The sound of Carol King’s Tapestry

fills the blue sweet room

and whilst I tell you that I am falling

asleep, that my eyes are feeling

the smarting torture of days

and the end of times,

you sit, cross-legged, but in readiness

for a career in psychotherapy on my

gnawed through and tender seat

and smile, the analyst is in, the twinge

of saying too much and being judged

in rocking horse silence… I ache

too much and I feel like I am being eaten,

devoured from the inside out and no one

is sorry, no one is safe from this wrath

of disintegrating bone; yet you sit

like the pal you are and silently evaluate me.

 

Am I mad, insane, Doctor wished futility

as they assured me I was over weight

with burden, smoked too much

on the fires they had created

and the exercise I preferred, that of thinking

was in no way helpful to keeping

the pain at bay.

If I am mad then I have lived amongst

the ashes of burning torture

and your eagerness to stoke the fires,

let them burn my skin, get to the bones

beneath and char them, for as my

teenage psychotherapist understands

and nods as she reclines in my chair;

I may not be well

but I at least value the scream

as it builds.

 

Ian D. Hall 2016