Coddled Insanity for Hannah D. By Mandi G. 2 word challenge

beautiful... deep...

Feeling better today, I see
Good work

thanks Lisa and Stephen. better but not 100%. It is easier to write with the tv and music off though.

Wow Mandi! That was intense, terrific!!

Very nice.

You spoke chapters in just a few words. Terrific!

thanks bonnie, george and barbara!

Amazing. That is great writing.

Lindsey, thank you!

Very mysterious, but this poem has the art of simple expression and is what the critics call highly aesthetic (high-toned word meaning 'beautiful'). I didn't get it, but I became enamored by the challenge to understand it. Any poem that gets to the heart of another person's reality is ultimately a gift because it's shared with openness, trust, and vulnerability. So, my thanks to you.

To me, this speaks of the fear and pain of losing someone you love desperately. Thanks for articulating this for me.

Deep and moving..

Kingston, thank you.. alot of people who don't understand the meaning behind a poem move on with out trying.. you didn't. That is special.

Rachel, you got it. thanks!

Cheryl, Thank you so much!

Mandi, not being a 'poem person' I had to reread this several times myself. The feeling I got was definitely intense. This was....WOW...for a better lack of words.

why thank you Serina!

I love "never allowing the pain to coddle me". I totally get it! Sometimes an individual can find pain comforting if it is all they know. I love the strength in identifying this within your work.

dawn and jeff, thanks so much!

This poem has that scary jagged feel of a suppressed trauma that eludes the survivor, who knows that it lurks in their core self, and uprooting it would cause the loosening of the moorings of sanity.
A sfumato ambiguity mercifully veils the speaker from the terror, which is expressed in paradoxical terms: "caressing my fears:" "allows nothing/but gives me everything'. The trauma is erotic, but inspires dread; freezes the speaker's spontaneity, but allows her a deeper range of heroic creativity.
Usually I don't like lyric poems that lack specific sensory referents (what the imagists called objective correspondences) for their feeling states, unless the poem that results has negotiated the near impossible balancing act of saying what it is, and being that, simultaneously. Examples of this are the best work of Emily Dickinson and Denise Levertov.
Having said that, I have to declare this poem falls into that special category of abstract, fearless lyric perfection, thanks to it's authors mindfulness, poetic skills, and facing up to her own unbearable experience, one degree removed. Mandi, if I appear overly analytical and a bit on the psychological side it is only to understand your intention better, and to do justice to this vibrantly dolorous poem.
You dove into your own wreck from the past, and brought back a pearl of great personal price to you. The treasure on the page that you have surfaced for all of us has touched everyone who commented before me in a deeper way that I can intuitively express, so I cast my net with the meagre tools of logic and poetics. As a survivor of my traumas, I salute your courage and say God bless you.
As a fellow poet, I congratulate you on crossing the abyss, with only language as your rope.

wow.. John? Can I print this and frame it for my wall??? I am sitting here in awe of you. Thank you is not enough for all of that...

thanks Wilhelmine..;-)

This is a specifl girt of yours, Mandi.

thank you kathryn ;-)

This was exquisite, Mandi. It has a lot of pain and rawness in it.

Mandi - I especially like the lines
It allows nothing
Yet gives me everything
In a blinding gift

thanks carol and nathan

Mandi, your writing is beautiful and moving!

thank you dawn ;-)

thank you Hannah ;-)

what they said.. ;)

This is great Mandi - you do have a way with poetry! Well done!

Excellent!

Cool. Very meaingful because everyone eventually experiences the pain of losing someone they love. I believe that God never wastes a hurt.......

Carolyn, monica, dm and janie,
Thank you everyone!

If, as is my belief regarding poetry,
THE NATURE OF THE POET IS TO PROVOKE, NOT TO EXPLAIN...

...YA DONE GOOD..MANDI
kinda like inviting me into a minefield though....thanks

thank you john ;-)

Mandi -

I like what John had to say..."provoke not to explain"...yes - precisely! I loved it and it touched me and that's all that matters. Beautiful - it's the way I hope to write poetry someday.

David, thank you for that wonderful compliment.

steve, sometimes I think John isn't real... how can one human be that that intune, smart, wonderful...

kinda like you!