The Mall
I sit still
And the world rushes past me.
On my right, the people rush North.
On my left, the people rush South.
If I try to watch
I find myself spinning
spinning
dizzy
too many colors
too many faces
too many voices.
All I can do
is wait
until the rush stops
And then sneak away home.
-JLS
5/26/13
I was looking through a pile of old poems the other day and I found this gem. It is written in a similar vein of The Ballad of the Fried Squirrel and The Legend Live On, which I previously posted.
These are the rare funny poems. Most of my high school poems are about suicide. It is amazing I am still here. I could have really used some hard-core therapy my senior year of high school. Instead, I read Sylvia Plath and wrote lots of dark poems.
Enjoy this ditty!
Note: Bobby Jo Jinkins is a guy. I don’t know why I spelled the name like that.
Bobby Jo Jinkins
By: JLF
11/15/94
On a chilly autumn day,
I sat and watched the squirrels at play.
The sun shone down, bright upon the leaves
That were freshly fallen from their trees.
When all a sudden, their chatter ceased
And they ran away like pigs that were greased.
So I crept up to the leaves, to see what they’d found.
To my surprise, what was buried in that mound
Was a three-week dead, worm-eaten corpse–
It was Bobby Jo Jinkins, of course!
The story had been in the papers for days
Bobby Jo Jinkins wandered into the corn
But more than corn mites had found Bobby Jo.
It looked as though his head was bashed in by a hoe.
Poor Bobby Jo, what a terrible fate for a Jinkins,
His life had been rubbed out in a blink of a blinkins.
Oh, oh. If the town could see me now
They wouldn’t believe this sight–oh wow.
No one I knew, ever believed
I could ever get Bobby Jo Jinkins alone with me
(Aint life wacky?)
I wrote this poem on the back of a math assignment in high school. I might have been a freshmen. I misplaced it for a while, and it drove me nuts because I really liked it and couldn’t remember exactly how it had been written. But then I found it again. I think it was tucked in a different subject’s text book.
I like how it rhymes. And how the children never have to go to school. As I wrote it while in school and didn’t want to be there. But I knew, realistically, the kids would still be required by the Happy Town government to receive some form of education. That is why I added “They learned from life/And their father’s wife [most likely being their mother]”.
I still don’t really know what a pawn or a rook are. Something to do with chess. Being stuck in school, I just loved the imagery of bad guys (and school bullies) getting what they deserved. And the image of playing with puppies in the sunshine. Sooo much better than being crammed in a classroom listening to a teacher drone on and on and on.
I do believe this could make a great children’s book someday. The image below I typed up on my word processor I was going to use to become a famous writer. I ended up selling it at a garage sale. But enjoy this poem I typed up and printed on the fancy-schmancy paper that came with it. I like how the girl at the top has a star on her eye. It makes her look like she belongs with Jem and the Holograms.
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Anxiety: 1. the state of being anxious. 2. concern about an imminent danger, difficulty, etc.
Anxious: 1. uneasy in the mind.
I have anxiety. It often changes how I go about living my life, but I do the best I can to not be beat down by it. For people who don’t have it (or don’t have it in large quantities), it is probably hard for them to imagine what it is like.
My most recent example is that I wanted to buy two $5 gift cards from McDonald’s. I was afraid they would yell at me for not buying food too. Then I was afraid they would yell at me for only putting $5 on the gift cards. I ended up deciding to buy only one gift card, and I bought it at Meijer while I was already there so I wouldn’t have to face the anxiety of McDonald’s at all. (Of course, in all this I forgot that the people at McDonald’s aren’t paid enough to care about anything. That is a dig at McD’s, not at the employees.)
I have dealt with anxiety all my life. When I was younger, if I felt overwhelmed by anxiety, I cried. Which is why I got picked on in school (creating more anxiety, creating more crying, etc.). The prescription drug company commercials used to make me think I had depression (which I have had twice in my life), but that is not what I have every day. My friend had pretty serious anxiety too–maybe even more than me. But she went on prescription drugs and now that is no longer one of her biggest health issues. I don’t want to be a slave to doctors & pharmaceutical companies. I don’t want to deal with side effects. I don’t want to have to take a pill everyday for something that may only hit me a few times a week. Now, if there was “FAST-ACTING ANXIETY NOSE SPRAY FOR URGENT RELIEF”, I would be all over that. The most common time anxiety hits me is when I am trying to fall asleep. I have anxiety attacks about how I don’t want to be dead one day & cease to exist. Ugh, it is making my chect tighten & my stomach churn just to write it. Nose spray would really come in handy at these times.
Here is an excerpt from an old journal I recently found which provides a nice example:
Last night at the casino the food court was more like a cafeteria and I was scared to tell the grill guy that I wanted a cheeseburger. Then I was too scared to go up and get a refill. I just feel like everyone is always going to yell at me.
And no one has ever yelled at me for such things. Here is a poem from around the same time:
Worried
11/2/2000
I worry about things
I know about
I worry about things
I know nothing about
I worry about things
I have never done before
I worry about things
I do every day
I am beginning to feel
worried
that I worry
2much.
My husband doesn’t understand when I ask him to do something for me because I just cannot do it myself. This usually manifests as asking for help for something in a store and having to talk to a sales associate. Or giving my son a bath. I know that when I start the bath, if he starts crying or bumps his head or something, I can’t freak out and leave him in the bathtub naked. I have to finish the bath, no matter what, all the way through to putting on his PJs. And I find this scary. And too often I let my husband give him a bath because 1. he likes to & 2. I don’t have to overcome my anxiety to do it. Anxiety is probably one of the things that kept my mom at home throughout her twenties.
Sorry. Just felt like venting. I have been cleaning my house & unearthed some old poems/emails/journals that got me on this line of thinking. I wanted this blog to be a mish-mash of my life. And this is a big part of my life, even though many close to me do not know it.
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