In Three Minds

Writing about the real issues

Image by Anya Juárez Tenorio.

Consciousness Bias

Here I stand in this grounded state
so empyrean in exalted dress
what a ruse, what a guise
frozen and forgotten
never forgetting
how it feels
when. you.
STRIKE me down
with your squall, gale
I’m always in the eye of your
innate ire, were you born this way?

How many others swelled and suffered before I did? You birthed dread

​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​​ ​ ​ You’re clasping my arm as our STORM
​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ cuts this crowd on cue of unbeknownst
​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ undue anvil techno revelers, the brassy
​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ beat drowns my voice, no cold comfort
​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​for sheer skin
​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ or my tears, you’re a seer of sorry sights
​ ​ ​ ​ ​strobing lackadaisical bright lights sear
​sullen surge, somehow, I still love you?

A deluge of thought, leaving or staying, how did I let you control me?

Downpour dormancy gifts me the right
​ ​ ​ ​to breathe but I can taste your humidity
​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​a SUPERCELL beckons
​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​harlequins twist around us like dancing
​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​gales of forced grooving, they feel the
​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ bravado beat of the bass yet my overcast
​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​​face is bespoke, concealing
​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​all the ballyhoo behind our secret shell

My secrets saturate me with guilt, my family and friends have gone

My
bruises
speak
of
you
over
and
over
in
muted
tongue
an
immutable
truth
floods
every
hush
word
every
troubled
side
glance
every
forced
and
forecasted
smile
threnody
thunder
distracts
none
of
these
none-the-wiser
shimmying
altruists
they
never
know
the
hell
you’re
clouding
nobody
clears
the
air
like
my
captor
such
a
heavenly
LIAR

Author’s note: I haven’t experienced violence and/or emotional control from an intimate partner, though I have several close friends who’ve survived their traumatic ordeals with ex-partners. There’s still a culture of silence, shame, and stigma regarding this issue.

Perhaps there always will be, so I write…

FOR THEM.

---

Image by Ozan Çulha.

She’s on the Streets

Between her fragile fingers is some unlit
Cigarette sHaKiNg in faux esteem pacing
←Back and forth →
She’s keeping it together = SHE’S STOIC
Pressure parapets as ↑ peak ↑tension tells
It always shows shh, no wicker word of a
Lie as lies lick
Dirty brown hair tousled mane (the shame)
The mishaps misshape “little miss” l-o-s-t
Potential

She cries out HELP and hears (?) nothing
Hushed venial voices
Echooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
No man, no woman, no soul, listen to SHE
Asphalt listlessness hinders foresight in
Hindsight of One-too-many-society-laden
Social champagnes, one
Hundred or more (more or less) passersby
Pass. Her. Bye. armchair arms linked in
Avoidance, boozy pivots, “that poor lass!?”

She wanders catabatic streets, edict pith
Opportunistic eyeshot empathy or worse
Opportune prey
She sleepwalks (Zzz) through a hazy dAzE
Yet their gaze is temporal, and time skips
200 tachycardic beats per picosecond, her
FEAR cuts through precarious air cycling
Rerun grievance as she aimlessly
Drags forgotten feet,
Stumbling, stuttering “no!” in swept gales

Providential paths trip-tiptoe from seeing
Unseemly pasts unto present-day PRESET
Prejudices, those systemic doors
Moot shuttered, as faint white-knuckled
Fingers - taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap
Locked + luckless yet no sign of the cross
Exists here
Sigils cue mimicry brusquerie back alleys
Allayed, laden with disowner “me” beliefs
Misnomers seal her cyclic ↓ descent ↓ so
Perhaps she never lived at all?

---

Image by Cottonbro Studio.

Wrath of the Pride

Some of us forgive, yet never forget (!!)
the vengeful eye of the Pride, lionesses
savannahs of silence shhhh act straight
straightlaced lashing
strident scavenger of solitarian pyres
embers of a vanguard vengeance dance
flicker before our ignited ire eyes
before the blackening
vitiate vulnerability, retreating to lick
wary. winced. wry. waspish. wounds.

Succored, blight-born on our own unto
colorless, tasteless tempests, prisms
neuroepithelial nightingales of hatred
of fucking bigotry
now, the born again, bellowing from a
PC playbook preach in plain sorry sight
allies allaying fears, where were *they*
when our Pride was ravaged by a reaper?
we gaaaaaazed like toothless scriveners
as they trespassed on historic stone walls.

Image by Cottonbro Studio.

Picaresque beings so principled, polemic
prowling for safeguards among tamers
solitudes of revenge, avenging, averting
the eyes of regal felines show ponying
for symposium safaris
was it serendipity that finally brought us
p-e-a-c-e?
or were we just the felicitous flavor of a
mercurial, magnanimous, month?
one wonders with a wunderkind mind.

Confluences of chaotic events corralled
centuries thrust onto laps of the divine
the desecrated, the desperate, DOWN ↓
deeper as omegas while the alphas, well,
they stalked us clad in suits of steel blue
endangered manes
a Pride whimpering, bereft of acronyms
smiley shiny striated sedulous rainbow
alphabet sobriquets circa 2025
some of us still roar at constellations in
mournful night skies, for lost stars.

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© Edward Swafford 2025