"compartmentalizing" poems
My Heart and Mind had a discussion one day,
About a man that they both knew quite well.
The heated discussion continued for hours,
Both with arguments meant to compel.
A debate ensued between the two,
With each taking a different perspective.
The Heart believed the man to be true,
And the Mind thought he was deceptive.
Heart started the discussion with an obvious point,
"He is sweet and gentle like no man before."
Mind responded smugly, "That's great in the moment
but how does he act after she's walked out the door?"
Heart countered, already knowing the point being made.
"Sure, he may not be able to write or call;
He is busy with constant demands of his time.
What he feels in his heart matters most of all."
"I disagree," and Mind continued to say,
"Actions mean far more than words alone.
It is when words and actions are considered together
that a man's true feelings are shown."
"He has to compartmentalize to get through the day."
Heart continued to defend his intentions,
When they are together his feelings are real,
but her insecurities span many dimensions."
"It's funny you would mention compartmentalizing.
Apparently your memory isn't as sharp as mine,
He was once quoted as saying this was not his strength,
proof that his statements don't always align."
"You are cynical, suspicious and guarded."
Heart was clearly tired of this dispute,
"Those traits are clouding your judgement.
He is genuine and telling the truth."
"I think you are overlooking the obvious but
I'll relax and stop doubting his intentions
if he makes an effort to send a simple sign."
Heart and Mind both wanting to prove their point
and have the bragging rights of superiority.
Mind sure that the man would disappoint her;
Heart confident in his genuine sincerity.
Both waited patiently for some type of gesture,
Something to demonstrate that he really does care.
Heart began to worry and whispered to herself,
"Stay calm and trust that it's not just another affair."
Patience prevailed and an email arrived,
just as Heart had hoped and prayed.
Mind, although disappointed by being proved wrong,
was relieved and no longer afraid.
Trust and calm filled her spirit when thinking of him,
but it was both that won in the end.
Maybe they were more than temporary lovers
and could also be permanent friends.
Dec 30, 2012
Dec 30, 2012 at 10:45 AM UTC
Teasing the beast
Looking for a feast
Hounds barking at our ears
Vultures flying up ahead
Circling a bald eagle's fresh corpse
Compartmentalizing symptom after symptom
To hide the great systematic sickness
Labeling the suffering, outcome from desire
We, wholeheartedly accepting being
Appropriated, labeled, discarded
As construing our own oppression and sadness
Enduring the **** of our minds
Being castrated of our consciousness
Before we reap the products
Of its bold liberation and grandness
Its the belly of the beast
And its hungry
Insatiable, amoral entrails
Hoping to salvage a feast
From the casualties of d(e)moc(ratic) wars
Hoping we feed our monstrous fear
Thirsting for the greed
Dripping off of accumulating wealths
Impatiently waiting, we keep parceling out grudges
Disfiguring our minds, our souls, and our bodies
Its misanthropic nature lashes out without conscience
Knowing we'll never realize we are masses
Disappearing the individuals who realize their suffering
Ensuring there's no collective opposition or action
Trying to reassure we are weak
Knowing at some point or another
We all act mute, deaf, and blind when anyone experiences:
Oppression
Pain
Silencing
****
Hunger
Fear
Violence
Repression
Retaliation
Discrimination
Torture
Negation
Alienation
All forms of mental, psychological, physical, and spiritual mutilation
Fearing death more than fighting for necessary abolishment
Preferring to live out our veiled miseries
Endorsing their continuance
Instead of risking our lives for everyone's liberation
Always ensuring the feast of the beast
By its very efforts trying to decree our very human nature
Ingraining greed, fear, animosity, and weakness as if inherent of us
All parts of its most damaging weapon: the seed of discord
Its implantation, a socialized deep desire for self-preservation
Sheep bleating painfully toward our ears
Vultures flying up ahead
Circling a bald eagle's fresh corpse
Signifying the impending recapturing
Of our true transformative desires
May 4, 2013
May 4, 2013 at 11:30 PM UTC
I watch the candle burning
The flame flickering
Pushing my hand into its midst
I feel the curious strength of something
That doesn't quite seem to exist
Evanescing, casting shapeless silhouettes
So powerful
It deteriorates that which surrounds it
Simultaneously essential
And malevolently destructive
I like to feel the heat of the wax
Dripping on my finger tips
As I grip it tightly
Pain is only a byproduct of sensitivity
Of which we can never have
In too small a quantity
I'd rather feel the pain
Watching the beads roll down my arm
Than lose that strength
In compartmentalizing
And someday you'll find me
Not burnt, not melted, but
Dancing like a shadow on the wall
Mar 3, 2010
Mar 3, 2010 at 3:07 PM UTC
It's common knowledge that after getting a phone number,
one must wait three whole days before giving a call,
to make sure the interaction remains calculatedly casual,
as opposed to needy or uninterested,
which is complete cupid ****
It's appalling that one's intense desire to contact an individual one is drawn to,
is not seen as a mere gesture of sentiment or affection,
but rather weakness and vulnerability.
