"Poetry is Medicine"

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Despair

How to describe it?
This feeling of living in a house
with no floors.
Just the walls.
And for some reason
I do not fall
through the bottom,
but stay suspended in mid-air.
When I finally

will fall off
this invisible glass floor that I'm standing on:
Will I crash onto a glass floor below?
Or crash right through it?
Even the basement does not have a floor.
The pit
just goes on and on.
And somewhere below
the little light that is left
is petering out
into total darkness.

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The Minefield

What if
You have been born
right in the middle
of a gigantic minefield?
The explosions -
never ceasing.
Hardly a day
passing without

an earthshaking eruption.
The screams
of the wounded
becoming a constant companion.
When
will it be
my turn?
And I will be
dismembered,
or vanish
from the face of the earth.
Being blown to bits
after a too brief life
of

fear,

suffering,
shame
and misery.