Being, Nothingness, and Hoarding: A True Story

First an admission:

I was watching “Hoarding, Buried Alive” last night,

(now that that’s on the table, I can continue with the rest of this poem)

when I suddenly realized

that the problem with hoarders

(aside from the filth, health hazards, and destroyed relationships)

is that they attach significance to everything

and are thus unable to part with anything.

This seems to me an essentially existential problem:

If life has no meaning other than what we attach to it,

then hoarders are using their possessions to create a meaningful life.

If everything (every thing) has significance,

then the more things one has, the more significant one’s life.

Perhaps, this behavior is a reaction formation:

(I apologize here 

for introducing a Freudian paradigm into this poem about existentialism)

Hoarders so fear nothingness

that they are compelled to fill every void with stuff.

Continued accumulation equals continued meaningfulness;

purging equals surrendering to the emptiness of life.

Hoarding thus creates quite the paradox:

Hoarders hoard to give life meaning,

but

the more they hoard, the more they lose

(like friends, family, health, money, shelter)

so their lives become increasingly lonely and empty.

This all made me feel very sad,

so I changed the channel

and watched Law and Order: SVU for a while.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Kerry's Wed. Challenge, Existentialism

Waterlily Moon

A waterlily blooming in an inky indigo pond,

the moon perfumes the night sky with its petals

We kiss on the jagged rocks,

toss promises into the sea below,

and watch them sink like stones,

lost in the water.

A seagull calls for its mate

Its plea rises and falls like the peaks of the waves

We walk together,

leaving our footprints and our names

written in the powdery sand,

washed away by morning.

You give me the pit of your self

but hoard the sweet fruit

I plant it in the warm earth,

yield seasons of memories.

submitted for Wordle 102 at the Sunday Whirl

The Beat

“There were women, they were there, I knew them, their families put them in institutions, they were given electric shock. In the ‘50s if you were male you could rebel, but if you were female your families had you locked up.” Gregory Corso

Them boys don’t know from beat-

I been beat up, beat down, beat in, and beat out

most all my life

Them boys don’t wanna love no woman;

they wanna make love to their mirrors

to themselves

They love each other;

woman gets fucked

Wanna hear some howlin’?

Listen to my late stage back alley abortion

Groove 
to some volts of electricity jammed through my brain

Hear my fists beating 

against the locked doors of mental hospitals

I was born a woman

I live a woman

but I can die as good as any man.

This poem is inspired by the women of the Beat Generation. 

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Let's Do the Time Warp Again, in which we are asked to write as someone from  the year 1958.

Seeds and All

Persephone by Patricia Ariel

I believed that you loved me;

you dragged me down to hell.

I thought I was your queen,

but your kingdom had gates I could not pass.

What I thought was passion

was me being devoured by your fire.

Now all that’s left of me

is bone and ash.

I have only myself to blame;

I swallowed your lies, seeds and all.

inspired by but too late to submit to: dVerse Poets Pub, Poetics, Modern Day Mythology 
submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Open Link Monday