Pattern Poetry at Paper Poetry

Detachment Is Not Aloof — It’s Love

A free verse poem with patterns about seeing and breaking unhealthy patterns

Author’s photo of the first draft of the poem with the journal I wrote it in perched where I wrote it tonight (2 am — on repeat — clocks fell back tonight) — how cool is the mirror shaped like a window above my bed

Is there anything or one
Is there anyone or thing
That you feel you’ll die without
Except for food, you won’t
Except for air, you won’t

Do you see a pattern here
Do you see a pattern there
What else will you die without
Except for love, you won’t
Except for whose love though

Love yourself fiercely I say
Love yourself so you may share
What life patterns can you break
Accept detachment from
Except not from yourself

I love it when an unplanned plan comes together differently than initially planned. That right there is another lesson in detachment. My readers know I am attached to tanka, and will occasionally mix and match in other forms, lately dodoitsu. After I wrote the first two lines in my head and started to play with whether I should alter the order for tanka or perhaps, do dodoitsu, I said to myself…