Even in the darkest and drunkest hours
there will be no super likes,
for no one can afford to wear the heart on their sleeves,
in this world of left and right swipes.
The chase is so overrated not only does it never end,
but also overlooks the catch even when it's finally caught.
True feelings disguised by emojis concentrated into 140 characters
ridicule the ideology of love and romance,
when really we're nostalgic of the times,
we once murmured into brick sized cordless phones at wee hours in the morning,
"you hang up... nooo you hang up first..."
When did meeting the parents not become meeting the parents,
but rather the quick show of another chick to flaunt how well life is going at the moment?
When did compartmentalizing life mean pursuing romantic relationships over the weekends only?
When did to love, to want, to need, to show affection become such girly things,
those who are engulfed by romantic comedies and sensitivity did?
All I really want is to call you and tell you how much I miss you,
and just listen to you breath even if you don't have anything to say.
But, I guess I'll just wait for you to whatsapp me sometime during the weekend...
Jul 27, 2016
Jul 27, 2016 at 3:02 PM UTC
I'm crazy.
Psychotic, mildly schizophrenic.
Bipolar, severely depressed.
But you like it.
You're sane.
Mormonly sane, rational.
Controlled, compartmentalizing.
But I hate it.
Jul 25, 2011
Jul 25, 2011 at 2:39 PM UTC
You break me like a toothpick
And hide all your insecurities away
But I can see them
When your eyes water
And teeth chatter from the cold
You control everything
Including me
But what you don't know
Is I wish you could just see me
As a person
And stop compartmentalizing
Feb 1, 2015
Feb 1, 2015 at 6:49 AM UTC
Hello’s are comfortable
In a world where awkward is
dreaded, avoided desperately
Goodbye’s are imminent.
The closure concept
never fails satisfaction
When will the colloquialisms
universally celebrated,
contradict the least sought
after desires of humanity?
Our relationships are divided
by stoppages in play.
With swift waves of hands
of fingers,
compartmentalizing nothing,
on a cluttered desk.
Where was my hello?
Apr 20, 2011
Apr 20, 2011 at 1:28 PM UTC
I'm seeing you tonight
And it's been quite a while
Four days to be exact
I remember a time when
It drove us crazy
To not see each other most days
I act like I don't care
Sometimes it feels like I don't
But I feel the sadness looming over me
How can I not when
I know I want to see you more?
Life isn't that easy though
It's best not to feel
Not to care
A self-protective coping mechanism
That lets me function as human again
I'm nervous to see you
I don't know how I'll feel and
If I really am compartmentalizing
I know it doesn't hold up
When I'm laying next to you
I don't want to want you this much
I still want to be with you though
Just not so invested
It's unsafe
It's uncontrollable
And as someone who needs to feel
A variation of both of those
I'm terrified that seeing you
Will destroy these walls I've built
Until I'm left with nothing but
Myself
and
My feelings
Mar 29, 2018
Mar 29, 2018 at 2:56 PM UTC
I'm compartmentalizing my thoughts and delivering them to you on my tongue. Gift wrapped in a silver metallic paper, with a tiny pink bow on top that bounces jubilantly with every step I take. Waiting to be opened and heard, the gift sits on my tongue.
Sometimes no ears are lent so I swallow the thought and redigest it. It falls into the black and finds itself trapped back in my head. It ricochets from wall to wall, eager to be released.
One day I found out no one wants to listen.
So I bottle it all up, and the thoughts start getting crowded. I become scatter brained, my head hectic with inmates, jailed without a crime. They riot, burning me out each time. My head sizzles like road **** in the heavy heat.
It's time for a jailbreak!
I pick up a pen and release the inmates into my veins. They pump through me and fill me with life, violently pounding their way through my fatal heart. Once I channel their energy, they flow out my fingers, into the ink and onto the paper.
They bleed as they're released, finally free,
singing the song of a man compartmentalizing his thoughts.
Apr 10, 2018
Apr 10, 2018 at 9:53 PM UTC
my grace is cherubic,
seraphic, angelic,
she is a temple built
upon skepticism.
my boy wears a sloth-suit
and is swept away by even
the weakest rapids after
dipping only his pinky toe.
my grace is a hefty FAFSA award,
and she is report card dinners,
a new-blue honda, a heartbreak,
she is coming home to do laundry.
my boy is a defect, anomalous,
he cannot bide his time and so
rushes. i chase him to the city
limits and hope he'll get it right.
my grace is building strength,
compartmentalizing, sequencing,
she is careening into career
and coping/moping with loss.
my boy is behind, he's lazy.
he shirks, avoids, evades,
any escape, any port, no storm,
he has to bring something else,
he only sits with us when he
wants something. he spends
time with us when it serves
his agenda, his procrastination,
he likes men; he's abnormal,
he has to bring something
extra to the table or else
it will reflect badly on me.
i never went to college.
i rarely did my homework,
so my daughter, son, my wife,
they bear the brunt of my avoidance.
my grace breaks down while
student-teaching. i love her.
my boy aces econ test after
physics quiz. i tolerate him.
