Category Archives: Depression

Blinded by the Pattern

Front room blinds
Lines and ever more lines
Perfect symmetry, vertical, straight
Setting sun squeezes through, says it’s getting too late
Too late for punishing gym workout
Too late for art workshop
Pajamas

I don’t care
I’ll sit here in my chair
Imagining pushups and treadmill
Feign guilt at missing tonight’s yoga (I’m so ill)
Wish giddyap would trump inertia
Blinds help me stay blind to
this pattern

© 2014 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Image courtesy of WikiCommons, thanks to photographer Petrolli, who graciously uploaded the file for all to use! License can be viewed HERE.

Victoria C. Slotto is the bartender at the dverse Poets Pub, and her prompt was ‘patterns.’  This poem is called, I believe, a triquain, relative of the cinquain.  My syllable scheme for each stanza was 3 – 6 – 9 – 12 – 9 – 6 – 3.  Thanks to the Toads for turning me on to the form, even though I didn’t participate in their take on it!!

I spend many days watching various arrays of sunlight as they stream through the venetian blinds. By the time I’m done pondering their endless lack of diversity (!), I find it’s simply too late to go out.  My new therapist suggested replacing “should” in my mind (as in, “I should go to the gym”) with WANT TO (“I want to go to the gym”). It helps me, honestly! She also said (and I love this), “Stop ‘shoulding’ yourself.” Get it? Got it? Good.

Peace, Amy

Posted by Sharp Little Pencil in Depression, POETRY Tags: dverse poets, Gym, Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, Inertia, Patterns, The Big Chair, Venetian Blinds, Workouts