Featured Poet - Melissa W. Sorgi

ICE DRAGON

Have you met the Ice Dragon?

He sucks all the life from you.

Your dreams. Your hopes, your very self.

You are not you anymore.

You are depleted.

Sucked into nothingness.

Just staying alive takes all your energy.

And no one knows.

It is your secret war.

Do you have the same battle scars

That I do?

If asked, in the nursing home

I will describe them as war wounds.

Will they understand?

Do you understand?

Then we are compatriots.

WASTELAND

Innumerable falls down stone-fringed ravines,

another stumble, tumbling through the scrapping brush.

I crash,

another victim of my own compromise.

The head throbs, the body aches, but the mind,

Oh! my mind still continues to dismantle me.

Tearing apart the minute gains

like foot-ball scarred knees, multiple surgeries knitting together tissues.

Another shot of numbness, a grunt of encouragement from a coach,

and I trip back to the field to resume play on the wasteland.

WHO WAS I?

Who are you 

when your sense of self 

dies?

You become someone

more accepted, more 

normal.

But it isn’t you.

It wasn’t me.

I almost died

because that self didn’t fit.

Death was more attractive

than this life I had put myself into:

I lived in an

emotional straitjacket.

Now I’m back

old but me.

Should I forgive my captors?

Should I forgive myself?

OLD SORROWS

Old sorrows run deeper each year.

Grinding through rocks and earth,

Palisades of denial and accepted ignorance

That wear down as the years pass

And the reality becomes too

Obvious to avoid.

You gaslighted me terribly.

I was the crazy one – 

Jealous, insecure –

Oh god how ugly you painted me.

Yet I was right.

You have since admitted it casually

As if I was fully aware and accepting.

Time may have passed

But I have neither forgiven nor forgotten.

Now we are aged and

You have become more needy.

You set yourself a trap you have fallen into.

How will I behave?

Will I take my vengeance now?

COUNTING

I measure my life by losses,

they add up,

like years and gray hairs,

but to no grand sum or significant total.

They just continue,

like pi,

until I run out of time

to count.

GENERATIONS

It was

Them.

Now it is 

Us.

There is no more door.

We are face-to-face with 

our mortality.

Listen to your heartbeat.

Does it still sound strong?

Are you listening?

Do you want to listen?

Are you afraid?

I am.



ABOUT THE POEMS:  These six poems cover my life from 1979 until now. They are the only way I can express the deep emotions I feel and can’t cope with. I have fought depression since I was very young and have been hospitalized once and drugged for years and years. I still go through life with the handle of Major Depressive Disorder attached to my name. As you all know – it is a daily battle and the fact that we’re still alive shows how remarkably strong we really are.