From Anxiety To Poetry

From Anxiety To Poetry
Simon Read

Anxiety: those debilitating periods when time stops, and you’re bursting with spiralling thoughts and feelings of negavtivity. I have suffered with anxiety for as long as I can recall.In 2022 I became interested in poetry and decided to give it a try. The simple acts of thinking and writing have been enough at most times to slow down the anxiety process in me.I hope that you may be able to relate to some of these poems and I encourage you to try poetry as an outlet for your own anxieties.

From Anxiety To Poetry

Simon Read

© Simon Read, 2023

ISBN 978-5-0060-6710-3

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

From Anxiety to Poetry

Anxiety: those debilitating periods when time stops, and your head and stomach are bursting with exponentially negative and spiralling thoughts and feelings of chaos, doom, and sickness. When darkness unexpectedly and rapidly descends, the world closes in, and your senses are overwhelmed by the impending catastrophe graphically imagined and entertained in every minutia by your overanxious mind. When your ability to function in any capacity resembling normality completely breaks down and you’re frozen to the spot, unable to think, unable to process the consequences of an event that has, or perhaps never will, happen. When no one can reach you because you’re pinned and immobilised under an immense burden of dread at the bottom of a deep chasm of despair that no one else sees.

I have suffered with anxiety (the kind that’s the constant and general worry and fear about everything) for as long as I can recall. It’s there with me the moment I wake, when I go to bed and for most of the time in-between. In 2022, I became interested in poetry and decided to give it a try; not as a deliberate exercise to improve my mental health, but simply as a casual distraction from the day-to-day grind of life in my late forties. Without any conscious decision or forethought, the context of my writing immediately started channelling my anxiety-ridden thoughts, probably because my mind was always so full of them. Very soon, thinking about rhymes and poems and writing them down became a natural and comfortable outlet for my anxious energies so that they could be gently coaxed out and calmly dispersed and not suddenly explode and violently overwhelm me. The simple and cathartic acts of both thinking and writing have been enough at most times in this past year to slow down the anxiety process in me such that I may manage it, rather than have it consume me.

These two hundred or so poems are simply concentrated distillations of my observations, thoughts, and feelings, at the instance of their creation. Some are very sombre, some are personifications of nature’s elements (a very relatable theme that I very much enjoyed exploring), some are simple experiments in wordplay, rhyme, syllables, symmetry, and alliteration, and a small few are intentionally humorous. I’ll let you decide which is which.

Wherever you find these poems on the mood spectrum of dark, grey, or light, I hope that you may be able to relate to some of them in some small way. Furthermore, I strongly encourage you to start creating poetry as an outlet for expressing and releasing your own anxious energies – should they exist within you. Perhaps, through thinking and writing about your own feelings, thoughts, and observations over a sustained period of time, you will be able to include poetry as an invaluable addition to your own mental health wellbeing, just like I have.

    11

May 2022

“Pause Life’s race…”

Pause Life’s race
As distant childhood’s recalled
Of innocence, splendour, and wonder.

When did you lose
All those magical dreams
And allow your thoughts to languish so sombre?

    13

May 2022

“A machine is leverage…”

A machine is leverage
A mechanism
A catalyst employed to some ends.

But don’t compare it with me
A human
For we are not friends.

It is soulless iron, plastic
And void.

I am flesh with blood
Hope with despair
Alive, not android.

And yet all love is lost
Within me
Somewhere.

    14th May 2022

“Stalling on another standby…”

Stalling on another standby
For another wasted cause
In the waiting room of life
In my own repetitive pause.

Waiting for an unlikely letter
Committing every hope to feel better.

And when one finally arrives
How all despairs swiftly depart
Like a treacherous love affair
How hope corrupts my shallow heart.

    16

May 2022

“Devoid of inspiration…”

Devoid of inspiration
Deprived imagination
Seven syllable rhyming
Such easy application.

    18

May 2022

“Retracing mindful walks…”

Retracing mindful walks
Within leafy woods