YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

Marvelous
for Walt Whitman

Rage woke me up again,
the stunning disappointment
we are, the colossal waste
of ceremony and prestige.
A potlatch in honor of no one:
what happens next will shock you!

God’s was the first
self-esteem problem,
InMyNotSoHumbleOpinion.
No viler creature exists
than a person,
no bigger failure of promise.

I, for instance,
whining about flow and flaws,
fakery and fear mongering,
the f/ducking GOP.
A mischief of life coaches manifesting
my death by a thousand likes.

Uncle Walt wouldn’t stand for it.
Devilish and drinking boba
in his pedicure chair, he’d wink and
gesture to a cat poster hanging askew
behind an altar of oranges and incense.
“‘Hang in there, baby!’ Lol...marvelous.”

I want to use words like marvelous,
to yawp and love freely and
embrace everything all the time.
(Now that's a life coach.)
“Swift wind! Space! My Soul!
I am afoot with my vision.”

I like it, a bit chaotic and going slightly over my head

I like it too.

Grows on you with the re-readings....

(Can we ask you about the meaning or thinking behind certain passages?)

BTW - Have you attended any of the Dodge, or online poetry sessions?

Thank you for sharing, JennaM!

I also have questions, and a deep desire to see WW in a spa chair next time I visit my nail salon.

(Well. I as soon as I surfaced, I guess I decided to dive back down to the deep dark. I just can't keep my head above water lately.)

But thank you snoring dog, river girl, and troebia, however belatedly. Whitman was my first great literary love. He lived for living's sake and delighted in everything, whereas I am so weighted down by PURPOSE and USEFULNESS I don't think I'd know delight if it threw a Boston cream pie in my face.

I guess the poem is a little about how much all the superficial intensity that squawks at us from every direction these days gets to me... I wish I could learn to laugh at it more often. Sometimes I can... but then I am compelled to judge myself for it. Uncle Walt would be drinking Rock Stars and scrolling endlessly through Tik Tok and he'd still be getting more out of life than me, because I have to spoil everything with my STANDARDS and SELF IMPROVEMENT and INTEGRITY. Ugh. I'm such a bore.

I don't know the Dodge thing, snoring dog. I am mostly a prose writer, but will definitely Google it and see what's what. Thanks again!!

J

Don't know a lot about Whitman, but maybe his time nursing soldiers during the Civil War had an effect on him?
Suffering and death up close, life fragile and fleeting. Carpe Diem then!

BTW - absolutely *nothing wrong* with "STANDARDS and SELF IMPROVEMENT and INTEGRITY"!
God I wish there was more of this in this old world!

Gotta keep a sense of humor though, and a balance....

Wishing you well.

SD

Don't know where to put this (so why not on your thread JennaM! )

A poem on self-forgiveness, beautifully read and commented on by Padraig O Tuama as part of the "On Being Project podcasts


Dilruba Ahmed “Phase One”

Poetry Unbound | The On Being Project

https://onbeing.org/series/poetry-unbound/page/7/
https://onbeing.org/programs/dilruba-ahmed-phase-one/

Intro and reading 0~3:00 minute mark
commentary 3:00~11:15 minute mark
second reading at 11:30 mark

Beautiful hammer-dulcimer segues too.

SD

Oh my my. How lovely. How necessary. How kind! I've only just now listened to O'Tuama's reading but am a big On Being fan. Going to jump right back in the pool then for the whole episode, but thank you thank you thank you, SD.

Hello JennaM,

Your note of thanks made me happy.
Sometimes a good poem is just the thing... something to hold on to, and return to.

And Padraig has such a wonderful voice and delivery and seems like a beautiful soul.

Another poet you probably know of is Mary Oliver, interviewed and reading at OnBeing, and another YouTube reading of her poem "Wild Geese".

https://onbeing.org/programs/mary-oliver-i-got-saved-by-the-beauty-of-the-world/

Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese"
https://youtu.be/lfayiBoaXE8

-----------------------------------
"You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.