Mar 29, 2015
Mar 29, 2015 at 12:09 PM UTC
Today I was in the middle of something when I had a fleeting thought of what it would me like if you were here. I immediately stopped what I was doing to let myself daydream of you. So rarely do I let my mind drift to this that I thought it would be a little reward for being so good and compartmentalizing so well.
So I thought of you. I thought of the joke you would make about my handwriting. I thought about where your hand would be on my thigh. I thought about the laugh lines around your eyes that would come out when you smiled at my smile. I thought about it all.
But while I wasn’t paying attention, my mind went out of control, and I was skimming through memories of you and me while simultaneously making up scenarios of everything that we could be. The room was spinning and I was barely breathing when suddenly everything went cold and hot at the same time and you were saying goodbye a thousand times. Over and over, each one hit, and I just had to sit back and let the waves of grief keep crashing over the same body that once was held in your arms when I couldn’t stop shaking that Wednesday night back in July.
It was like I was falling and flying all at once and it took three deep breaths to clear it all up.
I gathered myself and left the room because for some reason it was starting to smell of you.
**** this and **** goodbyes. I would die for just one more night.*
-bcg (i forget about you long enough to forget why i needed to)
Mar 5, 2015
Mar 5, 2015 at 3:01 PM UTC
I woke up to the fact that I've been compartmentalizing people.
Sectioning off different aspects of their personality and treating them like strangers.
As if they aren't just one and the same.
It's gotten me in trouble to fall in love with
The good you's and developing too much leniency for the bad you's.
Almost ignoring the bad altogether.
But sometimes we have to put it altogether to accurately make an assessment on someone's character and if we really love them,
And even if you really love them,
Is it safe for you to love them?
I can't hide from the whole anymore.
Its gotta be all or nothing.
Aug 8, 2023
Aug 8, 2023 at 2:41 AM UTC
I am filling my days with tick boxes
and to-do lists
Entertaining myself with others' inconveniences.
To save my heart from further
crack and freeze,
I play games and reward myself
with my own prizes.
I am burying every lingering question,
like you kept yours
locked inside the closet.
Like disposing our shared laughters
of their echoes and sounds,
I cover my own mouth as I cry
so no other soul hears it.
I am reducing my feelings to logic
Even my poetry and art have
become awfully calculated.
Compartmentalizing my daily plans
into sorry yet efficient lists,
I survive the nights by believing
losing me makes you elated.
I am weighing in the pros and cons,
like dancing with my own body
on a brittle balancing act.
Whispering lullabies
to my own weary heart and soul,
I find comfort in knowing
it will never come back.
Jun 19, 2023
Jun 19, 2023 at 4:56 AM UTC
I
Am
Too
Lazy,
Crazy,
Scared,
Foreign,
Solitary,
Lethargic,
Despicable,
Disgraceful,
Hypocritical,
Lackadaisical,
Disillusioning,
Incommunicative,
Incomprehensible,
Indistinguishable,
Compartmentalizing,
Moschellandsbergite
19 years
Years to go: n/a
Change possible? Yes. Go. Do.
May 9, 2013
May 9, 2013 at 2:37 AM UTC
Waiting around
I converse with myself
Climbed a tree today
Picked some bananas to sell
Or to barter
With shopkeepers
Down at the market
Compartmentalizing
The extra
To part with
Or keep to eat freely
As soon as they ripen
In but a few days
More of boring old life in
My site
Took a hike
To seek quiet,
Imagined these hills
Fulminating
In riot
If I were inciting
Rebellions
Contriving
An artifice to
See the fires
Igniting
But as the day ends
And the sun vanishes
From the scene
My passivity banishes
Any a notion
Of causing commotion
And looking for trouble
Where nothing is broken
Evoking instead
Of promoting bloodshed
In its stoking the furnace
Forged steel in my head
Mar 30, 2019
Mar 30, 2019 at 5:07 AM UTC
Take me back to the South?
I rubbed a puppy but you made it live,
I held your hand and ego as a ghost rode *****
I tasted your mouth
Your deep addictive kisses were salty ripe with hidden tears, expectations and confessions of fears,
You pressed me for affirmation with one foot out the door,
My supposition acquiesced to passion
Then, you disappeared
Now you’re here
Pressing me,
Asking me what do I want?
