"Sit down," you say,
"Take off your hat."
It startles me,
your mentioning a hat.
"What hat? I never wear a hat."
And yet you seem to see it,
plain as day.
What is it, this alleged hat?
Is it a Carmen Miranda number,
riotous with fruit and flowers?
More likely some drab fedora,
worn shapeless with the years.
Is it this, then, once put on,
that shades me in its doubt,
and causes me to haul my shipwrecked self
from day to day
and more than anything to want
to rest the sadness finally enough?
Mirrorless,
I've felt its weight.
I've wondered what it was.
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Con Chapman
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Comments
and causes me to haul my shipwrecked self
from day to day..."
provokes thought! --rated-- (my last name is stetson[of course I love hats])
You are an incredible talent, and have captured so much of what I'm feeling this evening - what is it? Despair? Simple exhaustion? Better to call it a hat, really. I can take the damn thing off and stomp on it. Enough!
I do like your poetry.
Beautiful, moving.
I've wondered what it was."
Me too.
An unwitting gift from a loved one?
A going away present from school chums?
Perhaps you put it on a long time ago and forgot to take it off?
Does it go with today's clothes?
Perhaps you noticed it earlier and instead of going through the trouble of taking it off and doing your hair you popped in a flower and went on your way.
We all have hats it seems and if not there are plenty of people who will offer one. The question, as it always is in fashion and life is, "do you wear the hat or does the hat wear you?"
"and more than anything to want
to rest the sadness finally enough?"
(I SO want to rest the sadness finally enough. How? How? Please wrote a follow-up poem with instructions!)
There's some hope there though. You just MAY have the Carmen Miranda variety hat...you don't know. It could be a shape shifting hat.
Great job.
I think ...seriously....you have hit on a very good style here...
therapeutic poetry....think of how beautiful it could be...
but it wouldnt rival "shades me in its doubt...shipwrecked self"
waanting to rest that sadness
is not easy, though i did
mnanage to do it last weekend...it is like: pressed further down
on the emotional vibrancy transmitter....
which runs: fear.....always fear...but for
a purpose: to be perfect.
that's what we were made to be,
we seem to think,
not knowing that the perfection is in every detail of the inner and
outer life, the subjective & objective neatly
tied up in a new way of seeing,
new eyes, startle proof and
on the Prowl for Understanding
white hat, ha jim