My Mad Woman

Gathering in silence my armour of anger

I prepare to war

My mad woman,

Locked up in the mind-attic now.

Armies of another time, place, gather

Ranging the fringes of childhood, innocence

Of a faraway self who is not I

But grew up to be me.

Now, far beyond reproach is she,

I merely question

The accidents or dreams

That led her to be.

Scarecrow Self

Trapped in a pool of its melancholy

nostalgia its sole reflection

time is the only wind that

ripples the surface and

spawns self-same currents,

—as if this were

a heady matrix of absence and desire

when its but a fool’s plaything

to chime away shallow suffering—

of a Scarecrow Self

who battles the days and night

lone sentinel of windswept barrens

learning endurance

and its place in the world.