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      July 17, 2011Two PoemsForrest Hamer

      A POEM ALSO ABOUT DUPLICITY

       

      It would be unfortunate if the idea of multiple selves
      obscured the fact the self is still
      responsible for the terror it makes in the mind.

       

       

      It would be a mistake if the multiple meanings
      of words like torture disguised the fact
      we are torturers, with lessened concern about it.

       

       

      It would be tragic if the loss of multiple relationships
      to the unconscious
      obviated the possibility
      of minding a more responsible life.
      I say this as someone who minds
      what insanity means, not what we are coming to think.

       

       

      Imagination means so much;
      so much depends on what’s under.

       

       

      * * *

       

      A POEM ALSO ABOUT THE UNCONSCIOUS

       

      To make it back home across town,
      we had to learn to walk
      only through black neighborhoods.
      Think about this as the map
      of a mind

       

      laying out spaces
      that are familiar and safe
      as well as the places where, if it is dark, someone in the distance
      crosses to the other side of the street,
      just in case.

      from #34 - Winter 2010

      Forrest Hamer

      “I wrote my first poem at the age of ten during what was then Negro History Week. Poetry would become one important way of making sense of my outer and inner worlds, and I would later realize that puzzling matters of racial injustice also undergirded my becoming interested in psychoanalysis. While I have often felt that my lives as a poet and a psychotherapist were at odds with each other in terms of attention and effort, I now accept that I live just one life in two very meaningful ways.”

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