poem

 The Inner Voice

Do you become more like the voice

Inside your head the older your get 

Or do you drift further apart 

Like old childhood friends 

Who lose track of one another

And it’s awkward when they run 

Into each at an airport bar

Or maybe it isn’t awkward at all

The old ways come flooding back 

Like time stopped and no one changed

But only for one night

And in the morning it’s gone 

Sometimes there is divergence

But no separation.

You become one thing while the voice

Either remains as is or turns into something else.

There is a battle for prominence. 

It goes back and forth, back and forth.

You forget which one you are

And can never be sure who’s winning. 

This we call alienation.

Sometimes the voice gets stranger and stranger

So it feels like a home invasion 

A chattering of foreign intruders

Discussing distribution of the spoils

In a language evocative of educated mice

While you hide silently under the bed. 

This, of course, is the first form of mental illness.

Medicines exist but don’t actually fix

The fundamental conflict.

They just silence one of the voices

So the other can act.

I’ve been fully hijacked by the inner voice

But you’d never know.

I seem the same on the outside—

The same old ways, predictable antics and jokes

But on the inside I’m someone else 

A man only a few people really know.

I'm on the bed reading a poem out loud

So the little boy knows it’s safe to come out.

2/17/25