Judging my safety
Like collapsing sandcastles
Rough-built at high tide

Feeble foundations
Based on assumptions
Freak waves waiting

Only recently
I learnt that not everyone
Always feels afraid

Turn gently inward
To ask whether I’m okay
Quietly observe

The body holds the answers
Truer than the pliant mind

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

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

We've all heard the quote.
We all know it's about taking that risk.
to me, that risk is the note I wrote.
The 'goodbye' video on the disc.

That risk is actually taking that leap.
and some days I regret not doing it.
those days I dig into my emotions real deep.
But i'm glad I didn't commit.

Those days when you just can’t wait to go to bed.
Not to slump down onto it in yielding surrender
or fall into it in tears, face first and meat red,
but to gently pull back the pillowy quilt
and the sheets, with tiny blue flowers,
flannelette, like a fresh work shirt,
so that when you slide in carefully
and make your cave in the sheets
the hug is work-arm strong
and reminds you of soil
and wheelbarrows
and gardening
and building
in the sun
as it sets…
and rises…
open eyes
still hugged,
you stand lightly
then soft pad to warm,
dark, sweet, pitch-bitter
coffee, and lifting the mug,
you pause before the first sip
of bliss, flooding deep in waking
flavours from magic beans grown
in ancient Ethiopian forests, noticed
by folk when curious goats turned zestful,
becoming a helper for evening prayer, to allow
hard work and intentional presence to earn well
your tiredness, so that you just can’t wait to go to bed…