Court Room of Resistance
Tight fingers of resistance
wrap around my heart,
obedient bailiffs,
following the commands
of a gavel pounding mind,
s squeezing, squeezing, squeezing.
I curl forward,
shoulders hunched up
towards my ears,
jaws and sweaty fists
clenched tight,
my shrinking form playing
the perfect victim
in the prosecutors argument. .
The jury gasps in pity.
The authoritative judge
reclaims the courtroom
of my experiencing,
c condemning,
in confident tones,
the events and imperfect beings
that flicker past.
as images on a video screen,
e marked, "Exhibit A,"
e
The "others" ,
who have been accused ,
of poking and prodding
at my insides with their own pain
call out their self-defense verdicts,
to no avail.
The judgment will be made
in little me's favour,
T Behind the closed doors of this courtroom,
h they and circumstance
will be found guilty.
Y Yet the sweet relief of justice
r refuses to touch me.
And instead,
with every "bad, wrong,
and shouldn't be"
I hear,
my heart,
shrivels and constricts
tighter, tighter, tighter,
until I can not breathe.
until just a slither of light,
a tiny breath of Life,
can flow through.
This rigged trial
is too much for
the part of "me"
that honors truth.
I must raise my hand
and let the jury know
that the only perpetuator here
is the resistant "me."
Those "others",
they are about to
condemn and sentence,
are just innocent players
in this game I play
against myself.
© Dale-Lyn, March, 2023
I worked a bit on this. Not sure why and am not sure if I did any good. I was just reminded of this poem and felt the need to come to it. Why? Woke up with the chest pain described in the poem and though I was half-hoping to pick up a shift today, I decided against it. I feel a bit weak. So I told myself a day off would be rejuvenating after the crisis my family faced recently. I even thought that maybe since my sister is back home and I am feeling so much relief there, I could just have a peaceful day to myself. As soon as that thought crossed my mind, I get a phone call with a request, more of an expectation, to go and help in a situation I was hoping to avoid....a situation I feel myself physically resisting. The chest pain, literally gets worse when I even think of it. I am having such a visceral reaction to this stressor. Man, I am a mess. I know the problem is not the situation and not the constant, chronic 24/7 demands for my physical and psychological presence it entails but this thought I keep dragging up, "This is all too much. This can't keep happening. I need a break and I am just not going to get it." The request, the thought, the sense of unending obligation to help fix a situation I have no power of fixing...is coming in, leading to a reaction that is so draining. I have been dealing with it...sometimes staying open...many more times closing...for many years but lately I hit a wall. Instead of staying open, I closed up tightly and continue to close up tightly in response to it. It is not the situation. It is me that is doing the closing. Why am I closing? Because I am resisting the chronic "what isness" of this situation...part of my mind is judging this as a "bad, wrong, shouldn't be..." I think it is the chronic nature of it, that is bothering me and this thought I have, "This doesn't have to be this way...if only she would take responsibility for the parts of her life she can control and let go of the rest." Well, again, I stress... it isn't the situation that is bothering me, I am bothering myself about it. I am bothering myself.
Well it is from this experience that this very imperfect poem came out. I could write a thousand critiques on it but I am not going to go there cuz it does say something important. I mean I could have skipped all the over writing and over kill and simply have said:
....the moment in front of you is not bothering you - you are bothering yourself about the moment in front of you.
Michael A. Singer, living untethered, ( New Harbinger/ Sounds True, 2022), page 25
Hmm! All is well
©
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