Walls of my Mind

Life is a constant war

 

Every insult is like an attack

Every argument is like a battle

Every fight is like a siege

But like a great wall

I will remain

 

The wall stands

To protect that which lays inside

Protect me from war

Protect from things that wish to harm me

That is its job

 

When war comes to me

When those who hate send out their armies

In hopes to break my barriers

If the bricks begin to crack

And the wall begins to wither

 

I have no choice but to protect

 

I must divert energy to the wall

I must thwart off my enemies

I must keep my defense alive

But in doing so

I must sacrifice my sanity

 

I will win

 

I would rather fortify my walls

Then feed my psyche

As I ignore the starving of my mind

The fields of my conscious will dry up

The forests of my memories will be cut down to fuel factories

Factories that spew taint the water

So that the river of my imagination runs red with industrial hate

 

Slowly

my mind will die

 

But it is better to kill yourself

Then to be killed by another

 

Explanation: This is a poem about the inner-workings of the mind. Many people become very hostile when anyone shows any signs of aggression, and I was once like that. I would become both verbally hostile and sometimes even physically hostile when people showed even minor criticism I found; however, that this behavior left me feeling sad and depressed, even though I had won the argument. I was inspired by the great Jade Bartlett when I read her poem, Doll Face. In that she used a doll house that was used and abused to represent how people treated her. I realized that I could use metaphorical objects to represent human behaviors and thoughts. I don’t really know why my mind went to the Great Wall of China, but it did. I then used the idea of a defensive wall to represent how human can build their own sort of defenses against other people. Our defenses are used to keep negativity from getting into our thoughts. But when someone becomes over defensive it can cause just as much, if not more, mental damage then whatever you where defending from. That is where I believe those feeling of depression and loneliness came from. I have since changed my ways but this poem exists as a reminder to me about a time when I was filled with hate.