Poems to Inspire
With thanks to Jan Sutton for the poems on this page from Self Injury and Related Issues www.siari.co.uk.
You Are Unique
author unknown
Think what a remarkable, unduplicatable, and miraculous thing it is to be you! Of all the people who have come and gone on the earth, since the beginning of time, not one of them is like you!
No one who has ever lived or is to come has had your combination of abilities, talents, appearance, friends, acquaintances, burdens, sorrows and opportunities.
No one’s hair grows exactly the way yours does. No one’s finger prints are like yours. No one has the same combination of secret inside jokes and family expressions that you know.
The few people who laugh at all the same things you do, don’t sneeze the way you do. No one prays about exactly the same concerns as you do. No one is loved by the same combination of people that love you—no one!
No one before, no one to come. You are absolutely unique!
Enjoy that uniqueness. You do not have to pretend in order to seem more like someone else. You weren’t meant to be like someone else. You do not have to lie to conceal the parts of you that are not like what you see in anyone else.
You were meant to be different. Nowhere ever in all of history will the same things be going on in anyone’s mind, soul and spirit as are going on in yours right now.
If you did not exist, there would be a hole in creation, a gap in history, something missing from the plan for humankind.
Treasure your uniqueness. It is a gift given only to you. Enjoy it and share it!
No one can reach out to others in the same way that you can. No one can speak your words. No one can convey your meanings. No one can comfort with your kind of comfort. No one can bring your kind of understanding to another person.
No one can be cheerful and light-hearted and joyous in your way. No one can smile your smile. No one else can bring the whole unique impact of you to another human being.
Share your uniqueness. Let it be free to flow out among your family and friends and people you meet in the rush and clutter of living wherever you are. That gift of yourself was given you to enjoy and share. Give yourself away!
See it! Receive it! Let it tickle you! Let it inform you and nudge you and inspire you! You are unique.
Tao Te Ching
by Lao Tzu, Chinese Taoist Philosopher c. 600 BCE
Good weapons are instruments of fear; all creatures hate them.
Therefore followers of the Tao never used them.
The wise man prefers the left.
The man of war prefers the right.
Weapons are instruments of fear; they are not a wise man’s tools.
He uses them only when he has no choice.
Peace and quiet are dear to his heart.
And victory no cause for rejoicing.
If you rejoice in victory, then you delight in killing;
If you delight in killing, you cannot fulfill yourself.
On happy occasions precedence is given to the left,
On sad occasions to the right.
In the army the general stands on the left,
The commander-in-chief on the right.
This means that war is conducted like a funeral.
When many people are being killed,
They should be mourned in heartfelt sorrow.
That is why a victory must be observed like a funeral.
Children Learn What They Live
Author: Dorothy Law Nolte
If a child lives with criticism,
he [she] learns to condemn.
If a child lives with hostility,
he [she] learns to fight.
If a child lives with ridicule,
he [she] learns to be shy.
If a child lives with shame,
he [she] learns to feel guilty.
If a child lives with tolerance,
he [she] learns to be patient.
If a child lives with encouragement,
he [she] learns confidence.
If a child lives with praise,
he [she] learns to appreciate.
If a child lives with fairness,
he [she] learns justice.
If a child lives with security,
he [she] learns to have faith.
If a child lives with approval,
he [she] learns to like himself [herself].
If a child lives with acceptance and friendship,
he [she] learns to find love in the world.
Poem for Every Person
From: John T. Wood, How do you feel? (A guide to your emotions, 1974)
I will present you
parts
of
my
self
slowly
if you are patient and tender.
I will open drawers
that mostly stay closed
and bring out places and people and things
sounds and smells,
loves and frustrations,
hopes and sadnesses,
bits and pieces of three decades of life
that have been grabbed off
in chunks
and found lying in my hands,
they have eaten
their way into my memory
carved their way into my
heart.
altogether ... you or I will never see them ...
they are me.
If you regard them lightly,
deny they are important
or worse, judge them
I will quietly, slowly,
begin to wrap them up,
in small pieces of velvet,
like worn silver and gold jewelry,
tuck them away
in a small wooden chest of drawers
and close.
Please Hear What I’m Not Saying
Author: Charles C. Finn (September, 1966)
Don’t be fooled by me.
Don’t be fooled by the face I wear
for I wear a mask, a thousand masks,
masks that I’m afraid to take off,
and none of them is me.
Pretending is an art that’s second nature with me,
but don’t be fooled,
for God’s sake don’t be fooled.
I give you the impression that I’m secure,
that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well
as without,
that confidence is my name and coolness my game,
that the water’s calm and I’m in command
and that I need no one,
but don’t believe me.
My surface may seem smooth but my surface is my mask,
ever-varying and ever-concealing.
Beneath lies no complacence.
Beneath lies confusion, and fear, and aloneness.
But I hide this. I don’t want anybody to know it.
I panic at the thought of my weakness exposed.
