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0 By Laura Owen
Whenever I feel my anxiety and depression creeping in, it consequently distracts me from being able to put forth my best efforts – whether that is at work, school, or during social events. Something I find helpful in distressing moments is to express myself through poetry.
There are several thoughts that go through my head when I mention poetry. One is that poetry seems like a lame way to bring about one’s feelings. On the other hand, I’ve admittedly realized just how stress-relieving it truly is to be able to describe how I am feeling, without flat-out stating the raw and sometimes damaging reality of mental illness, yet in such a way that people can actually understand the symbolic meaning of my words and the feelings behind them.
Similarly as with art, I find that the best poetry stems from the emotions felt in the moment of writing, rather than from trying to recall a past event (unless that is the point of the art or poem, of course). The name of my blog, The Plath Effect, honors the way Sylvia Plath relayed her poetry and writing about her struggles with mental illness. She never attempted to impress readers or “fluff” the ways in which she felt on a daily basis, often referencing death and depression in her work.
Here are some short poems from moments when I needed to express my emotions through an outlet for my growing anxiety and depression:
Concrete Garden
Never-ending
Never changing
Imagining the plight of flight
So wishfully thinking
Watching the roots
Of this foundation
Transforming into a plague
Its decay is ever-growing
It rains quite often, here
Flooding the path from flowers
That were meant to grow there
I’m concaving in.
One Season
It’s too hard to take a breath in
As I inhale my cigarette
The trees that were once green
I look at now, and there’s nothing
Nothing left for them to hold onto;
Onto another season
They wait without question
Their bark flakes
Onto another seasonpoetry
Until they can see fresh dew drops on their iridescent leaves
It’s still winter and they’re waiting
Quite still and peacefully
The Disappearing Act
Why is there no “natural” left in nature?
We inhale
We conquer
We destroy
There is no way to justify the harshness
Of the polluted organisms that rein over concrete grounds of fragile sanctuary
From those times when the air helped us breathe
Those grounds are long gone now
B&W
In the contrast of black and white,
You don’t see anything
But the reflection of its own
But when you pull the darkness into the darkness
That’s when you see its true light
Its piercing, deafening light
That is finally seen
Now that its definition has been pulled
Out of its shadows
Reverberations
In the mind
In the chest
Fluttering
It won’t digress
Reverberations
Bring bubbles to the surface
They overflow
From all the energy
Energy exuded
Past the low ends of the deep
It’s her face that’s eluded
The worries of others will cease
To exist
Nature’s Selection
One weed
Surrounded by thousands
Of specks in the desert
Yet,
It keeps growing
No one notices
The sun’s light does nothing but accentuate
The shining grains
It dulls the weed
But it’s still there
A relentless soul
Reproduced with permission, originally posted here: theplatheffect.com
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[…] are so many different ways for feelings to be expressed, song lyrics, poems, quotes, characters in stories… the list could be endless, and I suppose it’s down to […]