I have two internal measures
for the way that I behave;
a mental slave to personalities
conflicting through the day
and I particularly hate
when both collide
in times of stress,
one's a mess, the other’s message
slides under messy depressive
states of habit I’ve constructed
to survive and mime reality,
unrelenting muscle memory
devised from grooves in symmetry
through brain and grained gray matter
a pattern cyclically repeats
and I’m defeated just before
I get to stand on my own feet.

~kb