living expressions of inner work. Offered as a glimpse of the process towards radical self-acceptance, healing, and growth.

Poetry, A Requiem Zachary Phillips Poetry, A Requiem Zachary Phillips

Seen Through Their Eyes

 

Seen through their eyes
my father’s shame
a new disguise.
Their questions,
first responded to by lies,
then by compromise,
and finally by a summarize
of all the things I despise.

Somehow they are surprised
to find me so compromised,
so paralyzed,
So utterly debilitized
with my inability to
sit analyzed
and scrutinized
and demoralized
and so clearly despised.

Of course they’ve taken offence
at my dropping of the pretense.
How could I have been so dense
to think they could handle my defense,
to think they’d want me to get off the fence,
to think they’d want my two cents?
Yes I’m intense.
Yes my pain presents as a nuisance.
Yes my demons are immense.
It’s common sense
All they see is my father in me.
How’s that for a recompense?

 
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Poetry, A Requiem Zachary Phillips Poetry, A Requiem Zachary Phillips

Moment

 

There is a moment that comes
Just before a lightening strike
When I notice an ever so slight shift
A constriction
A dropping
A sense of dread mixed with wonder

In that brief moment
I feel truly connected to the world
No longer merely observing it
No longer apart from it
But a part of it

It’s feels as if time stops
As if there is an eternity between that moment
And the flash
And the rumble
And the rain

It’s just one moment
But that one moment
Is enough

 
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Poetry, A Requiem Zachary Phillips Poetry, A Requiem Zachary Phillips

Panic Attack

 

You know what’s worse
Than feeling completely overwhelmed
By the mundanity of normal life?

The shame

The knowing
That I
Now must
Make plans to cope
With things most others thoughtlessly navigate

The knowing
That I
Now must
Choose between
The embarrassment of bailing
Or the embarrassment of failing

The knowing
That I
Now must
Accept
The fact that I am limited
That my desires will forever outstrip my capacity

All in order to survive
A crowd
A noise
A smell
A look
A word
A touch
A thought

Yes
Even a thought

My mind
In its infinite wisdom
Sometimes views the thoughts it itself creates
As so dangerous to its own existence
That it deems it appropriate
To shut itself down

The shame
The isolation
The confusion
The loneliness
The limitation
The fear
The inevitability
The holding back
The rumination
The depression

The shame

 
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