Freshly awake from feeling trapped in a dream
I drink Sleepytime tea in the dark and
Read an article perfectly summarizing the modern world of
Cluster B personality disorders - the underlying psychopathology
Now overtly on display in a world gone mad
It hits the proverbial nail on the head
But maybe that's the problem
I don't want to be a nail, nor even a needle
I want to be just fingers tying
Knots on a loom
Like in the old days around the fire
As stories and tall tales of Gods and Giants swirl
And so like everyone else
Stick my hammered, needled, knotted head
Deep in the proverbial sand
(10/25/23
Maybe I’m a child
Maybe I’m a kid
Maybe I don’t know what
psychopathology is.
But I have two eyes
And I have two ears
Believe it or not
I can see and hear
And I understand you
Even when you say I won’t.
You can’t underestimate me
Because I’m eight years old.
Maybe children are meant to be seen
And never ever heard.
But how can you find us
If we don’t say a word?
In an exercise of
Psychopathology
Students are told
To find
A safe place
And to go in
My home, your room
In the forest
Under a tree
A hidden cave
Quickly went out
My mind
Crippled and entered
Stayed there
Never ever again
Expected
Older and rumbly
White washed patches
Dirty big walls
Three sides secured me
The heavy iron door
Kept me watched
And locked by the big key
I was safe and slept
Shadows of inmates
Shaded in and out
I was called
To come slowly
Out of the place
Stepped to the door
Was not opened
The jailor or the guard
Was not near by
I was called
Come to the present
And to open my eyes
From closed of my eyes
Tears fell out
Hid it I in
Opened my eyes
Incredible sight
Mind in the cell
Broke the heart
Why did the mind
Go there for a safe
To escape from the death
That was the place
It was not my choice
Time gave the prize
Darken days and nights
Prolonged the life of death
Once in away
Flash back to the past
I am not allowed
To forget my pass
Udaya R. Tennakoon
found within the many
rather than the few
the hope of wrongdoing
(happenings which may have no explanation
worthy of the damage done
to self, to family, to friends
spontaneously aroused by
incessant turmoil whose cause
cannot be determined to be
any one person’s violent efforts
but instead must be linked to
a psychopathology of the
whole)
festers,
and with it comes actions
which have their base in something of a
common human horror
wanting “bad” things to happen to
“good” people
wanting “bad” things to happen to
“bad” people &
subsequently delighting when they
do.
this spiral seems to have no end &
the time spent swirling, orbiting the
eye of the hurricane,
is time wherein one watches & learns the hurt---
as one is hurt by another
one passes on that hurt to someone else,
because if it can happen to you
it can happen to me &
the whole while
our shells become harder
our punches become stronger
our premeditation becomes sharper &
our rate of success grows,
like we were all carrying
our own little voodoo dolls
wrapped up inside us
equating our own selfish greed
with that of terrible destruction
coming from our very hands.
Hay is threshed by the rotor blades,
Hay along with the arms,
Legs, and heads of the milking maids,
Down on the carrion farms.
Farmer Misogynist reaps his yield—
Satan nurtured the crop—
Psychopathology wet the field—
Whing! Now the rotor blade lops!
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.