As well as holding down a (professional) job, I also ‘work’ as a poet. I wrote this poem 6 years ago, about the process of crashing: that sudden overwhelming drop into depression. It isn’t even a case of ‘the higher you are the further there is to fall’. It doesn’t seem to work like that, does it? A crash is always what it is, whatever ‘speed’ you might have been travelling at at the time.
CRASH.
The bird asked me:
How does the crash happen?
I replied:
It begins as a subtle,
idiotic skimming of feathers
about my head
but builds to a blind
thrashing of wings
pulping my whole
body
contorting even the
pose I hold, sitting.
The tree asked me:
How does the crash develop?
I replied:
The wind pulls me
this way and
that; grows from a
rustle to an angry
mob. It
envelops my head:
speech, nerves and
movement
slow
-ing
each to an infant
crawl when swaddled.
The rain asked me:
How dark does it become?
I replied:
My whole being
fights to preserve itself:
I feel the ambivalence of
wanting to live yet
being almost unable
to countenance
survival. I wish for
the whole world to
hold me; to swaddle
me in a bright blanket
made up of atoms
drawn from life itself.
The baby asked me:
How do you grow?
I replied:
In this state I barely
exist: pain wracks my
entire body, neck to
toes, head to
tips of cold fingers.
I go on only
because it’s dictated in
my genes. My DNA
tortures me, tying me
to life in these
episodes of
string-bound
cloud.
I asked myself:
Will you always go on?
I replied:
I’ll fight. What
else can I do?
There was no reply
this time.
©2009
celtcoch 