This poem was recently revised, and due to formatting problems has been re-posted out of chronological order. 

Talk Therapy

May 29 2009

How does that make you feel …?

She invites me

to dig myself deeper

in her steady relentless way;

a finger prodding, prodding,

water, drop-after-drop.

To get down on my knees

and sift through the layers of dust

with a small fine-bristled brush,

like Carter

ignoring Tutankhamen’s curse.

She knows I can’t abide

expectant silence;

that I will talk

eventually.

She cannot know

how often I’ve felt

nothing at all.

How I sleep-walked through most everything,

eyes on my feet, ears clapped shut

brain, busy

with reassuring bromides.

Angry, I say,

whip-sawed between perplexity

and a flat forgetful sadness -

an impatient archaeologist, with his tiny brush

grunting-up off his knees

and waving for the ‘dozers,

diesels roaring, spewing smoke.

Ancient civilizations

lie in layers

in neat chronological order.

But I am prehistoric -

the walls of blacked-out caves,

middens of bones, well-gnawed,

sharpened rocks.

My autobiography

changes day-to-day.

I tell her everything.

I give nothing away.

I'm not nearly so deep or tortured as this poem implies. (Although I will admit that it was written on a day I felt more angst-filled and neurotic than usual!)

It started with a scene from a TV show. A rookie cop, after a traumatic event, is having the prescribed follow-up with the official shrink. She seems in over her head. All she can repeat is that formulaic question. He doesn't bite. As soon as I saw that, I knew I would -- because I would just have to fill that pregnant silence. And I immediately wanted to play around with a poem beginning with that line. The archaeological metaphor came as a gift: the moment line "dig myself deeper" came to me, it was obvious. (And even nicer that "brush" "dust" and "Tut" just happen to rhyme!)

I'm unusually introspective and analytical. But still, I often find that my repertoire of emotions is often black and white, limited to either anger or depression: either "mad" or "sad", as I frequently observe to myself. So that finds its way into the piece.

I suspect I have more regrets about the past than most people (or at least indulge in obsessing over them more than most people!) More the things I haven't done than those I have. So in that sense, in the allusions to a painful past -- to sharpened rocks and blackened walls and things gnawed over -- this is most definitely not autobiographical. In the sense of deep privacy and keeping things in, keeping things to myself, it probably is.