Best Anxiety Poems
Anxiety (The Worst Noose In Town)
-- like flooding waters, creeping in
I count 30, seconds, holding my breath again
Drowning in agitation, overwhelmed by fear
I try to hide the pressure in hopes I don't pass out
My pores are soaked, from all the perspiration
I feel the pins and needles pushing in
My skin is ruined from all the peeling
At this point, I can't seem to win
Washed out by dead hope and desire
My soul is lost searching for a shore
leashing, grasping and ripping the chest wide
I count 40, seconds, once nausea can't be blocked
Everything about this moment is driving me mad,
I need to escape, however, my knees are too weak
I tremble while losing control to the emotional distress
My knuckles are pale, detached from reality,
wounds forced with further embarrassment.
Guaranteed failure surrounds my day
Numbness strikes my very essence - I can't move!
Lost in a room,
Therapy - even so I feel singled out
HAPPY VALENTINES (it can get the best of us)
---------------------------- love Linda
Dear anxiety
Nemesis to my reality,
mental manipulator of tentative trust,
massacring my once sagacious soul -
you cut me into a slice of loneliness.
The fault is in our thoughts,
so I am haunted by the things you never said.
You remain silent to society's subjective eyes,
but a glimpse of a poet's soul shivers,
to these vivid verses held by ghosts -
echoing a repetitive chorus in a cathedral of screams.
I'm an uninvited guest in an audience with you,
so I drink poison in every line I write about you.
These words burn my vocal chords,
but I swallow them anyway,
as my paper heart pumps onyx drops
crying through my veins to heartache's recital
of an infected celestial mind yearning for a remedy.
But life is a cupid cruelty in dulcet disguise,
when your heart is a sinister seashell,
oblivious to potions of omen brewed in pigments of pixie-dust.
You're an unwelcome melody to my mystic,
composing an internal deadly demeanour.
I am the ink stuck in your cage,
dissolving like acid in your controlled carnage,
confined to trembling bleeding intuitions,
lost in corridors of horrific obscure mirrors,
whilst paranoia palpitates in a whirling haze of
magnetic ice warmth, melting my sanity,
amidst crumbling stars that lure cavernous comets
of silver grief to pirouette above frozen seas draped with
a fluorescent creme of skies.
As oceanic tides of topaz rise and fall,
flatlined into pewter streams of emptiness.
The moon coruscates in coral blue lies,
passing through intractable phases of trepidation,
abandoning light in black tourmaline nights -
pivoting into a psychedelic trance.
Rainbows fade before we can embrace
their colorful showers drizzling jade jewels
that rhyme with kaleidoscopic kismet,
as life through rose coloured lenses turns
into a provisional poetic manifestation.
If only I could escape this self-inflicted dungeon,
but you pursue like a perpetual predator.
I'll forever expose your oppression through my poems,
confessing how I never asked for this enforced affair.
I know I'm my own storm, I'm my own calm -
I just hope this is the last time I write about you.
Upon the arc rises familiar visage of tenebrous dawn
As birdsongs protest, yet another day gone wrong,
In anguish of emptiness thrashing~ stygian, forlorn,
Screaming relentlessly of despondent, indignant void
Blasting his emotions, clasped in poignant thoughts.
Nothingness was the theme of his darkened night
That brazenly shrouded luminance of starlit skies,
As the waxing moon turned pallid, refusing to shine
And benevolence of Venus dolefully uttered a sigh
When dreams, too, acceded to nightmares’ assault.
Life has been a long journey, trekking hills of misery
In hollow pursuit of hope, always despaired trying~
Every forward step of progress unresponsive, lacking
To rescue him from oblivion, from gravity of abyss,
Where silence echoes fear, warning there is no exit.
He knows intimately, she too feels dread of anxiety:
Of ocean-storms unseasonably rushing summer heat,
Parching her delicate notions of blossoming spring,
Of harsh winters encroaching on her autumns fiercely;
Yet, she stands steadfastly, defying the curse of grief.
Prodding goodwill of divinity she tolls bells of harmony
Giving voice and meaning to life’s reassuring feelings
Clamoring for a day to brighten halo of their morning,
Demanding relief; with her clenched fists at the ready…
Forever, if it takes that long, to alter path of destiny.
