Helpless Feeling: A Slam Poem
My heart is beating
Far too
Quickly I
Don’t have time to
Catch my breath.
I always forget this
Helpless feeling that
Takes over my
Entire being until this
Helpless feeling comes back.
Lungs inflating like an
Air mattress through a
Soggy paper straw.
I hope beyond all hope that
I’ll finally forget what this feels like.
That this will all become a
Distant memory
Captured by photographs
Left on yellowing pages
A memory nonetheless.
But I just
Can’t escape this
Helpless feeling because this
Helpless feeling is a tragic boomerang that
Always finds its way back no matter
How far I run.
It’s a game of cat and mouse
A maze I’m running to
Free myself of, only
I created the maze and I
Am the maze and if I
Can’t even finish the
Crossword in the
Saturday-morning newspaper
Over my
Soothing bowl of cornflakes
How am I ever going to solve this?
This is a riddle I
Never asked for.
Metaphors won’t
Get the poet out of this one.
I’m told ways to
Change the puzzle or
Use the puzzle or
Write about the puzzle and
Talk
About the puzzle but it’s
Really hard to
Talk about a puzzle when you
Are the puzzle and you
Kinda think you might
Hate the puzzle and
You would give anything
To just stop being a
Puzzle and
Be figured out already.
If you give something a name
Can you take that control back?
Because naming it doesn’t help my
Legs to shop shaking or my
Heart to stop aching it
Doesn’t help my
Eyes to see clearer or my
Smile to be wider.
A name doesn’t
Loosen the muscles in my chest
Twisting as if preparing for a
Game of double-dutch.
I honestly don’t think that
Voltaren is going to be able to
Fix this one.
I write poems so that I
Might be able to
Coax the air back
Into my lungs and the
Logic
Back into my mind but my
Thoughts are the muddled warble of the
Chickadees outside your
Window and the
Voice of a large crowd.
You told me that
Healing takes time but
I don’t know where to start.
By @ally_geist
#mentalillness #mentalhealth #poem #allygeist #poerty #poetry #writer #writing #heart #anxiety #depression
