Spoken Word // Mismatched Shoes

I am walking along this path wearing mismatched shoes,
To some this may bemuse or confuse, yet I refuse to be judged on my decisions.

Under a cloudless sky I begin to wonder, if we simply ignored the thunder claps in our ears, would it erradicate fears or would we still adhere to stereotypes? We are not anyones prototype.

Our minds are a wishbone, well known, and unknown all at the same time, yet society has a complex paradigm which we are obliged to climb. This is a waste of your time.

Life will always be full of conspiracies but if you live within your idiosyncrasies you will begin to believe. You have been given a reprieve, a chance to breathe.

So excuse me if I continue to walk along this path in my mismatched shoes, along those hidden avenues. This is my life and this is what I choose.

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Smiley Faces // SPOKEN WORD

As a child, what was more fun than drawing on condensation?

That sheer exhilaration and fascination which surrounds the depiction of an image onto glass.

As a child, it became an addiction, every time it rained, it’s like the habit was engrained and my mother she complained, yet it kept me entertained.

We would draw stick men and smiley faces which would fade but still leave noticeable traces of a child’s carefree innocence.

Gone are those days now, it’s considered juvenile.

As an adult we must be more versatile, yet we are walking through life in single file, while we stockpile these memories of the past into locked compartments in our mind.

I feel so confined, can we go back to a world that was undefined. Less unkind.

Can we go back to the places where I left traces of smiley faces?

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Haiku: Embrace The Change

Sometimes when I am lost in thought, I wish time would come to a standstill, allow me to stop and catch my breath. I feel like sometimes the world is on fast forward, speeding away like a runaway train, with me running to catch up but falling behind getting lost instead.  

Life throws us hurdles and its our job to be resilliant enough to overcome them, to leap over them and embrace the challenge ahead.

“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” - Martin Luther King

 Recently, I received the news that I would not be able to complete my degree due to an exam that i just could not pass after attempting it four times. Naturally, I was disappointed, I felt like I had let myself down, despite how hard I had worked. For a while, I let those feelings fill me up inside, convince me that I was a failure and that there was nothing I could do now to change that. That I had let everyone down.
I was wrong.

I think we all get that moment of clarity after a while, that little voice in your head shouting back, arguing with yourself and willing you to believe that you are enough, you are not a failure, life just has a different path for you to take. So I dusted myself down, had a cup of tea (well I am British after all) and focused on the positivity that surrounds me every day.

Embrace the change that life throws at you, no matter what that may be.
Don't be afraid to walk along undiscovered footpaths and snickets once in a while because sometimes you need to lose yourself to find yourself again.

As a lover of all things writing, I thought I would try my hand at a style of poem that I have never tried before; a haiku. The message behind the haiku is simply that you never know where life is going to take you so just go with it, similar to a dandelion seed floating on the breeze.

Keep smiling

Joanna

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Collateral Damage // SLAM POEM

I am collateral damage.

What I mean by that is whilst many people manage a mostly equilateral existence, mine seems to be more unilateral by comparison. 

Predisposed to being so often discarded without a second thought, is it any wonder that I am now so guarded.

My heart mimicking thunder claps, as the thoughts crawling through my brain relapse. Now so fraught and frayed that I walk through a handmade greyed existence.  

Hiding in masquerade, shrouded in mist, wishing to exist in a world that doesn’t resist. You are not my ventriloquist.

I am a maverick, put an asterisk by my name but you might want to step back to avoid the flame, my life is a continuous waiting game. 

Waiting for that warm embrace, for the world to just fall into place. If I retrace the footsteps of my past, would I still be the outcast? 

There were never auditions, the positions were already filled. Life itself must be distilled. 

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It takes more muscles to frown than to smile so smile they say. Easier said than done. It’s easy to paint a smile on your face to convince others that you are happy but your brain is not so easily deceived. A smile that doesn’t quite reach your eyes, the window to your soul, something now so shattered and fragmented that it’s barely in one piece. Add pressure and it would surely break

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Impossible Expectations

The clock ticks nearer, closer to midnight and closer to ‘the new you!’. It is a horribly common misconception that the moment that hand reaches midnight and it is the start of a new year, you become this completely new person, completely separate from the person you were five seconds ago. 

The logic is due to it being ‘a new year!’ A new year does not mean a clean slate, just because the number at the end of the year changes does not mean your money problems, weight problems or relationship problems suddenly vanish? They are still there, just briefly hidden underneath  all the empty promises and unrealistic goals that you set yourself at the start of a year. 

Fast forward a month into the new year and there is chocolate in your shopping basket, you haven’t stepped foot in the gym yet, your nails have been bitten off and that glimmer of motivation you once had is trickling away like water in cupped hands. 

What people forget is that these things take time, something that is often in short supply nowadays. You can’t just eat salad for a week and expect to see a difference, you need to keep on working at it and don’t get disheartened if things don’t go right first time. However, this is made much harder to do due to the interference of other people, claiming to know better, criticising anything you do and saying that despite your best efforts that you are destined to fail. How is that constructive? How is that helping? 

You may think you love that person, that by saying these things you are helping them? But the reality of it is that your words are self deprecating. She will look at herself and feel like a failure, question the point, if she is destined to fail then why try? And even if she were to succeed, would you be proud? Would you tell her that she is beautiful? Would you tell her she can conquer the world and that she can accomplish anything she sets her mind to? Or would you find another flaw, 

The mind is a delicate thing, and those thoughts that you have embedded in her brain will burrow down and take root, infecting her thoughts spreading like seeds right up until every corner of her mind is covered in dandelions. 

Words are powerful. You never know the damage you could cause. Choose them carefully. 

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