Colour-coded lists
with satisfying check marks
Tally for self-worth score
Free time is a dead wasteland
Work compulsion conquers all

Work is my savoir
Proof that I have use
Grateful for the gift
of structured daily toil

I don’t need a break
I am far too strong
I am made to stand
in any roaring storm

Endlessly on point
I cannot relax
Maybe I should take
a class in calming down

Another degree
Major in stillness
Minor in poems,
music, walks and gardens

What happens to me
While I do ‘leisure’?
What will I be worth
when I take time for me?

When days are rough at work, and heat is high
My self-esteem is carried by a role
To prove each working day that I am fine
And value comes from actions to assist
At frantic pace that slowly dents my soul

Beware when job and self strong-overlap
Identity is blank beyond my job
Then molehills swell to snowy mountain range
Allotments to sheep stations in my mind
And working day and night a sleeve-worn slog

Befogged in role, befuddled in self-worth
In muddled shame, obscured by guilt and fear
With added slow fatigue and hopelessness
And where do your needs end, and mine begin?
All rules of world and life become unclear

Learn to take time off
Negotiate with myself
New type of self-worth
Creative time, open field
Discovery nurtures all

Nightly whiskey flow
stains a white-walled childhood home
Parents seem blurry
Love and danger co-occur
Paroxysms of anger

In childhood there’s no room for shades of grey
It’s black or white, confusion sits unused
A place for everything and each in place
And I am in control and thus to blame
Come adulthood to show me I’m confused

So, consequences passed down like a gift
In genes and in behaviours left unchecked
To witness fights, hard falls, deep burns, and pain
The trauma transfer, second-hand ingrained
With love and anger, care and dark neglect

Then later roughly realise there was wrong
The blend of wrong and love is hard to hold
Most often see the child who fails at school
With low self-concept, guilt, hot shame, and fear
But all built strength and power left untold

Compensatory
change for homeostasis
Strong roles adopted
Scars deftly hidden
Chaos-order alchemy

I must be The Responsible One
Parentification at maximum pitch
A list-making, chore-running, stable-housemaster
A self-worth creator from jobs neatly done
All leisure-time wary and leadership-rich

I must be The Adjuster as well
Will follow directions and bounce from extremes
A dime-spinning, change-juggling, fresh puddle-jumper
Surprise and emergency make me excel
More calm at the edges than flat in-betweens

I must be The Calming Placater
Maintaining still waters whatever my price
A vigilant, change sensing, smoothing class helper
To people-please acts as a guilt-shame assuager
All pliable, social, and overly nice

Imperfect but strong
coping mechanisms forged
Power in order
Capable, dependable
Psyche shaped by survival

They always said
How much the little girl
Was like her daddy in
The way she stood
Walked 
Movements
Gestures
Cute when she was small

But the older she gets
The more she takes on
More serious aspects of
My strengths
My weaknesses.

Proud to see her
Strong personality
Flashbacks of my youth.
Strong-willed
Free in spirit
As a young deer
Kinking up its hind legs
In defiance of constriction.

A free spirit sees
No need for the fences
We build to contain it
To control our so-called
Base instincts.

In her my strengths are
Magnified
but oh
So are my weaknesses
My weaknesses magnified!

Looking at this
Living mirror of myself
Seems to
Magnify
Intensify
A normal father/daughter
Relationship.

I think I see clearly because
I think I know myself so well.
I chastise myself
I condemn my weaknesses
The mistakes I made in my youth.

I look down at me
She looks up to me.

They say she is
So much like her daddy
But she is much more.
Part mama
Part gran
Part grandma
A tapestry of traits
All formed in her
Along with what her social
Environments have
Sown in and reaped of her.

The teenager often sees the
Outward beauty of a
Model or movie star.
Someone is always
Better looking
Someone else always
Has more of something.

I try so hard to help her see
That this is so common
A feeling.
She is above all this
She is not run of the mill.
I know she knows this
Somewhere
Deep inside.

Time has proved
That I see more
Than what meets the eye
But this knowing
Holds possible dangers.
I can see ahead to
Warn her of trouble
But there are troubles
That she must endure.
Over-protection
Every caring parent knows
This pain.

I do not want to fail her
But distance seems to grow
Between us when
I monitor her progress
When I push and ****
To make her less like daddy.
She shouldn’t be like me
I have too many regrets.

In the night hours
I sometimes hear sounds
That I cannot distinguish.
I hear fluttering sounds
That I think are birds
Flying out of the trees
But in reality it is the wind
Blowing high
Through the pines.

I see shadows of strangers
Seeking mischief
Shining bright
Lights at the family tent
In the cold
Half-dream-state
Of the cold night
But reality says it is
The distortion of the campfire
Through the fabric of the tent.

I cannot always distinguish
Certain sights and sounds
At certain times
But time reveals what
They truly are.

But to bite the tongue
When I wish to scold
Out of season.
To stop focusing on our
Likenesses to the point
Where I cannot differentiate
Between what she used to be
And what I used to feel
And the individual soul
That my daughter is.

They always say how
much she is like her daddy.
Maybe daddy needs to change.

Sometimes we must move
Not shallow gym class work-mimicry
Empty choreography
Planned, timed, synchronised
Movement the purpose, fitness the goal
or health, or presentation
Important, worthy, needed
and yet, a slight, simplistic facsimile
of really moving

Sometimes we must move
Not gentle-stroll-incidental, ancillary activity
Perfect temperature
Sweat-less, shiver-less, comfortable
Sunshine the purpose, restoration the goal
or biophilia, or head-clearing
Cleansing, uplifting, lovely
and yet, orthogonal to the experience
of really moving

Sometimes we must move
For more than moving’s sake
Sincere reverberations
Changing, morphing, building
Action the purpose, elevation the goal
or processing, or releasing
Cathartic, detoxing, rejuvenating
in a way that leaves our world
different than before
we moved

When danger seems a looming steady state
Embrace the energy to scream and run
and channel into moving through the fear
Transmute to new found strength to persevere
To body-work at peak ‘til job is done

To push and pull, to dig, haul up, and scrub
Yield recompense for sweat and pulsing nerves
The world a little better than before
Clearer, cleaner, cared for, kept, and more
And you all terror-spent and panic-purged