Pets on Leashes Near the Custom House Quay
He licks floors sticky. Newspaper ink bleeding into a piddle puddle. Gibberish people talk at blooming volumes. He leans up the quay so his collar’s tags jiggle like Mr. New Bone.
He isn’t the only one here who wants to pluck a pigeon off the street, feel its kibble-y heart flutter under the city-gray feathers and snap its willow neck while he projects his personal feeling of panic into its black eyes.
In the dawn-ish fog along the Liffey, Dublin is a cloud city. Floating. A hermetically sealed pocket atmosphere that condensated concrete, wrought iron fencing and yellow buses shortly after this sky-born mass of water vapor abandoned gravity in an attempt to blot out the sun.
He hopes we are in the sky so he can justify this sense of falling. And so when we do come plummeting globeward, like a damp newspaper, the destruction will be so total that the Dionysus statue reverts to gravel in his stainless steel bowl.
Anxiety
The pit of my stomach has twisted into a soft pretzel flavored with the salt of my tears. Shaking, I know, it's "no biggy" right? Just a thing. Ain't nothing but a thing- but it's everything. This could change things. My breathing is irregular, my heartbeat following the wrong tempo, my mind whirling, my mind swirling, my mind twirling around a fence of gated feelings, I'm crying. Breathe. God, breathe. Okay. It's okay. It's not okay. I'm not okay. I'm going to be sick; I grip my sides with unheeded force. Someone hold me, someone do something, give me a pill, something. Please. Please. Please.
Worry
The twitching lure is upstream,
Never to be reached.
The current is stark,
Red eyes stinging,
Dry throat closing,
Twisted face wet,
Drowning above water,
The childish splashing of one who's
Dull enough to think they're moving.
There's nothing to be done for it so,
Claw at arms, legs, face, rip the flesh,
Useless things anyways.
A Version of Fear
The fear that you will fail
The fear of rejection
The fear of leaping over the rail
Into unknown land
Afraid that when the ship sails
You'll wish you had
Vulnerability
Keeps us afraid of the result
Worry brings us to a halt
Making a decision?
Thoughtfully considered
Mistakes crushing our ambition
Over-analyzed?
Of course it is
Faith keeps you alive
Living and not just existing
Hoping it works out
Getting rid of all doubt
And in the end we say
"I don't know what I was so worried about,"
Because I can’t stop.
My mind buzzes,
the voices in my head
mixes with the outside world
I gasp at the scenarios occurring
within my mind as my imagination
run wild.
The possibilities raged within me
as I try to stay positive.
The telephone rings
My heart thumps out of my chest,
beating in my ears; thud! thump!
i am quite worried
in the back of my head
a black little ball
maybe not a ball, but a mass
it grows
like a tumor
it's a thought
and it's a feeling
but it's also kind of empty
it has no substance and it has no meaning
but it is endless
i wish it could be eradicated
like some disease
but instead it grows
in my head
finally it is so big it ends up in my belly
it's funny, this thing
it's like a big bunch of emptiness
but you can't feel "empty"
empty isn't an emotion
but this thing is empty
and i can't stop feeling it
i don't know what it is
or why it's there
but it won't leave, and it never does
it touches me from my head to my toes
this big, black mass
i think i'm empty
but, still, somehow i'm full
it's funny
the way i'm full of nothing
disregarded.
worry.
it feels like death.
like butchery, like annihilation, like a massacre.
it feels like gut wrenching diarrhea,
why wont they call back?
"he has 12 hours to live."
it sounds like, an all caps message, "Carrington, brady killed himself."
it feels like choking, like suicide, suicide, it feels like leaving, it feels like loneliness, it feels like they left.
it feels like your own breath in the back your neck, like gentle hands slapping you across the face, hard enough to knock you out.
it feels like pissing yourself in public,
like the dreaded "i have to talk to you."
it feels like that time you slit your wrists too deep, when you found every chair in your house stacked in the middle of your kitchen, when you got home and found the house empty.
it feels like giving up.
like the air has been sucked from your lungs.
it feels like 7 different antidepressants.
it is undeniable, and it is scary.its what it feels like to lose everything you've ever cared about in a matter of seconds.
Worry is weight.
It is the thing tugging at your gut to let you know
"You're not fine".
Worry is a lead dumbbell that grows heavier with every waking moment.
Worry eats away at you until you're in shaking shambles.
Worry can and will make you its own.
For some, Worry comes every once in awhile.
They are merely acquainted with Worry.
For others, Worry has overstayed its welcome.
A form
Cosmic misbehaviour.
Or is it me
Misbehaving
against nature.
Or is nature itself
Misbehaving.
Or that actor on TV
Tom Cruise
Misbehaving.
Is it a sin to die?
Or is death
Misbehaving.
Lend me your carriage
To see
Who the hell is
Misbehaving
this harmonic chaos.
Maybe its my words
constantly
Misbehaving
my thoughts.
Or that lyricist
in constant agony.
Maybe its an evangelical
passage
misbehaving.
So once again
reader
what time is it?