Good heavens ~ this poet seems to be on a little teenie miniature actual roll, here! How the heck did that happen??

*****

Recorded Reading (7:04): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/bbr62m7pnndt777mpfb4d/Mighty-Uncomfortable.mp3?rlkey=f80n8irheqovf438txq4pss04&st=kpo52aet&dl=0

*****

Mighty Uncomfortable

For the people in this town,
When this poet was put down,
Looked at my despairing frown
Decided to make me a clown:

Framed me as malicious dunce
Didn’t bother to check once ~
“Friends” of just the day before
My existence then deplore!

Did I once some poets aid?
No longer must be afraid
Of my excellence in verse
No one now will ‘ere rehearse

And there were of course those, honey,
Jealous of some sudden money
Legitimately come my way ~
No longer able to say

The tales of your adventures that
I, indigent, had never had ~
Could not, as you’d done with glee,
Despise me clandestinely

Girlfriends with whom I had had
Adventures both bold and bad
Now act like you never could ~
You’re nothing at all but “good”!

When misfortune came to call
Didn’t consider at all
Tales that you were being told
Which didn’t fit the patent mold

Of the companion whom, before,
You’d welcomed through your glad front door
Easier then to believe
That which will jealousy relieve

Forgetting everything in past
Which made the friendship firm and fast ~
The benefits you knew you got
For whatever it was you’d brought

No longer me “adventurous”
Now presence deleterious ~
Not bravely sacrificing all
To save my conscience from a fall

Not willing to be called some other
To be what I knew was good mother
Even to a child whose need
Whose ineradicable greed

Was not for the upliftment of
Anybody she, um, love
But every cleverness employed
To see their happiness destroyed

Only to find swift belief
From those in whom I had belief
Would trouble early, mid or late
Just once to communicate

With my actual self, nor those who teach
What gives your malice its full leash
On strength of such compromised word
As anybody’s ever heard

Tell you what ~ I’ll go find out
What you’re “really” all about
By seeking each disgruntled one
Who’s felt that they from you should run

I will deep communicate
With every disillusioned mate,
Each teenager who thinks you old
Or slow, or plain, or dumb, or cold

Ferreting out every grief
Of anyone who’s got a beef
With anything you’ve ever done
Since adulthood was first begun

But wait ~ I need’t even bother
Consulting with any other
I have my own memories
Of things which I helped through to ease

You, in your young adulthoods ~ Ay!
Forgiver, I’d put them away:
Backed away from honest strife
In order give backbiting life

(After all, when you confront,
A reasonable creature’s wont
To prove her reas’nability,
Damn it, inconveni’ly!)

Oh, satisfactionless complaint
Such as relationship must taint,
And not along lines of belief
But only pettiness give brief

And ‘ere my judgment, I’ve preferred
Not to ask you a single word
About the way that you’ve been slurred
Nor anything might have occurred

That was May ~ now it’s December
Uncomfortable remember:
Virtues for you time disguise
Re-revealing as I rise

Painfully, and gradually,
Back to that promontory
From which your so-listened-to-he
Long ago has toppled me

With enthusiastic help
From mine own ungrateful whelp
Whom you’d oft called “stupid,” but,
With her precise scuttlebutt,

Had you dancing to her tune
In January and in June ~
In a room with me you basked
Doesn’t mean you even asked ~

Now I don’t understand why,
When put to it, either should I!
It doesn’t matter, after all,
How you came unto your fall,

Or ~ if we still traded wit ~
How I might have helped with it,
For if you attempt recall
Our young friendship’s run at all

Though, like poets, always poor,
I sometimes did provide the sure
And perfect word, rock-based, forsooth,
Of saving and redeeming Truth

It’s true I have more than my share,
As you’ve so loudly been aware,
Of handicaps, and blind spots too ~
While seeing what’s hidden from you

These are things you used to know ~
They’re what made our friendship grow ~
But you kicked them all aside
When threatened loss of status, pride,

Or shallow motivations call,
So that you couldn’t see at all
Perpetual, unchanging grace
When it was right before your face

How much even easier
To paint it even sleazier
In its absence, peaceful gone
To leave others peaceful alone

With all their needs to dominate,
Denigrate, humiliate
And put beneath them anyone
They think might prove defenseless fun

If I will not, upon their border,
Acceed to their pecking order
It behooves me to be gone
Some other border to be on

Especially if I love they
From whom I’ve had to go away
In order to give them some time
To reach for something more sublime

Without my irritating presence
Full up of unwanted lessons ~
If later they find selves haunted
By lessons formerly unwanted

It’s very easy currently
For a poet who, like me,
Splashes all her heart online
Anyone succeed to find

But mostly I, in later day,
Keep myself from all away ~
Bringing gifts in fingers cupt
Succeeds only to disrupt

With uncomfortable light
Shining very much too bright
Oh, receive to e’en begin
Those who dwell the shadows in

Of gossip and destructiveness
One upmanship, deviousness
First entrapment, then betray’l
Through which modern friendships sail

Expectation irrational
But safely conventional
Talk and talk about belief
In the end we find relief

In groupthink’s false security
Protecting illusorily
Manufactured reality
Superior to earthy me!…

It’s now a truth
Indeed, forsooth,
That those formerly mighty
To falsely judge me flighty ~

A truth, and unavoidable,
Although surely regrettable
When regard it they are able ~
Such will feel uncomf’table

*****

This poet reminds all within reach of her words that an offering of any amount will put an actual poem back on this poetry site.

Arts patrons may visit http://www.UgiftABLE.com , using code 72D-31S. It will take about two weeks for the poet to be notified of your patronage.

International donors should contact the poet through these comments or the contact page address on this site for special instructions.

She presently lives at a fraction of her nation’s poverty level, and in perpetual terror of a repair on her old vehicle which, unfinanced, will result in the towing of her home and all possessions, and her own ticketing into imprisonment.

Thank you for supporting quality in the fine arts