29. Stressed

Stressed

Step away from that word

And what does it mean?

Rendered obscene

And useless by over application;

Infiltration of corporate speech,

Medicalised brain leeches,

Lexicalised, brain bleached

And a fashionable label on a jammed jar.

Tonight the sea saw balance

Between resources and demands

Lays heavily spent on the right side,

As it has these past few weeks,

With a gradual quickening

Of foetal force that leads to

Remorseless thinking of the grand

To Do List, growing in laborious pain.

My phone a modern thumb screw of

Texting back the tennis ball

Over the net of petty requests and

Haranguing demands I cannot satisfy.

I will let someone down,

As inevitably as my over-concern lets

My own self down.

All nine of Yeats’ bean rows

Taunt as idealistic impossibility

And the hived honey bees

Would have me bat the air

And run for sting shade.

Somewhere in this, I lost my heart.

Or it got trampled by ignorant feet,

That needed ground too much to look down.

I know better than rest,

Is wholeheartedness.

I know I left it here

In a velvet box,

Tied with hopeful spider silk.

But I am too tired yet

To take the needed breath

Stop looking, and so to find it.