Poetry is for suckers

...a position on which I will certainly back pedal later....


Change is hard.

That's one of those things that people say at the beginnings of self help books in order to prepare the reader for the fact that they might actually have to do some work. Like an insurance policy so they don't ask for their money back when, upon completing said book the readers aren't magically transformed into a beautiful butterfly.

I'm still in my chrysalis, scraping my way out.

Birth is painful.

For years I feel I have been laboring under some false idea of myself. In recent weeks, that idea has proven flimsy under scrutiny and, in the end, unsatisfying.

The catch here is seeing that a change needs to be made and then making it. It is one thing to recognise that I need not be so taken in by another's thoughts, moods, feelings...no matter how lovely they may sound. And quite a-sticky-wet-nother to do something about it.

A foal gets dropped out of its mother...bang! and then comes the falling down and getting up and falling down again. It's wet and effing cold and there is no real control.

Poetry is not necessarily just for suckers. But suckers who are slimy and falling down and getting back up again, should quit listening to some well meant knee jerk cooing (or even forceful, hard jawed rhetoric about pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps) from the sidelines.

Just concentrate on balance. One step. One step. Fall down. Get up. One step. One step. Fall down.

Hopefully I can take my own advice, as slimey and suckery as it may be.