by Lynne Barnes
Your mother was ill and away
when you were very little.
Did this mean that one of your
foundation beams was laid out as clay,
creating that listing psychic gait
that seems to have hobbled you
since toddlerhood?
Your early language threw darts
of defense against harm inside
your family’s nest of punishment
alternating with neglect.
You began sharpening knives
of revenge, destructiveness
back then, just to survive.
As you matured, you were mentored
by those who were traumatized like you.
Oh, if only your resilient spirit had been
gifted just a little more warmth
at your first hearth, perhaps your sense of
self-worth would not have become pea-sized,
inside and protected by, a hot air balloon.
Heated molecules of fear inflate
that bubble of space around your core.
Your borders are so thin and vulnerable
that you must strike first, slur people away
to feel safe, and your re-tells of conversations
all have others referring to you as sir.
You use loser, lowlife, liddle, lightweight,
for others. And for yourself you say
tremendous, perfect, winner, greatest,
and speak with clueless pride
that other humans kiss your ass.
You, dear sir, learned so early to strike first,
before anyone could breach your fragile border,
see the size of your ego infirmity,
but now, power has enriched, fused your childhood’s
uranium grains into a global nuclear cruelty.
We must fight, drain your power, disarm you whose wounds
block you from the language of human love and care.
As we face off we’re terrified, but also Sad!—witnessing
a fellow human walled off from the beauty of empathy as prayer.
Lynne Barnes is a retired psychiatric nurse and librarian who has lived in San Francisco since 1969. Her poetry memoir, Falling into Flowers (Blue Light Press, 2017) was a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Book Award.
