Third Layer

Third layer of my trauma’s zone
Speaks strong connection to my home
To me here now years twenty-six
Of all but one I’ve hated which.

It started out OK by far
Though hell broke out, set life ajar.
I sought to find the trouble’s source
Found snake in suit without remorse.

By then I knew the jig was up
Invited me last supper sup
I found it strange they did not eat
Unnerving stood with words so sweet.

They waited till a court-case passed
(As witness used) – pulled plug real fast
Fifteen sweet grand to hush me up
The fastest shekels in my cup!

I festered with that trouble spot
Though good to family move here brought
I then without a way could see
Real good for wife and kids – not me.

I shut my mouth to family give
Less troubled life in town to live –
A game of sniff they play in town
Targets of envy to bring down.

It works – though vicious be the day
From oldest to the youngest play
The sole defense – let truth hang out
And shadow-side of self just flout.

With such an act they cannot deal
Their power o’re folks is threat to squeal
If we’re forgiven and confess
They slink away, their case a mess.

Sometimes we need tight lips to hold
And let them take our source of gold
But costly is such self-defence
Like now, for me, these decades hence.

Again this twisted layer’s there
With sex entwined to increase scare
A false report stopped at the time
Lay smoldering within their slime.

What power sex has to trouble make –
Few quiet words insinuate
That’s all it takes, sends shudders round
While twisted words advance their ground.

It’s not that there’s no trouble here
It’s more that sin skulks under fear
A tangled network checked, cross-checked,
Has town tied up and friendships wrecked.

I dealt with trauma’s angry side
Forgave the guy who tanned my hide.
It set me free from rage within
To set him free from wrongful sin.

I got on with life best I could
Till now – with cancer understood
To be now in my lungs perhaps
Small wonder – given times now past.

So strange how now this layer three
Has Freud’s dynamic links in me
Sex, death, religion inter-twined
With body, soul,emotions, mind.

I’m grateful for Art Therapy
That’s shifted left, right brain set free,
These layered rings of trauma past
So into freedom I can pass.

I need not understand all this
Nor are they critical if missed
Parts I can’t see, or comprehend
Suffice the trauma shifts, to mend.

The breakthrough great of science new
Fact – freedom now for me and you
Great traumas here from any source
Can be removed, all in due course.

As trauma shifts I comprehend
How tangled past has need to mend
This trauma last, the cancer threat
Has yielded greatest freedom yet.

Art therapy was meant to give
A chance at freer life to live
Once it was shifted to left brain
Peace comes for what of life remains.

But as the woman said at first
The other troubles often burst
Out from their layers of tangled past
Freed from them all we’d be at last.

I wanted photo-life inside
My walk of life – no more to hide.
Hunched some connection was in there
Now it comes clear as traumas bare –

Themselves in layers deep in me
Cross-wired in ways I scarcely see
But even now as traumas shift
The blockage on my photos lift.

Strange world, this land so cancerous
Which lands on us with such a fuss
‘Make sure it gives more than it takes’,
Was good advice – my freedom makes.

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