POETRY

Ode to an Animus

To honor the undiscovered parts of ourselves is life’s work.

Denise Darby
2 min readJan 6, 2023

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Photo by Amir Hosseini on Unsplash

Fighting tendencies to run for freedom,
holding out for liberation.

Run-on sentences — spewing nonsense -
heady, wordy, thoughtless creed.

Transcription of prescriptions
of unintended purposes
— mounting attacks against fictitious enemies.

All transgressions are from within,
walls of glass are walls nonetheless
— only trickery to the eye — to the mind

Go slowly young man — you are but a newborn cub.
An undeveloped sword makes a precise mess.
Bravado amongst peers is insecure alone.

Transformation is a load worthy to carry,
putting it down — picking it up
— uphill and in circles

Freedom is an illusion we talk ourselves into
when we vie for liberation from without.

Go slowly young man — see clearly — see deeply.

According to the APA Dictionary of Psychology, the animus is defined as:
n. in

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