December 20, 2021
Poem of the day on December 22, 2021
Placed 1st: Pick-A-Title, Vol 27 Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Edward Ibeh
Title: A Shout Into The Void
Her piercing eyes burn through paper-thin lies,
igniting fear as flames erupt inside.
And reluctantly, she breaks down and cries,
trying to salvage what's left of her pride.
She believed you both had found your soulmate,
and thus, never thought either heart would stray.
And she struggles with bouts of love and hate,
as she watches her dreams slipping away.
There's no such thing as an innocent flirt;
it's the first crack in a relationship.
And the lies that accompany it hurt,
causing the scales of happiness to tip.
Jealousy is an emotional dance
that stomps out flickering flames of romance.
The adoring crowd here at Red Rocks amphitheatre awaits. Tonight, like every night, I will go out there and give them my best. They will show their love by means of applause and whistles. When I am on the stage it's like being on top of the world. The adrenalin rushing through my veins gives me a high that is hard to explain. I am invincible, indestructible, free.
What the fans don't know is how terribly lonely I am. Each night, after the performance, I go back to my hotel room and try to drink the emptiness away. Food has become a loathsome thing to me. I starve myself to give them the look they crave, the stick-thin waif living the rock star life. I die a little after each show. How I abhor this life. And yet the fame addiction is too strong. I hate it and desire it all at once. To become comfortably numb before I enter dream world is the best I can hope for.
Well, I've just received my cue. Time to give them what they want. If only they could understand that what I really need is someone to hold my hand, to tell me everything will be okay, that I am loved whether I perform or not, that I am a good person, that I have worth just as I am. But for tonight, the show must go on. I am a puppet on a string. And they, the puppeteers.
playing the fame game
standing on top of the world
empty soulless life
"Fame has a tendency to destroy otherwise good people" - Me
Life is not as sweet as a bowl of golden glace cherries,
nor is there a golden illuminated future for a fruitless mind.
Trembling hands and gritted teeth disguise my disorderly brain,
feeling lost in the mist,
surrounded by drowned out voices.
Deceptive chanting charms plant everyday confusion,
with stalking emotions running through my mind's corridors,
carrying a voice that gives birth to eerie echoing funnels,
pumping frustrating thoughts deep into the depths of phobias.
My demeanour hides behind a canvass of mysteries.
a pure transfiguration, where compulsive obsession
takes possession of stalking my vulnerable affections.
There's too much repetition in the fluidity of periods and seasons,
as I lose this battle to control my will's strength of life.
I constantly wonder if the only place of victory,
to find peace,
is to slay silent intoxicating depths,
which desire to explore me.
But in reality despise me with conflicting contradictions unable
to stop my puzzled conscious suffocating from over analysing,
enslaving excessive dwellings from every aspect of my existence.
Life is not a jigsaw,
I do not have the energy to find every piece.
My soul's fine heaven is rimming with untold tales of nature,
but misjudged precious intentions result in distracted actions.
An angst which has no remedy as all scars remains unseen.
But my Fears are made into gems,
when alone with my nemesis,
an unwanted life long partner
feeding upon deranged dilemmas,
which keep my mind,
spiralling in circles of uncertainties.
When we search for answers from egotistic minds,
life is full of meaningless questions that lead us nowhere.
You sabotaged the sandman who brought me my dreams,
corrupting and confusing the clarity of my conscience.
In a world of betrayal, I thought you were my
saviour,
but your promises were sworn from a throne of lies -
where you perch as the king of false pretences.
Tired from being a victim of your insecurities,
I am not your mistake nor your abandoned
trauma.
Fate led my empathic sanity into your labyrinth of splintered hollowness,
confining me within a soulless sphere of unfair
madness,
yet, I still remember how you pledged to show me the moon -
falsehoods which led to an eternal eclipse for my eyes.
You stole the silver sewn with perfectly metered syllables,
calming the storm I carry in cacophonous silence,
but now, all I see is a megalomaniac monster, draped in rose tones of synthetic rhodolite, pretending to be an ivory dove in a horizon of vicious vultures,
hiding behind a decaying province of black petunias.
Your synthetic smile veils your cruel character, afraid that the vermilion you paint across your
sunsets,
will reveal the poison you fed my paralyzed soul.
My ink will always portray your true parasite persona,
about your attempts to assassinate my authentic aroma,
as now i blossom in meadows without your
toxic touch.
