A poem I wrote about the difficulties some people have engage in the therapeutic process due to self-judgement or misperception about therapy generally. It has a narrative voice, a therapist’s voice and a client’s voice, presenting the contrasts between the client’s struggle with the process and how the therapist sees it.

The Files

A daily parade of names and souls

wander into the therapist’s chamber.

Inside, a dark forest of shadows stretch from their voices

across the floor with branches up the wall

cast by the play of light between a warm campfire

and ghosts daring the eye to look at them.

Black on black, cold figures dance just beyond the reach of safety.

Faceless silhouettes in the distance speak in echos returning from hard surfaces

somewhat unique for each, somewhat the same to all.

His office was dark 

with too much light glaring at me

I am enigma, or paradox. 

I am here to be seen as invisible.

It’s fine. I swear. 

You’re not going to make me think about it.

It’s fine, but dear God please fix it.

20 years I’ve presided over this couch with the most appropriate rites and rituals

but none of that actually matters.

This is not religion, or surgery.

None of that means I know you.

What it did teach me, is that this is art.

You are art.

No, no one is perfect.

no, you are not fine as you are.

no, you can’t simply stop.

no, none of that makes you any less

priceless.

A daily procession of zombies and vivified corpses

room filled to bursting with flashes of unexpected light,

lightening shocking dead things to life in the therapist’s chamber.

Dr. Frankenstein piecing together the dismembered.

An arm not recognized, an unidentifiable face,

a missing I, a dislocated word

fragments of self, disordered, strewn across the floor.

I in the therapist’s chamber

my ideas and words drawn out on the rack to confession.

Wrestling with God or gods unknown, rulers of my present darkness

stretched and straining to be captain of my soul

How will I know when, if, I find what I don’t know?

Excruciating labor, birthing what?

I am art? Ha! This is mockery.

How pathetic. 

It’s almost prostitution,

paying someone to care about me.

Am I getting screwed?

Is there a point?

This mirror shows no one.

Looking is the pain.

You’re alive! And yes I see you as a survivor,

and no, “alive” isn’t mockery.

You’re actually alive. Your death was a lie you told yourself.

You are not just your injury.

Do not let your suffering remain your identity.

We, but you, can reanimate yourself.

That’s why the fire is here.

How will you create yourself?

You are the artist.

What do you want me to say?

It’s wasn’t fine. No, I’m not fine.

Those shell-game words like “heal” and “forgive,” 

cover the unseen lump of hatred rolling around underneath.

I can’t forget where it is; you can’t fool me.

I rebel against hands that feed.

I am become Nemesis.

A blind man slashing at the dark – betrayed, revenging 

And when I find no throat to strangle, I choke myself 

with rage.

The daily march of soldiers in files

martyring bravely into battle:

so many weak and writhing words, so little meaning.

Each phrase has scrawny arms, easily overpowered, 

beaten by a mob in the streets, bloody abandoned on the pavement

in a modern world of so much connection, 

and from that fiction, all the more disconnected.

On that couch — desert of the real — nothing but words all the way down

and dissociated from meaning, I start eating my own tail.

In this, I turn my stomach, vomit myself up.

The dirty secret of heroism: scatological research.

Looking at the gross thing that I am, the me on the floor at my knees

I’ll be damned! if I let this scare me away.

But wait, listen! Both are true. The imperfect is the priceless.

It’s what makes the brushwork unique.

Salvation is not given despite errors,

but because of them.

My humble little office is so much bigger on the inside, 

a museum filling itself with endless beauty.

This triumphal parade of memento mori,

paintings enter, filling each labyrinthine wall.

Van Gough’s self portrait looks up at me with said eyes, full of self-hatred.

A painting’s eyes cannot see itself,

cannot find meaning from its own beauty.

A masterpiece cannot value itself.

I walk isles between masterworks that are not who they want to be.

The perfect has a necessary flaw — it doesn’t exist.

One can retouch, and reword endlessly, 

rumination, editing … and even when there is improvement

it can never become more than 

priceless.

Add an extra lyric or line,

now it’s merely different.

Although that addition, may truly make all the difference. 

I walk these isles of endless stories

co-author, script doctor, trying to add that surprising twist,

a twist the character foreshadowed in dramatic irony.

The profound is found in that mystery, one only the audience sees.

I wander this library filled by The Great Authors,

as observer to stories that draw lines of worry and laughter on faces.

To merely read is a sublime privilege. 

And in the best …

… in the best … 

the hero triumphs in the end.

Splattered, worn, injured and torn

spine cracked and margins filled.

Comedy or tragedy, miracle or mundane,

a gentle hand adds it lovingly, 

with all the respect due a treasure,

to this library of the greatest works in human history.