Civilizing Me: and other poems

Civilizing Me: and other poems

These poems encompass an array of visual and sensory experiences of life in the individual and collective - joy, fear, conflict, struggle, distrust, suffering, acceptance, release and freedom. It describes the dark hues in the tapestry of life juxtaposed with splashes of lightness and color. The author's love and awe of the natural world are woven into the themes to show the likeness of man's nature to the vagaries of the natural world, as also hope and renewal through the seasons and rhythms of time. The poem' Parents, look away' is about carefree children playing barefoot in a stream. 'The couple' is about immigrants tight with anxiety taking a seemingly pleasurable evening stroll. 'Demon of the night' is about a sick woman staring at a clock as she's worn down with the weighty burden of pain and age. All uneasy subjects found in the daily humdrum of our lives. Author's note These words don't even feel like my own. They spilled out like water from a broken dam. The mind plays games with our experiences. The actual and imagined blend and coalesce to form and break through into words, spoken and unspoken. These got spoken in verse. As I read back the words, I realized the cracks in the dam started to appear as I heard a familiar phrase or word or got a whiff of a scent that reminded me of times past that I may have been previously impervious to.