Hope, A Little Remained
She walked the creaking floors of the rat-infested room,
trying to remember what tragedy had sent her to this shabby place.
Her heart felt the desperate pains, that lost love sends in aching waves,
praying her sleeping infant does not wake and cry out from its feverish thirst.
He paced the cold cell, languishing in deep misery, heart shattered,
each step an eternity echoing curses, a testament to his broken pride.
Although thousands of miles apart, he felt her loss, never-ending sorrows,
dawn would come, priest would take his last confession, yet Hope remained.
7-03-2018
For Silent One's, eight lines of fate, when you wonder if it is too late.
My mind is a puzzle of cryptic metaphors.
whilst searching for my sanity,
I've become my own worst enemy.
In this cauldron of despair,
time is like sand in my hand -
an oxymoron poetic
paradox of cruel compassion.
Sadistic green eyes bring my demise,
as my sighs are captured by the wind,
slowly morphed into madness and travesty.
I sit alone on the throne of midnight illusions,
cursed by dark imaginations
lingering like mouldy air,
as vivid flashing images
engrave inkstained imprints.
Dripping lament from a
palette of black and white,
colouring in the emptiness of my sensitive soul.
In echoing whispers of weeping violins,
whimsical vibratos from wooden wind-chimes,
steadily orchestrate instrumental sonatas,
ringing through my strained metallic heart,
whilst I try to strum strangled strings,
harmonizing an inconsistent symphony of a tragedy.
Fate has me stranded within a monotonous loop of uncertainties,
for when twilight’s last breath piercingly eclipsed over
lyrical edges of my insomniac shadow,
it awoke restless beasts of nocturnal nights -
in nightmares I wondered does no one hear my screams?
i can see dazzling dusts of black diamonds,
drizzle manuscripts of maniac irony
translating dialects hidden behind unshed tears
that gleam like shooting stars,
as i sing mystical moonbeams,
sewn with silver sequins of euphonious memories on refrain,
chorused from nameless tunes of timeless tomorrows,
as the magic of the maestro,
residing in the highest bridge of sanguine skies,
guides these electric fears, trapped between
synchronized layers of my unsettled skin.
I'm tired from intangible tears in the mirror,
slowly sinking me in swirls of sorrow,
like a bruised creature
seeking shelter in a silk cocoon,
so this aurora's smile is no longer a masquerade.
I hunger for rays of sunlight to paint my skin
in a plethora of pastels,
so this golden bronze queen,
can once again glitter
in a crown of illuminating heartbeats.
While walking amongst an angry crowd,
trying to escape the turmoil surrounding me,
Hope appeared. I took her arm;
She guided me through the chaos.
In the sea of mayhem, we were separated, I lost sight of her.
Frantic and overwhelmed; dizzy with the shifting of the crowd,
a small opening appeared; I maneuvered my way towards it.
As I stumbled, the opening changed direction;
an exit pattern laid out before me.
Focusing on the exit, I realized I had not lost Hope,
she was clearing the way for me.
With the roar of the crowd behind me,
Hope and Peace stood before me.
Originally written: June 2016 for Paula Dyer after the tragic loss of her husband, John Dyer.
Date: Jan. 7, 2022 entered in Brian Strand Poetry Contest
Placed 1st in contest
Date: Feb. 3, 2022 entered in Hope Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Mohan Chutani
Placed 3rd in contest
When she dreams/ with Jennifer Noble
(It was a) different time...
a different world
Long ago she learned that..
trust can turn
(Everyone said) such a pretty girl...
Her porcelain skin so soft and new...
but...no one had a clue
Chorus
She still hides from the danger
and when she dreams she's far away...
In her mind...she's living in a better place
No one can take-
take away
Broken bags-treasures saved
I rushed on by but,
could not look away
I could not breathe- so surprised
saw my reflection-in the stories
in her eyes...and...I saw her shine
Chorus 2
She still hides from all the danger
and when she dreams she's far away...
In her mind, she's living, in a better place
no one can take-where she feels safe
She won't tell you her problems,
she won't do as she's told
Sometimes I go and sit beside her
and..watch her universe unfold
Bridge
Where the danger keeps replaying
in the...hollows of her mind
and I try to piece the pieces...
try to give her... some of mine
Chorus 3
We all keep our secrets silent
we walk faster -turn away
We're all looking for a better place
Where we can be
We can be seen...
