Unmentionables

TheFeatheredSleep

What can’t be said aloud

or even blown into an envelope

placed in a bottle and set to sea

or kept beneath your pillow in diary

those words and feelings without words cannot

find a place of expression

for a multitude of reasons or just one

you carry them around like a weight

dripping from your neck

sometimes in a weak moment

you feel yourself urging to spill

the bunting and string it high

confidences for everyone to see

what’s the worst that could happen?

and yet, you know, the worst

is bad enough to keep

you quiet

how many others, you wonder

carry their own list of unmentionables

and what would they be?

any in common or always unique?

if you let someone know

the sum of you

would they

grow bored?

become disgusted?

smile and say ‘i understand’

when they did not?

who can understand the deep of us?

where we dare not venture, let alone another

what permissions given and retracted

exist?

like the long necked lillies that spring

miraculously from dry texan ground

after it has rained and

the electric mist has caused wonder

to touch the barren

perhaps it is a sign when

you can talk of such things

late into the night

with a stranger you will never

meet again

or that you whisper to yourself

the varied outcomes of confession

strung on a tree, lighting dark road

no, sometimes it is best

we model our forefathers and mothers

who knew what to keep to themselves

for years they held them in jars

turning to the light once in a while

and when they died, sometimes you would find

one survived the cull

and everyone would hush and hold their breaths

in inky silence

not sure of how to respond

somehow a secret after you are gone

doesn’t hold the same concern

and maybe they were free of them

in that hour

when all who knew, discovered

they had not

known them at all

22 thoughts on “Unmentionables”

  3. Before i go on the
    Feathered Sleep
    is such a Two
    Word
    Poem
    among
    is self as
    Words come
    Organic Reflection
    of who we are so far
    as Sleep will be Twilight
    of Warm And Fuzzy Comfort
    or Flight into Dreams Fruition
    Effortless as Daylight Turns Night
    Forevernow
    ‘Tween
    in
    Midnight
    Noon Day Love
    Summer Spring
    DeLiGHT ALWaYS
    NoW True VirtuAlly
    iMpossible to: Capture From:
    Heaven in Words As Heaven
    Lives howEver SpArks now may
    Fly HeaVeN LiveS oN as Morning
    Star BRiGHT STiLL ALWayS to come
    it’s worth
    noting
    my FriEnd
    to me at lEast then
    not speaking until Four
    For Grand Expectations
    of others still not able then
    to Form a Creative Paragraph
    After Three College Degrees then
    other than a Technical List Working
    at a Bowling Alley For Close to Two
    Decades then.. Sure copy and paste
    High Scores for Bowling Tournaments
    too.. coming to Learn more about Computers
    And then Being Described as a Computer Soul..
    it’s true
    life is a
    reference
    point of now
    depending on how
    Many Colors we come
    to Paint with Potential
    Emotions and Senses
    Set Free and all i
    Will Truly
    say
    NoW
    iS how
    Fortunate am i
    for this modern fuller
    abiLiTy to sWirl aRound
    A Globe and Land on so
    Much Beauty of what comes
    in both dArk and liGht of the Human
    Condition now for every drop of Humanity
    from Abyss Beyond Heaven BecoMes the Flavor
    and Taste of my Soul as it continues to Grow Freely
    totally exposed
    for true
    my FriEnd
    Candice this
    Feathered Sleep
    is one for Comfort and
    Pain and Flight for all that
    is Pleasure True iN LiGHT
    and NiGHT
    tHere is
    never
    a time
    equal
    to now for
    those who are
    Not afraid to expose all tHeir Soul Free
    As This is what Birds Do Never Cover
    Their Wings NoW WitH CloThes..
    of
    ‘fore
    in Close
    So oPen NoW iN FLoW
    Swum by Water Be Air Feathered Sleep
    it’s True mY FriEnd the Feathered Sleep From: A
    Cover now to: i may not look like a Katie Mia Frederick but i am..:)

  8. Indeed, there are secrets our shadow selves keep even from us, and there are those we know and keep from others. Still, there are those rare, so much too rare, times that one spills out and someone says, “What?! You too!? I thought I was the only one.”

  12. Everybody needs a priest at one time or another. She may nor wear a clerical collar or pray the rosary; she may simply bear a large heart to hold others’ brokenness. She may be a stranger; she may be a friend. But when we meet her we will know she can bear our burden – our unmentionable . . . I would be such a priest. And so would you . . . I do love your poem!

  13. Ha good comparison w Jung and Shadow self wish I’d thought of that very true he said it best, and I find it fascinating as so many carry secrets nobody knows and in the olden days when someone died maybe people would find out … Really interesting to me.

  14. I totally relate. I really think about this a lot. The ebb and flow of the confessional versus the I’ll take it to the grave! Plus all the people we know and their unsaid things. Like a secret world. A layer unvisited.

  22. I am going to say something totally unrelated and random to this thought-provoking poem of yours. I have valiantly been trying to do ‘catch up’ reading having been away for a month. And I have sadly come to the conclusion that it is a task of such Herculean proportions that it is well nigh impossible 😦 So I will offer this one over-arching comment to all those poems of yours that I have missed – I am utterly and absolutely convinced that they are ALL fabulous in their own unique ways 🙂 xx

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