Thought Cat And The Thought Mice

Written on 23rd March, 2011. I had recently lost a friend, and was running the grieving process through my head. Came up with this rather messy metaphor.

Thought Cat And the Thought Mice

Thought cat prowls

Day to day coping her domain

‘Don’t fall to pieces, don’t let them in’

 

Without warning, a thought mouse

Enters, thinking it hasn’t been seen

Everything unanswered, maybes,

What ifs,

Tails as long as trigger day shadows.

Thought cat pounces

Kill it before it nests

Once it’s in, it’s in.

No chance then.

Thought mouse scuttles away

Dodging thought cat’s fatal blow

He will hide for now

But in a short time, they nest anew.

Author's Note

I'm posting with the aim of entering this piece into a competition- please bear that in mind when reviewing (i.e. be as critical as you like)

Reviews

[TLK]

Now, I'm not fond of cats -- they have squishy little heads full of murder -- but I grasped quickly that thought cats were the mind's defences against that assault of unwanted thoughts. I'm a Psychologist, and I don't know where they come from. All I know is that wanting to not think about X means you are thinking about X (in terms of not wanting to think about it), and if you think about X (even in terms of negation) then you'll end up thinking about X. The mind is a great ruminator. That's why we shock it out of complacency with action and exercise. Or, of course, shock it into complacency by carefully arranging a world of information around us that never surprises us in the slightest. That's the nuclear option.

I enjoyed the use of "coping her domain", which I took as an audacious invention of a new kind of action. I understood it as someone/thing setting themselves the limited achievement of survival.
The doubts represented by the thought mouse are obvious. "Trigger day shadows" is, to me, slightly reminiscent of some morbidity. I definitely take it to mean those days when your whole self is a closed-down out-of-season beachfront which asks the question: "could I ever have sparkled with honest life?"

After that I feel entirely as if I have inhabited this sad situation a million times.

Perhaps this is a poem that those more ruminatory and psychologically-attuned will understand fully. But I enjoyed it very much.

[Casey B]

Thank you,

I'm intrigued. This is the first time I've had a psychologist comment on my work, and it's a pleasure to read the way you've interpreted it. (Utterly correctly, for what it's worth.) Your description of trigger day shadows cuts right to the heart of what I attempted to express. 'Could I ever have sparkled with honest life?' is a more eloquent version of the sentiment I found myself mired in at the time of writing.

Thank you- I look forward to trading more comments with you.

Casey

[TLK]

I can't promise I'll be able to interpret your writing accurately each and every time!