Life is a funny thing that crawls on your face when you wish it to be over. Gathering sentiment as it forces your mouth open while screaming down your throat. You can’t wake up when the option is gone.
-M. Taggart
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Tag: Depression
My Closet – Poem
A Poem
Written by -M. Taggart
1/21/18
For years I opened my closet door to see nothing
but my own jackets, sweatshirts, boots, shoes, crap.
Eventually my closet and I didn’t get along.
Why bother opening a thing that gives back
only the same memory with no hope of progression.
My boots became more worn. My jackets changed
positions and eventually those too become useless to me.
Five years into being a hard core bachelor
-nothing could control me. Not a thing,
except for my fucking closet.
I specifically remember opening my brother’s closet
during a family event. It was the twins birthday.
I was among the last to leave. I had ruffled their hair,
told them I loved them- they ran off into another room
and I opened their closet door to find my jacket.
This was my brother’s home and my brother’s life.
In his closet hung children’s jackets. Some of which
had little ears. And on the back of the closet door
hung shoe and boot holders and in the holders were
little shoes and little boots. I wanted to cry. I wanted
to do more than cry but instead I closed the door and
walked out of my brother’s house and got into my truck.
I shut the door, turned the radio on, and drove. I drove
through farmland and shut the damn music off because I
never listen to music and it was nothing more than a mask
for having looked into another closet that was not a closet
at all, but a life. A home. A real home. I had my four walls
and my closet that I didn’t get along with waiting for me.
-Now though..I sit here thinking of that asshole closet of mine
and about how somehow, someway, it’s still there. And now
It’s the one who is alone because I am no longer alone and haven’t
been for a long, long while. Even before I met Megan. Something
happened. Something that propelled my being into what I was
meant to be, to live, to see. And now when I open my closet, it isn’t
my old boots. It’s life. It’s beautiful life. Megan’s fluffy jacket’s that
I couldn’t possibly understand how to wear, it’s her boots that I couldn’t
possibly walk in, it’s her smile hiding in the hood of her jacket, I open
my closet now and I see my son’s winter jacket puffing out at me, begging
me to put it on him. I see tiny little ears. I see little boots. And little shoes.
This is my closet, and this is my most favorite closet that I have ever had.
-M. Taggart
This Christmas
A smile can hide all the hurt in the world-
A caring question from the right person
Will set them free
-M. Taggart
Please. This Christmas, if you become aware that someone is struggling, ask them a question such as, ‘Do you need me to listen?’ And then..just listen. Say nothing. It isn’t your hurt. It’s theirs. Or ask them if you can sit with them. Don’t drag them further down by pointing out they have an attitude when it’s the happiest day of the year. Because that part is a lie and they will only use the truth to further distance themselves.
Cheers.
Matt
Odd Walking Thoughts – Don’t keep
We walk into the shadow of death to pull one wounded child from its depths, to find another daft man standing in the corner. Leaves are shuffling outside my window. A man with a golden heart is gone. Another stands in a room looking. Don’t block me. I am here and at least I have my fingers. The man in the room standing, looking daft, asks for silence because silences never questions. Never says a damn word. The girl with the golden brow would have cared for a word. And the boy with the covers pulled tight would have cared for the same.
**
copyright 2017
-M. Taggart
No way home – Poem
lying face down-
with vomit spilling from his mouth
we let him be
We tried to tell him with words-
Hard top roads
are all the same-
only this one-
is yours
Tomorrow-
after the stench has cleared,
He’ll speak with a clean tongue-
And tell you everything you want to hear
**
copyright 2017
Odd Walking Thoughts
The child hurt. But had no scratches. No bruises. No black eye. Now the child wrings both hands together furiously and places them, palms down, on each thigh to feel warmth. Nearby, the petals of a yellow rose droop from the weight of the rain. Spilling now, what small amounts had gathered in the folds of the fragrant bloom. The child reaches for the dripping flower, smiling. ‘Can I pour my life out too?’ the child whispers. ‘And start again.’
Thought Drop
When confidence isn’t met with execution, or production, depression finds confidence and destroys it to hell. -M. Taggart
Odd Walking Thoughts
Being in a depression is seeing too clearly. Eventually either truth consumes us completely, or we create fog and come out of it. A weed grows nicely. A child plucks the weed from the ground. Isn’t that a nice weed. -M. Taggart
copyright 2017
No More Angels – A Poem
Under the chair rocks a breeze
Indentured to the dirt and dust
Out of which comes a ball of hair
Further now it travels
Into the wild openness of the floor
Your floor which you keep immaculate
You see this insult nearly floating about
Seething and spewing mindlessness
This fur, this thing, it cannot be
Not on this floor – certainly not within this house
When rushing to capture this weightless debris
The chair rocks more deeply than before
Set about are three more
It must be the cat – It couldn’t be me
The mop bucket sloshed and readied
Always this – Always this – Never any more
Inside this head rests the tallest walls
So strongly built there is no out
The children’s laughter bounced from the old house-
Making the dilapidated clap boards seem to dance-
Even the sun-warped windows were beginning to smile-
They ran and shouted and cheered-
The sunshine splashed down on their hair and made angels of them-
As they mingled away, the old home was once again alone-
No more dancing clap boards or smiling windows
No more happy children’s laughter
No more angels
Odd Walking Thoughts – Cornstalk
A child walked along the row of corn while looking at the beautiful gleaming sunlight bounce from the stalks. The child wanted to know why they couldn’t always feel as the corn looked as the sun danced upon it. The child hadn’t realized they’d asked the question out loud and the frog had listened. Then the frog replied, ‘We think of ourselves in bad ways and then we think of ourselves in good ways and sure enough we then don’t know which way to think of ourselves at all.’
copyright 2016 -M. Taggart
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