I’ve been listening to too much NF (lies! I love all his music) and the Mansion reference at the beginning of this is aimed at his first big album. All his albums and singles are great, and worth checking out.

I am also a fan of spoken-word style poetry with loose structure, soft rhymes, and rhythmic phrasing. I occasionally write such pieces as the lyrical equivalent of emotional venting on a given subject or feeling.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a piece about the human condition and the “bad wolf” in the popular analogy about two wolves. Really, I wrote it to ensure I sent something in for our critique group, but it led to some conversation and deeper thoughts after the meeting.

We talked about whether there was something “more” in the proverbial basement, psychologically speaking. While I can’t claim any significant trauma or tragedy in my past, I do habitually shove my frustrations and emotions down to shut them up–partly because I try to pick battles worth fighting, and partly because I try too hard to avoid conflict.

All that stuff festers and builds up, if not checked or dealt with. Contemplating that led to this bit of “poetry.”

The Basement

To borrow from Mansion, maybe build an expansion

I’m considering action toward the house that I’m trapped in,

all these feelings I’ve wrapped in the lines that I’ve crapped in

to documents tapping the keys like I’m rapping

but I know I’m lacking—-Lotsa talk but no backing,

lotsa thoughts but still slacking, lotsa dreams but they’re stacking

like firewood packed in a shack getting racked up

for hacking to kindling I’m axing the questions

I’m tracking the lessons but passing up chances

amassing like cancer, outlasting the answer

by lapsing in trances and grasping at fancies

and fables and falsehoods in fashion

like all of the lies that I cash in

when I choose to live out excuses

and act satisfied when I know that I tried

with far less than the best of my passion

 

I know there’s something in the basement, but I thought I boarded that door,

Did I make a mistake in the placement, did I open a hole in the floor?

Don’t you think that’s some kind of statement, do you wanna know what came before?

Maybe this goes beyond entertainment, we ain’t creative writing no more

When the fear or the pain or the hatred rears its head through the holes that it tore

I don’t know if I can restrain it if I open up down to my core

If I can’t even start to explain it, how could I hope to win such a war

All these white-washed walls’ll be painted blood-red with emotional gore

some kind of lore, some kind of more that I’ve held back in store,

some kind of knowledge encountered before,

maybe I took a mental detour,

maybe I turned something painful I learned,

some experience earned,

some life lesson I spurned,

like a victim got burned,

a prisoner blamed and unnamed,

restrained and contained

 

Like a blur that you see for a minute

at the edge of peripheral vision

but when you turn your eye to look in it

what you thought was right there—now it isn’t

and the hairs on your neck start to raisin’

like there’s someone behind you appraising

all the weakness in you, like he’s gazing

at the prey that he’s planning on tasting

And those holes in the floor are his ceiling,

when he’s looking at them I start feeling

like he’s reaching up through it and stealing

all the joy and the possible healing

all the good things I say, he rewrites em,

all the good deeds I do, redefines em,

absolution? he keeps it behind him

in the dark where he knows I won’t find him,

and his voice echoes up from the stairwell

with a challenge he knows I won’t bear well,

“Wanna come down and play Show and Don’t Tell?”

‘cause he tells me confession won’t fare well

all the pain in my heart, I will hold it,

try to trap it, collapse it, enfold it

in a poem or song where I’ve told it,

in a part but never the full bit,

that would take recognizing the whole of role

of the beast that retreats to my soul pit

and I’d rather just give it the bullet,

got my hand on the trigger—can’t pull it,

so it stays in the place where I placed it,

I guess it’s the guest in the basement