Category Archives: psychology

September 2, 2022 · 3:09 pm

There Used To Be Twenty – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Linda is hosting Open Link Night when we are invited to post a poem of our choosing.

dVerse Poets – OLN

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.” Edgar Allan Poe

There Used To Be Twenty

I'm having a garage sale,
my sanity's going cheap,
and my vanity is worn so
make me an offer and I'll 
throw in a few lost aspirations
and some fragments of jealousy,
there's a chunk of broken
innocence, sadly no spare parts,
though I can offer bits of 
placated ego that might help
patch that mess, and there's
a box of baggage for when 
you're haunted, and a couple
of packets of mixed nuts and
a bag of marbles, there used
to be twenty but five are missing,
cash only.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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August 30, 2022 · 2:36 pm

Shedding – Haibun by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Mish is hosting Haibun Monday with an invitation to write about Shelter.

dVerse Poets – Haibun – Give Me Shelter

“A house is a home when it shelters the body and comforts the soul.” Phillip Moffit

Shedding

I sought the rusted sheets with popped springhead nails that constituted a place of imperfect refuge, where the wind rattled the loosening sheets with devilish thoughts of crisis, and the rain laughed in penetrating bullets of inaccuracy that threatened reality. The corrie strained and shifted with metallic moans that wrenched my gut as the rain drenched my sense of doubt.

In the shed I shed tears of sorrow as the storm passed both within and without, and I longed for the assurance of summer’s dry calm, that quiet air of warm repose offering slow, delicate thoughts of life so different to this winter of my soul. In letting go I found a peace of incomplete and imperfect arrival, with none of the expected sophistication of a revival of soul, just the plain ordinariness of self understanding.

In the shed I shed my skins of old, like a python letting a season’s past regress, and the salt that burned my cheeks retired. And though the memories are retained I no longer own them. This place of shelter from the elements is shelter from my storm.

Winter's rusted sheets
let water slowly leak in
my soul is hidden


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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August 24, 2022 · 3:49 pm

Perhaps It’s The Cypress After All – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse guest host Jo is hosting Poetics with an invitation to write about scent.

dVerse Poets – Poetics – A World of Common Scents

Photo: State Forest reserve in Kirup, Western Australia, forests have their own, very complex scents.

“She stood for a long time breathing in and breathing in, the scent of the trees ….” Margaret Atwood

Perhaps It's The Cypress After All

Cypress stirs my body memory,
so too the wattle blossom of winter,
ah, yes, the wet dog after rain at the
salted, seaweed strewn beach remains,
along with cinnamon toast on a cold 
night's mist, the sweat of love pulsing
my inarticulate flesh, simple scents, 
the easy embodiments of youth.

But what of the hidden things,
is there a scent for wisdom or
compassion, is there a scent for 
soul, for reflection? 

Perhaps it's the cypress after all.



Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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August 22, 2022 · 4:17 pm

Somewhere In The Middle – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

“Our capacity for self-deception has no known limits.” Michael Novak

Somewhere In The Middle

She tells her early life three ways,
the innocent child who was bullied 
by her calculating brother,
the young teen rejected by her
indifferent father or,
the older teen rescued by her
caring brother,
victim, martyr, sufferer,
and somewhere in the middle of 
it all lies the truth which has been
mangled and pressed down,
like a bitter vintage slowly sipped
until it no longer offends and
tastes sweet in the jumbled retelling,
a mask of normalcy and a ritual
that hides an inability to accept 
the lived experience. 


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights reserved ®️

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August 14, 2022 · 2:21 pm

Acceptance – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

“How can one liberate the many? By first liberating his own being.” Lao Tzu

Acceptance

The self is a greek tragedy
looking, longing for soul,
desiring to overcome the 
great wound of separation,
that bifurcation of unity 
one calls love, into a 
dismembered anxiety, 
the self as scab to be
picked at first, then in guilt 
be covered, that its shame 
might be healed before 
it is discovered,
until age usurps the 
chorus with the wisdom
of acceptance.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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August 13, 2022 · 12:38 pm

Needs To Be Opened – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

“The cruelest prison of all is the prison of the mind.” Piri Thomas

Needs To Be Opened

If you believe a thing,
does it become a thing
and colonise your mind,
cages, cells, atrophy,
a place without bars,
incarcerated thoughts,
self-held with an 
unconscious iron will,
or is it fear that shuts
the thinking, feeling door
that needs to be opened
so wide, nothing 
can be contained, 
simply entertained 
and loosely held.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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August 9, 2022 · 2:33 pm

Type? – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse De is hosting the Quadrille with an invitation to write a poem using the word type or any of its forms.

dVerse Poets – Quadrille – What’s Your Type?

Photo: mrmrsintagetypewriters.com. The once popular duck egg blue Imperial portable typewriter. We still have one in working order, it outlived the Brother Electronic typewriter.

“There has been, is, and always will be every conceivable type of person.” E.M. Forster

Type?

Did Cicero use helvetica or
plain it with times roman,
and how did Gurdjieff get
nine or Jung four, while 
chapman gave love five,
and who knows if I'm 
sagacious, diabetic, alpha, 
A positive or negative?
I do know imperial is my type.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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June 5, 2022 · 3:34 pm

I’m Sure It Was The Clarinet – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: from exploringyourmind.com

“Our feelings are the most genuine paths to knowledge.” Audre Lorde

I'm Sure It Was The Clarinet

Yesterday I lost a feeling within,
it surfaced and I couldn't quite
locate its origins, and it slipped 
through my ponder for all to see,
it left me feeling irritable and
restless, it might have been the
clarinet buried in the background,
or the shards of charcoal lazing 
on the hearth, perhaps the 
reminiscence of a face or name,
I'm sure it was the trigger of the
clarinet, whatever, it changed my 
mood, a signal for me to look
carefully inwards and now I'm
digging deeper. 


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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April 1, 2022 · 3:27 pm

Everything – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Ingrid is hosting Open Link Night – where we link a poem of our choosing.

dVerse Poets – OLN – Spring Has Sprung!

Photo: The power of emotional maturity – wisdomfromnorth.com

“Everyone is an ocean inside.” Khaled Hosseini

Everything

I want to sit in the light,
to know what slices darkness
and why the sun laughs out loud,
to untie the knot of oppression 
for all who pass along this way,
to understand, that as my skin 
holds my innards, what holds 
the wriggling, translucent bag
of emotions from spilling out,
and would it matter if they did,
spilling might be good, not
everything can be held long in
perfect balance, but everything
can be given time to distill,
even resolve, if not fully, at
the very least, just a feeling 
of being at one with everything.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved®

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February 3, 2022 · 11:11 pm

Even When – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Linda is hosting Open Link Night, where we are invited to post a poem of our own choosing.

dVerse Poets – OLN – Smile

Image: found at letterpile.com

“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.” May Sarton

Even When

The diversity of my parts are not the sum of me,
but merely the complexity of possibilities,
I am not my body's disparate functionality
divorced nor captive to its parts dogmatised
by loud voices from the past as if they are flags
of virtue, I am not an acronym to be sung as a 
standard, never a diagnosis or an expectation to
be pinned, roled, or approved as part of some
myopic, narrow definition; I am not that, I am
myself as I find myself at any given moment, even
when I am a stranger to myself.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

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