Today you are the critic!

I recently unearthed this poem that I wrote as a college undergrad for a course I took in writing poetry.  I can’t remember what the assignment topic was but I mean, whoa…. Angry much???

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I see you standing isolated and alone
In the searing
white
spotlight
of your own self-criticism.
In a small, dark closet
at the back of the big, empty house.

It began with just one drink.

I feel your eyes, lips, fingertips,
exploding
with pent-up anger and
frustrations
screaming to be unleashed
unheeding, unmindful, uncaring
of the scorched, ravaged, buckled and furrowed creases
of my brow and blanched, clasped hands.

I hear your whipping words of woe and want
as they beat
relentlessly
upon the walls of my bursting eardrums
begging and pleading
again,
for deafness.

I taste your bitter accusations as you spray and spit
acrid acidity
pent-up inside of you
down
my
throat.

It burns.
I don’t like it.
It hurts.

I smell the rot that
days
months
years
decades…
could not erase.

The stench of secrets kept too long and never shared;
Pain
kept selfishly
close,
setting you apart,
eating you,
inside-out.

It began with just one drink.

And that drink has set you free…
Free.
Free to share all of this
and more,
with me.