Saturday, March 22, 2008

In Between the Dark & Light

In between the dark and light is fear.

numbing, crazy sensation that stems from an irrational place
it overwhelms you, drowns you in a mist of strangeness

yet in everything there must be balance,
so the lack of it explains the fear

in any moment of self-doubt or self-dislike,
the irrational culturedly phases in, in sharp pokes

and then again it is only a snap of the fingers away,
this difference of dark and light.

In between the dark and light is fear.

this fear creeps into the guilty part of yourself
and have you cry into the corners of your mind
wondering and alarmed, scattered and afraid.

if you could only calm that part of yourself down
you would be like anybody else,
safe, sheltered, unharmed
but are there such persons at all?

we are madly lost in the sorrows of war.
our primitive instinct creeping up like the way fear does
our inner groove lost in this deepening sorrow

where its safe and untouched by dirty hands
the inner city of tranquility and hereby:
excitement uncontained and quiet familiarity of the unknown
unknown no longer a source of fear (irration)

In between the dark and light is fear.

-Written between the slumbers and the cigarette cocktail-

6 comments:

X. Dell said...

I guess between cocktail and cigarette is the perfect spiritual place in which to write about life in the gray area, the shadow world of uncertainty that haunts us.

Fear, unfortunately, is one of the things we have in abundance these days. It's not good for us. Worst thn cigarettes.

BTW, I was reading your earlier post about movies, and I thought you might enjoy this essay by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer.

Unknown said...

Like x.dell said, sometimes writing between the cocktails and cigaretts is the perfect time to write down these thoughts. Fear is so restricting sometimes. Keeping us from chasing what we want and becoming who we want to be. Never let fear win out in the end.

Unknown said...

I was reading something recently, on fear... we are not our fear. If we step back and remember ourselves, we will remember that though we may feel fear and acknowledge it, we are not it. That detachment, I find, helps to return the balance.

goatman said...

You make it look so easy, writing this.
Seems that the gray areas are the trickiest with variations of the extremes.
I like your poem.

Anonymous said...

It can be hard to manage that space filled with fear...I think I used to run from it far too often. I try as best I can to work with it rather than run from it, or confront it directly...I think it can aid us on our journey, especially when writing.

Tracey

goatman said...

You have touched my heart yet again.
You know that our fellow Rumsfeld alluded to "unknown unknowns" as opposed to "known unknowns". But he is gone without taking his war with him.