Where we can dream
Original write February 21,2018
John Derek Hamilton and Jennifer Nobles
final revision January 15,2020
collaboration with Jennifer Nobles completed
March 15,2020
Running through the Black Forest of no tomorrows, my heart beats at warp speed as the hideous howls draw nearer. My thoughts briefly digress to the world I knew before. I had no time for God or religion. My only goals in life were self-centered and ambition oriented. O how I long to return to my yesterdays! I would change my ways and repent. This beast will surely end my life of todays and cast me into an abyss of eternal darkness and oblivion. Instinctively, I get down on my knees and pray, but alas, 'tis too late, too late. My executioner has come upon me. I bow my head and willingly submit to the inevitable.
Blood red moon tonight
Starry skies have disappeared
Apocalypse now
When anxious thoughts linger through a grey maze of silence,
I search for metaphors of hope in trembling twilight-
while ink refuses to bleed~ heart fights for balmy dreams.
Yet in darkness, like mauve stars sequined with cosmic dreams,
I find rhymes that serenade to the rhythm of silence,
and in dreariness, I draw twinkling faith from twilight.
My fears are tangled between threads of waning twilight,
as the fragility of mind mirrors misplaced dreams;
I've long been caged in a sanctuary of silence.
Silence is an art for angst, amidst dreams of twilight.
You look at me so uninviting;
I may have some missing teeth, stumble when I walk, bout' to FALL!!!
Stutter when I talk, but yet I'll still call;
Might smell like ole mothballs or mint or maybe even Old Spice;
You see me and you stare, you're looking at the patches of my skin YES! it's different (maybe diseased ) different;
different colors and wrinkled on my face, the gray in my hair;
Yes you still stand there and stare. . .
I may talk bout RCA, Philco record players you say "what's that;
I might talk bout Annie Oakley, BoZo the Clown, Captain Midnight, you say Whose that;
Well child let me tell you all...
Don't throw me away;
Cause I'm just like you;
Don't put me out cause I'm too slow;
You think I'm in the way and I can no longer grow;
Don't throw me away, place me in a rest/nursing home;
Don't put me away because you think I'm in the way;
I', senior don't talk bout me in front of me I don't understand a word you say;
I'm alive, I have more brain cells and I got all my memory, well;
That's more than I can, say for you huh-hey!
Imagine if I'd treated you such;
But I wouldn't cause I've got God's love in me so much. . .
Love you see
::::::::::::::::::::::::what?::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
So I just suck it up turn the other cheek;
I may tumble but I won't fall;
I may forget something's but not all;
And yes I still eat meat;
Cause I got all my teeth;
Remember your just trying to get where I am at now;
I'm a senior don't throw me away;
I'm telling you I'm history and I'm a part of God's glory wanna hear, come here;
Come here and sit down, I sit in a chair can hardly rise or go anywhere;
You see me and you stare I drive slow you begin to cuss and swear;
I won't do you ill;
I won't act like you will;
I'll take you today......
But I won't, I will NOT THROW YOU AWAY
Dedicated to all Gods people's 60 years of age to 100 years
Thank you for your wisdom, thank you for your life. . .
Written by James Edward Lee Sr. July 6 2015©
For the book Poetry to Bridge Generations University Of Nebraska at Omaha 2015©
This poem also found in 2020 POETRY SOUP BOOK:." PS: IT'S POETRY A BRILLIANT POETRY ANTHOLOGY"
Wellness and worry are by no means friends.
To be well, your mind of worry you must cleanse.
Living with worry, there’s a price to pay
worry will kill you if you let it stay.
If you want to enjoy physical health,
beware of worry it creeps up by stealth
then causes your nervous system to stress,
and in time, you’ll be a physical mess.
Worry also affects your mental health.
Its effects can creep up on you by stealth.
Worrying can lead to anxiety
which makes you withdraw from society.
Worry can steal your emotional health
Like a cat it moves in silence and stealth.
It gnaws on your joy, making you feel sad.
Before you know it, everything seems bad.
Worry can ruin spiritual health.
The crafty old lion stalks you in stealth.
He tempts you to doubt and distrust your God.
Before you know it, your life he has clawed.
Worry is a thief; he is after your health.
Give him a chance and he’ll steal your wealth.
When worry shows up, don't open the door.
Trust God instead, and feel your spirit soar.