my poem: no dignity

There’s no dignity in panic.

It stops your heart from consuming any sensation, real or otherwise.

Your brain hums, but it’s got no tune. It is an off-key drone.

You can’t breathe, your lungs forgetting their purpose,like a pillow over your face, it suffocates.

Your feet are leaden; won’t walk, won’t work.

In fact, decency and decorum would help a lot right about now.

This moment, you wish was a memory.

But in fact, you have no magid wishes; not one, two or three.

Your brain, heart, lungs, legs are corrupted, having forgotten their purpose.

This is the simplest and worst of betrayals.

You are offensive even to yourself.  Sickened by your fear.

There’s no dignity in panic, nor any humanity or decency;

only a crippling,fractured, dismembered day,

hour-by-hour

endured.

No self-respect;Until somehow

Wisdom anchors to your soul.

And you let it go. Not to forget,

but for now to breathe, think, move until the next

most unwelcome panic.

4/15/2009

Written by Melody Harrison Hanson