Welcome to The New Normal

Welcome back, poetry people!

It has been a bit of a reset, and things will, of course, have to change a little bit. Because Beehiiv is not Substack, and I think in many ways, we can all be grateful for that. What will this mean for my little newsletter in particular? What will Words Poetically Spoken be doing from here on out? It will be splitting its shifts, so to speak. I will be sending out one newsletter per week, including five poems and commentary.

Where, you ask, is the spoken word content going? We are headed to Patreon, folks. I will be sending short posts and sound content to Patreon. I will be breaking each poem up into a separate podcast. I am still working out getting the video set up on Patreon but hope to have it going sooner rather than later. I can’t keep spreading myself out thinner and thinner. So, as much as I would love to keep things exactly as they were, they must change; it’s the only option. Since I am just learning, It is my hope that they will just keep getting better.

Resetting and Rebuilding in the New Year

I don’t know about you, but I feel quite melancholic at the turn of the year. I have been on a streak of accomplishing things I set out to do, yet It all somehow feels hollow. I can only see the shortcomings, the lack of financial stability, the hole in my life where family and false comforters once stood with hollow, snide smiles.

I don’t really set New Year resolutions, but I do like to try and reset and reorient myself towards the goals I have and possibly reconsider those goals. On occasion, I have found I am suddenly completely uninterested in the direction my life is taking, or worse, I am concerned about it. So the New Year is the perfect time to sit down with one’s self and ask: Am I traveling in the direction I set out? Or is someone or something else guiding my journey?

Guide-Line

This first piece was written very much about the realization that I had been unhappy, and not simply because of the trauma itself. I realized that I would never truly feel fulfilled or find happiness if I didn’t take control of my life in the present and start setting my own goals. If I didn't start living it for myself and my family. The one who loves and really takes care of me. This doesn’t mean selfishly turning my gaze inward and forgetting the world; it just means not jumping through hoops to get love that will never materialize.

Just coming to the conclusion that I hadn’t been on my own chosen path wasn’t enough; it took a lot of effort. Even if it was needed, there was a certain pain in departing the shady, easy path that had guided me off into this open field of confusion. Getting back onto the straight and narrow isn’t exactly an easy task. Or everyone would be easily running their purposed course with no bumps of diversions.

I can’t say that this New Year, I suddenly felt entirely better, but at least I could recognize that I had made progress on my goals. I still had to deal with some feelings of inadequacy, but the spiral was short-lived and I am taming the beast that is unrealized fears and ambitions.

Guide-Line

walking blind my entire life
leaving an invisible trail of
destruction and pain
Inside my body
inside my brain
running in circles
yet, nothing is gained

falling from a cliff
convinced
I’m on an elevator
swirling in dazing clouds
filling up my head
soon as they clear
I feel a hand
instead of helping
pulling me deeper
no chance to scream

I contort and bend
with no escape.
trapped in a state
where I’ll never relate
only bob
on an invisible line
like a broken open tea bag
in the cup of time.

Reverse The Clock

This piece expands on that same melancholy feeling of having accomplished little yet having been pushed along by the built-up forward momentum of the entire year or, more accurately, years behind me. It’s mixed with the reality of cutting my family, who, although they were abusive, also took care of me in many ways.

I try not to feel guilty or let it affect my self-worth since I can now clearly see keeping me in need of their help was part of the plan to keep me under control, but it doesn’t feel any less embarrassing or painful to be an adult that regularly feels stranded or unable to care for some of my more basic needs.

I feel especially frustrated some days remembering the hard physical labor I used to do, the hours of detailed handiwork I used to complete, and never to my own benefit. To benefit someone else’s financial gain. It hurts to dwell on, but it also never really goes away because it happened, and it wrecked me; it literally stole my vitality and youth.

Reverse the Clock

I was born on the stroke of luck
chiming madly, reversing the clock
Every second I’ve spent
on this forsaken earth
has been counting down
to the end of the curse
Born blind
stolen from the womb
Crawling, searching for glass lenses
in puddles on the ground
Rising graceful, strong, full of vigor.
All their burdens laden
upon my yoke
I always saw the
imbalance incoming
Choosing the exact placement of
every new demand tossed upon me
Working hard for the family
not dirty money
Making nary a dime
not to worry
there’s always more time…
Every impediment
added to the mix
only seemed to further impress
Throwing the ropes, lashing me down
to inspect the unusual amount of
power I possess
The larger I grew
faster I ran
the closer they got
weaker I became.
Acquiring knowledge
the delusion of option.
The more wrong I knew they were
the more walls
I found myself enclosed within
Every attempted escape
just a time-wasting exercise in futility
Is there a way
to get it back?
recapture the hours
stolen from my glass?
It would seem not
To reverse the clock
would mean erasing all thought
Every good I have imagined
managed to enact
upon this thoughtless planet
Would I sweep it all away?
Die to erase the pain today?
Oblivion would be the only way
The clock reversed
the very day I came into existence
I have to say no,
I will carry on
with my count down to one.
Day in
day out
till my strenuous path is adequately run
It may be, that none of my hard work
is ever seen, but at least
I will have seen it complete

Shattering The Mask

This piece looks at the ongoing efforts I have been making to Unmask. For the most part, I involuntarily unmasked during the pandemic. I hadn’t gotten my memories back yet. I didn’t even know what it meant to mask; I had written about the concept creatively before, and I described my personality in that way, but it was purely observational and based on my own inner feelings and monologue.

