Before starting this poem, I spent several days reading up on various subjects that I felt pertained in some way to tensions and circumstances that not only led to the demise of my marriage, but my choice in women and the types of relationships I get into in general. Subjects included attachment theory and related disorders in adults and children, including some of the methods employed to help children and adults overcome their “attachment disorders”. Along with this I read up on human bonding, age disparity theory, and even read a little about the limbic system, amongst other things—Just things I wanted to know about.
This lead me to reflecting on the nature of play in relation to my early and mid childhood “attachment traumas” and realizing that I’ve never experienced what’s referred to in attachment theory as a healthy “secure attachment”. Secure attachment is what allows a child to feel safe exploring and playing in ways that are constructive and developmentally sound. If there’s some problem with the child’s attachment system, then play becomes more reactionary than natural due to the lack of a secure attachment base to return to. A lot of this stuff made sense to me and jives nicely with my own reflections.
Looking back, I was able to remember enough to realize that one of the first casualties of my childhood was play and playfulness. I was a very serious child, and I tended to use play to express my general state of anxiety, distrust, and ambivalence, destroying my toys and those things I would make with them—with building blocks and Lincoln logs for example—rather than letting them stand awhile, and then tearing them down for the sake of building something else. I didn’t build things for the sake of seeing and enjoying the creative fruits of my labors; I built them for the sake of their destruction.
This was a mode of expression, an enactment of my inner state—reactive play rather than constructive natural play. So, I meditated on this and then wrote my 20th hybridanelle.
Confounded
The stones that should have formed a stable base
were shifted out beneath your primal needs;
the wood that should have framed your living place
splintered from the weight of bitterness and hate
and left you wailing naked in the wind,
ambivalent at best and doubting every trust.
Tremors filled your soul with rolling dreads,
so that your own creations, wrought with care,
were shifted out beneath your primal needs,
reduced to disarray in manifest dismay
as wooden joists and girders in your mind
splintered from the weight of bitterness and hate.
And as you grew, you found yourself unsure;
you stacked your Lincoln logs and building blocks
so that your own creations, wrought with care,
were never meant to last and fell to every blast
that leveled self respect and left you stunned,
ambivalent at best and doubting every trust.
You strove to transfer fundamental shocks
throughout your play; depicting fell effects,
you stacked your Lincoln logs and building blocks
and with profound expression smashed at your discretion,
every symbol housing hope destroyed,
splintered from the weight of bitterness and hate.
Those first potentials of your intellect
were swept away by rage and disregard;
throughout your play, depicting fell effects,
your structures each collapsed as inspiration lapsed
until you grieved the wreckage of your hand,
ambivalent at best and doubting every trust.
And now you limp through life disabled, scarred;
the stones that should have formed a stable base
were swept away by rage and disregard;
the wood that should have framed your living place
rotted from neglect and left you derelict,
dwelling in the ruins left behind—
splintered from the weight of bitterness and hate—
ambivalent at best and doubting every trust.
