You scrubbed yourself over me,
making me feel dirty, a wash of panic
in soapy suds and irritating flakes,
a seventies child with memories
of you in the classroom and digging deep
in the dirt of my stomach to quell
the beast of panic, pushed harder
over and over again till people thought
perhaps I was driven, maybe I was,
but it came from the feelings of being unworthy,
push harder, I may as well be an unborn child
in the womb, push harder,
every day you see I give myself one more day to live
in that simple fact I push against the grain
and when I don’t achieve a single thing,
even if it just breathing, then panic
comes along and whispers in the dark
to me, ears cocked and alert, that I am not worthy
of all I have accomplished on this Earth,
push harder…
push harder child, push harder infrequent teen,
push harder, back aches, ignore it, unfit,
smoke too much, all in your head…
push harder now…
now I am tired, that day the sun rises
above the houses at the back of the church
and each night it jaunts off towards New York
and round to California and back again…
push harder, see the dawn, give yourself
one more day to live,
despite making plans to see the rolling blue alien
of the waves of the Pacific in your 50th year,
panic
panic
panic …I dig deep but my shovel and spade
are becoming blunt
and my body is so very tired.
Ian D. Hall 2017