Since I’ve joined online communities and entered algorithmic circles that have clued me into the truth of what it means to mask, that led me to do research and ask more questions. I still have a long way to go, but it feels good to meet myself and build myself up really build a space for myself to thrive.

This piece is split into two distinct sections: the lead-up to unmasking, followed by the unmasking action.

Shattering The mask

You finely crafted it for me
over years of
negative reinforcement training
a perfect alabaster mask
you attached it
while I slept and laughed
thought I would not notice you
I never really sleep, though, do I?
wore your mask patiently
became everything expected of me
I gave, and they took
till nothing was left
but the mask

so I grabbed
round the edges and ripped
the threads hurt to pull
through my papery skin
but the rest felt so good
to get off of my face
you never knew
or cared who was underneath
as long as the mask
stayed tightly in place
well, it’s been removed
and smashed to smithereens
because I never was that mask
and you never loved ME

Dream Slayer

This piece continues on the theme of shedding old dreams, or ones that did not originate with the self, and not just putting them behind us but completely obliterating them. One cannot simultaneously walk two life paths. You can have two jobs maybe, you can have many small goals leading you to larger ones, in fact you should, but you can’t be more than one you. Usually. At least not reasonably or healthily.

In reality, at the time I wrote this, I took a look around and started changing the decor in my house. Growing up, two of my special interests were Ballet and Paris, acceptable interests for a girl, part of why that aspect of my autism went unnoticed. Although people very much noticed my interest in insects and ancient history, but I digress.

Over the years, as I became unable to dance, I put away my ballet things, my figurines, my outfits and shoes, my pictures and paintings, etc.… But the Paris decor didn’t disappear, if anything that only spread into the hole ballet left, until my mother started decorating all of her rooms in Paris decor. At first, I didn’t notice it was bothering me; it was only one room, but as it started taking over her whole house, I could feel my interest wan.

Even then, I didn’t throw all of my things away. This last move, I still put up most of my things; in fact, as I was looking around at streets I would never walk, art pieces my mother handed me down, pictures of food I can never eat again, the dream died once and for all.

I went around taking down all my Paris decor. I don’t actually want to go there. I can’t enjoy it at all. I can’t eat any of the foods that Paris offers and is famous for. I can’t brave the crowds every day. And I certainly won’t be getting on a disease-ridden, pull-top pressure cooker filled with drunken, possibly racist Karens to get somewhere I can’t enjoy myself. So down came the Eiffel Towers, and up went the peacocks and embroidery.

I balanced this one out. Starting with a question and ending with a statement. even lined stanzas making a sandwich on the page. Beginning in a dissatisfied state, ensnared in the dreams of others, ended up setting off on my own newly found dreams.

Dream Slayer

When you live with hope
dreams can never die
can they?

I live
surrounded by
the corpses of dreams
that never came true
Paintings of streets
I will never wander through
Ancient landmarks
my lenses will never
physically view

With hope you rise above
never give up
There is always a spark
to carry you on
to the next day
where new dreams are born
The heat they generate
keeps the fires burning
for just another day

To see
what new dreams
you might slay

Reformation

This piece, if not quite celebrating, is at least acknowledging the journey, and efforts it takes to change course and make a new life for oneself. To rebuild your very being. That process isn’t always pretty, and rarely is it comfortable, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth undertaking. In fact, it may be the only way to reach your new desired outcome.

The most important factor for me right now is trying not to overload myself, I say as I write on Medium, restart my newsletter, work on poetry drafts, send some finished ones into lit mags, and finish up some podcast scripts so I can actually get my podcast filmed, oh and work on some random stuff you know… for fun. That is really hunkering down and getting things done, right?

Reformation

I spent an age stooped beneath the weight of pain.
In order to extricate my atrophied bones,
I anchor sinewy flesh to the hold.
Long ago, I gave up on moving the unbearable load.

The only answer became shifting the plane I was anchored on.
Every atom, wavelength, and pole,
Reversed and floating to let me unfold
Where pressure had previously compressed and controlled.

Now I expand outwards to test the limits of my soul.
Feeling the stretch, but loving the burn.
I might collapse from exhaustion, but I am free-floating,
With no poundage to uphold.

You might think what has melted away can never be reforged,
Yet I have been building myself up.
Hour by hour, day by day
Not identical, but in an entirely re-imagined, hand-shaped form.

It may not be perfect, limitations still riddle my core.
Foibles pepper my flawed recreation of life.
It matters not; I find reconstituted fellows surround me.
With reformation complete, we seem drawn, like negative ions, to positive.

Thanks so much for rejoining me, or if this is your very first foray into the poetic mindset that is Baily, thank you for joining me, and I hope to have you back next week. The videos for these poems are coming out as you read, on Patreon. You can sign up for five dollars a month. I also have some free visual poetry slides with poems on them, so when you head over to take a look, there is something you can see even if you don’t end up subscribing.

Until Next week,

K.B. Silver