Poetry is the art form that most sincerely speaks to my life and heart. If I haven't written it yet, someone else has come very close, if not dead on. The first poem expresses pretty clearly how I've felt for the last year or so...if not longer. I've been in that place...
Symptom Recital
by Dorothy Parker
I do not like my state of mind;
I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn's recurrent light,
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the gentlest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I'd be arrested.
I am not sick, I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;
I do not like me anymore.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men.
I'm due to fall in love again.
The second poem describes where I have been the last week or so and where I am now...and where I am going.
Love After Love
by Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door,
in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread.
Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
I've always thought I needed romantic love, a boyfriend or husband, to make me whole and stable and happy. I don't know what took me so long to realize all that comes to me from romantic relationships is chaos and confusion...and wounds. When I'm involved with someone else, I tend to become like them...losing myself in them. So along with the other decisions I've made recently, the other changes I've been making, I'm also making a conscious decision to hold on to myself, to be me, regardless of who I am with. Art changes me too, but in a much gentler and uplifting manner. Either way, it's all part of the refining process.
I have only ever wanted to be two things. The first, I haven't had the opportunity to be. The second I haven't had the courage to pursue. My top career goal and desire in life is to be a wife and mother. Timing of that is not really up to me. My extremely close second is to be an artist. So here I am, taking steps to cultivate my artistic life.
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