That’s why I frantically create a mask to hide behind,
a nonchalant sophisticated facade,
to help me pretend,
to shield me from the glance that knows.
But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only hope,
and I know it.
That is, if it’s followed by acceptance,
if it’s followed by love.
It’s the only thing that can liberate me from myself,
from my own self-built prison walls,
from the barriers I so painstakingly erect.
It’s the only thing that will assure me
of what I can’t assure myself,
that I’m really worth something.
But I don’t tell you this. I don’t dare to, I’m afraid
to.
I’m afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance,
will not be followed by love.
I’m afraid you’ll think less of me,
that you’ll laugh, and your laugh would kill me.
I’m afraid that deep-down I’m nothing
and that you will see this and reject me.
So I play my game, my desperate pretending game,
with a facade of assurance without
and a trembling child within.
So begins the glittering but empty parade of masks,
and my life becomes a front.
I tell you everything that’s really nothing,
and nothing of what’s everything,
of what’s crying within me.
So when I’m going through my routine
do not be fooled by what I’m saying.
Please listen carefully and try to hear what I’m not saying,
what I’d like to be able to say,
what for survival I need to say,
but what I can’t say.
I don’t like hiding.
I don’t like playing superficial phony games.
I want to stop playing them.
I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me
but you’ve got to help me.
You’ve got to hold out your hand
even when that’s the last thing I seem to want.
Only you can wipe away from my eyes
the blank stare of the breathing dead.
Only you can call me into aliveness.
Each time you’re kind, and gentle, and encouraging,
each time you try to understand because you really care,
my heart begins to grow wings—
very small wings,
very feeble wings,
but wings!
With your power to touch me into feeling
you can breathe life into me.
I want you to know that.
I want you to know how important you are to me,
how you can be a creator—an honest-to-God creator—
of the person that is me
if you choose to.
You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble,
you alone can remove my mask,
you alone can release me from my shadow-world of panic,
from my lonely prison,
if you choose to.
Please choose to.
Do not pass me by.
It will not be easy for you.
A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.
The nearer you approach to me
the blinder I may strike back.
It’s irrational, but despite what the books say about man
often I am irrational.
I fight against the very thing I cry out for.
But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls
and in this lies my hope.
Please try to beat down those walls
with firm hands but with gentle hands
for a child is very sensitive.
Who am I, you may wonder?
I am someone you know very well.
For I am every man you meet
and I am every woman you meet.
You asked, "How are you doing?"
Author unknown. Often attributed to Kelly Osmont, author of several books about death and grieving
As I told you, tears came to my eyes ...
and you looked away, and quickly began to talk again.
All the attention you had given me drained away.
How am I doing?
I do better when people listen, though I may shed a tear or two.
This pain is indescribable.
If you’ve never known it you cannot fully understand.
Yet I need you.
When you look away, I am again alone with it.
Your attention means more than you can ever know.
Really, tears are not a bad sign, you know!
They’re nature’s way of helping me to heal ...
They relieve some of the stress of sadness.
I know you fear that asking how I’m doing brings me sadness ...
but you’re wrong.
The memory of my loved one’s death will always be with me,
Only a thought away.
My tears make my pain more visible to you,
but you did not give me the pain ...
it was already there.
When I cry, could it be that you feel helpless, not knowing what to
do?
You are not helpless,
And you don’t need to do a thing but be there.
When I feel your permission to allow my tears to flow, you’ve helped
me.
You need not speak. Your silence as I cry is all I need.
Be patient ... do not fear.
Listening with your heart to "how I am doing" relieves the
pain,
for when the tears can freely come and go, I feel lighter.
Talking to you releases what I’ve been wanting to say aloud,
clearing space for a touch of joy in my life.
I’ll cry for a minute or two ...
and then I’ll wipe my eyes,
and sometimes you’ll even find I’m laughing later.
When I hold back the tears, my throat grows tight,
my chest aches, my stomach knots,
because I’m trying to protect you from my tears.
Then we both hurt ... me, because my pain is held inside,
a shield against our closeness ...
and you, because suddenly we’re distant.
So please, take my hand and see me through my tears ...
then we can be close again.
Death is nothing at all
Henry Scott Holland 1847-1918, cannon of St Paul’s Cathedral
Death is nothing at all.
It does not count.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
Nothing has happened.
Everything remains exactly as it was.
I am I, and you are you,
and the old life that we lived so fondly together
is untouched, unchanged.
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.
Call me by the old familiar name.
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without an effort,
without the ghost of a shadow upon it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was.
There is absolute and unbroken continuity.
What is death but a negligible accident?
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am but waiting for you,
for an interval,
somewhere very near,
just round the corner.
All is well.
Funeral Blues
Author: W. H. Auden (1907-73) The following poem was read by John Hannah at his friend’s funeral service in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Don’t Quit
Author unknown
When things go wrong as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest, if you must—but don’t quit.
Life is odd with its twists and turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow—
You might succeed with another blow.
Success is failure turned inside out—
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell just how close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit—
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.