PAD Challenge - Day 5 - Unearthed

We've reached Day 5 of the WD 2014 April PAD Challenge! Today's prompt was to write a discovery poem. I started out with intentions to write about discovering some beautiful, metaphorical gem, but instead had yesterday's them about discovering someone's judgmental attitude still teasing and taunting me. I fought it because I wanted to write something uplifting! But, such is the life of a poet... We write what we're driven to discover. What about you? Have you discovered a poem within yearning to be unearthed?

So here is my poem of discovery...




Unearthed

The day I unearthed
Your hypocrisy
Buried under only a thin layer of dry support
I thought my heart would break
I took a deep breath
Looked your judgment square in the eye
Something you had yet to do
Realized I couldn’t show you
What you’d buried so deeply within yourself
You ceased to recognize it in all its glowing ugliness
You hid behind words others spoke and you applauded
While denying you believed what you promoted
Yet your judgment destroyed love
Replaced it with a hate you denied feeling
I wonder if you see the disconnect
When you look in the mirror
The knowledge of what you truly believe
Even if you deny it to yourself
You may wonder why I ceased to share
Now you know
Your judgment belied your hypocrisy
I don’t trust you
And I’m far too vulnerable to fight
Your judgment of things you simply don’t understand
Your worldview tainted by your sheltered experience
Outward support doesn’t trump inner judgment
So keep your judgment and your hypocrisy
I don’t need that kind of faux support
Here’s a shovel
Bury your judgment and hypocrisy for 
Someone else to unearth
T. L. Cooper is an author and poet whose work aims to empower and inspire through an exploration of the human condition. Her poems, short stories, articles, and essays have appeared online, in books, and in magazines. Her published books include a collection of short stories, Soaring Betrayal, her Silhouette Poetry Series, and a novel, All She Ever Wanted. She grew up on a farm in Tollesboro, Kentucky. She currently lives in Albany, Oregon with her husband and three cats.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

When Failure Isn't an Option, But...

The flip side of fear of success is fear of failure. Both end up in paralysis, have some of the same triggers, and share some of the same roots. It can be hard to discern which is which. I've struggled with both, and at times still do. Fear of failure for me was a need to be perfect. I equated perfection with love. I could only be loved if I was perfect. I could only be perfect if I was successful at everything. Failure wasn't an option. An "A" was never good enough in school. Everything I did could be better.  Early in my life I developed a fear of failure that at times has stifled my creativity, my progress, and even lead to complete inaction. In some ways my fear of failure contributed to my later fear of success. I started life confident that I could and would do whatever I wanted, but as I began to encounter those little digs that meant I could never be perfect and the harder I tried to be perfect, the more my imperfections haunted me. When I was assaul...
Read more

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Image
I recently read A Collection of Poems by Robert Frost . It's a beautiful book and one I'd been salivating over for a while, ever since I saw it in Costco several months ago. It is filled with poems that speak to my heart, my imagination, my core. I was thumbing through one day while reading - yeah, I was looking ahead - and came across Nothing Gold Can Stay , and the first thought that popped in my head was "Stay gold, Ponyboy." I stopped in my tracks as a shiver went up my spine and a smile slid across my face. I remembered in that moment the first time I read The Outsiders   by S. E. Hinton . The first time I read Nothing Gold Can Stay in the book, The Outsiders , the first time I heard the poem aloud in the movie , the first time I read the letter at the end of the book, the first time I heard the letter at the end of the movie... Robert Frost and The Outsiders are forever linked in my memory because of this poem. S. E. Hinton used Nothing Gold Can Stay to...
Read more

Benefits to Buying Books

Image
Last week I wrote about supporting authors without buying their books, so this week I want to talk about a few benefits of buying books. To be honest, there's this little voice in my head going "People need reasons to buy books... They're books. That's reason enough." Of course that's the writer and reader in me. The minimalist and anti-consumerist in me totally gets why many people don't want to buy books. Buying books is a commitment. It's adding another "thing" to your shelves, your home, your life. Let me be clear. I understand that people work hard for their money, and buying a book can feel like a luxury. I totally get it. I've been there. The rent, the mortgage, fuel, food should all be higher priorities than buying books. I remember days when I saved change for a month to buy a book. I'm not, in any way, proposing that people sacrifice necessities to buy books. There are advantages to buying a book. You own the book. ...
Read more