First published on Medium for Bouncin’ and Behavin’ Poems (link to original post).
My natural rhythm is some sort of waltz but
It ebbs and it flows and it spins to a halt
— Hits
A wall
Hurts
Its head
Tends
Its wounds and
Finds itself again, anew
With in-breath and out-breath
And joy in the one-two-three
Rolling and rolling in thought loops, emotions, sensations
Chaotic pentameter’s what I would call it
If I bothered to go back and count.
If it ever stayed still long enough
If the stresses didn’t slip
If order were maintained
But it’s not — it comes and (it) wanes
All I can hope for is to notice
The beauty of chaos and flows
The serendipity of rhymes without reason
To savor the freedom of knowing
I’ll never stick to any rhythm I may find along the ways
One-two-three
One-two-three
Let me be me.
Some background for the curious
Post ADHD and Autism diagnosis, I’ve been on a journey to learn to accept and live with myself the way that I am. Recently, the idea of “finding my rhythm” has been quite important. I can’t stick to a routine, but some structure to my days is beneficial — can I reconcile the parts of me that need familiarity and predictability with those that love getting pulled in random directions without apparent logic?
So it happened that I was doing dishes in the middle of the day, thinking about what I should do next. Lie down? Work? What makes the most sense? What’s my natural rhythm? And suddenly I was stuck. “My natural rhythm” just kept repeating in my head, in a loop. As it repeated, I noticed its rhythm — like a waltzy 3/4 or 6/8 — and the thought emerged, My-NA-tu-ral-RHY-thm-is-SOME-kind-of-WALTZ-but … That seemed perfect. Some waltzy dactyls, but introduced with an anacrusis and ending awkwardly — that’s what I had to do next. I jumped on my bed and a poem was born.
And in a way, that’s my natural rhythm. To be earnestly thinking about what the correct next course of action for my day is, and then become completely sidetracked by a random idea that became my temporary number one priority.
Hopefully you enjoyed it, at least :)
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Citation
@online{brazão2023,
author = {Brazão, Vasco},
title = {My {Natural} {Rhythm}},
date = {2023-09-16},
langid = {en}
}