I need consistency, presence, commitment, and time.
What do I feel?
What I feel is
Soul mate attraction,
Unconfined by silence,
Driven, diving, biding
Ineffable, inexplicable, unconstrainable
Uncontainable love and lust
Intertwined and unbound
How do you feel?
Do you have clarity?
For me, it’s taking its sweet time
Dragging and compartmentalizing
The inner unraveling of the unforgiven knot of the unacknowledged
The unpolished
And unabolished.
What do I want?
Excuse me as I try to unpack the dusty boxes,
On my neglected shelves.
I’m not a stranger to love or lust,
But, I’m not a friend either.
I’m not an enchantress,
No siren here my friend.
Nor, am I an open book,
My closest companions are the choir of thoughts,
Who sing songs of loyalty, doubts and declarations,
I’ve wandered but
I want a true partner to walk hand in hand the path of a life mundane,
Stealing moments of hungry happiness, exquisite.
You break down my defenses
Despite all logic and suppression,
Fingers press into mind’s flesh,
Nails rake down your neck.
My heart pounds and my mouth rounds,
Warm wet worship,
Down the base of your inspiring ****
Your groaning and growing elicit my complete attention,
And, focus my irreverent intentions
To unraveling the bead formed on the cusp of your tip,
Your palms trace the strands of my hair,
Your pleasure drives sated completion
Is it plans or preoccupations of hands?
Are you practicing yet?
For now, as you lament love lost
I’ll sit quasi patient,
Outwardly immobile and facetiously engaged
Damp wanting but waiting,
Quietly watching the two flames in my candle
As they melt and burn the wax around its’ wicks,
Hot but constrained
Destructive but contained.
I’ll be externally reverent for the life carefully molded,
Grateful for familial serenity
But, ever mindful of the calling,
Forged by sound, touch and taste
To an internal dereliction sung by our blue flame.
May 11, 2025
May 11, 2025 at 1:26 PM UTC
I am most collected with brush in hand, messy strokes flying and gliding, music playing, and a mess on my hands and shirt.
I process most while cleaning and organizing
the compartmentalizing of my things and thoughts at once.
I am most vulnerable singing
laying bare my heart and soul void of emotional levies.
I am most at peace dancing with my babies and holding them in my arms
seeing my future in their eyes and knowing theirs is worth the fight.
Dec 28, 2014
Dec 28, 2014 at 7:10 PM UTC
1am, your floppy hair, freshmen on the dorm floor
debating theology as if we knew what it was
and i saw your mind, but i also saw something more
and i saw you all over
in colorful flowers, sunny days, old churches
i heard your voice
while watching anime or listening to tales of ole'
and sometimes even when i sat alone
your endless search for perfection intimidated me
building up a dream of a woman
i'm not sure either of us will ever meet
and i wasn't her
i knew i never would be
but i remained in your orbit nonetheless
desperately compartmentalizing my heart from my head
as if friendship was enough
as if i wasn't in love
and i wrote about you anyway
as if our story could end happily
rain boots dancing in a puddle
a jubilee of you and me
when i finally said the words to you
i made them so much smaller
"i have feelings"
the confession of a coward
and as you answered my exclamation with a question mark
i retreated
maybe friendship is enough
maybe i'm not in love
you wanted to know you meant something
but i kept my breaking heart to myself
trying to salvage what we were
hoping my declaration hadn't destroyed it
but i was destroyed
and i had been so good at hiding it all away
that i still sometimes find another broken piece
the remnants of rejection
the love i can't quite extinguish
Apr 7, 2021
Apr 7, 2021 at 12:38 PM UTC
Wings clipped from edges of earth, dusted with flecks of golden triumph and darkened by the ashes from graves of opportunities missed but still tried for. I tried to break the cage that locked me in, the bars were welded tightly together and sometimes I saw no way out. But the mind, just like the powers of the heart, can compress the aches, the pains, the hurt into tiny boxes, only setting themselves (and you) free when open space to be us, appear.
I found a lot of open spaces lately despite the crowdedness of sub-urban life. I found spaces that encouraged me, that loved me, that even glorified me. It is nice to be so unconditionally loved even when sometimes misunderstood.
But the cage remains around certain parts of me. Around things I may not be able to let go of for some time–around the angst about the future, the worry around my potential, the uncertainty around everything amid chaos. I am still compartmentalizing. Emotional boxes are still bound tight with invisible tape, silencing my own words, own thoughts, and the chaos in the background.
The wings, albeit in disarray, still allow me to fly, sometimes to places I never thought I would go. And when they become so unfeathered, there is always another opportunity for transformation.
Jan 15, 2018
Jan 15, 2018 at 5:41 AM UTC