Doubts, a Poem

It's been a while since I've written poetry, but sometimes it is easier to express things in that medium. It's a different medium for the words in my head.

Doubts 

Slithering fingers
Piercing my fragile brain
Worming past concrete barriers
Walls of hope and light
Offending digits
Leaving trails of disgust
Loathing and worry
I hack them off
Leaving bloody stumps
Wiggling obscenely
Reforming flesh and sinew
Flaying my soul anew.


No matter how hard we try to avoid it, there will be doubts. We doubt because we lay bare our souls for the world to judge. I paint with words as an artist does with colors. We both will doubt and fear that someone will find us wanting.

Despite that, I can't stop. The words won't let me. I stop, I cease to be. At least that part of me that revels in the flow of words. In the creating and shaping of worlds, lives, and stories. I've been there for too long. Years of my life wasted by being a slave to my doubts and fears.

Years ago, I met a man named Ed Brunt, police officer, Tae Kwon Do master, poet. He came to my Junior High and spoke to us. He told me something that has stayed with me for years.

All of you could gang up and beat me physically. But only I can defeat myself mentally.

At the time, I didn't understand what he was saying.

I do now.

Only I can stop me from succeeding. I am my doubts, my fears, my own worst enemy. If I chose, I can succumb to those feelings and stagnate or I can rise above it. I accept that I have doubt. I accept that I have fear. I accept that a part of me will think I am nothing.

But these things are only a part of me and not the whole of me. By accepting it, I make it less. By owning it, I make it my slave. By moving forward, I make it smaller.

'Till Next Time