A Circle on the Floor

In psychology, the concept of the “inner child” is often misunderstood. Actually there are very often several inner children that an individual creates as a coping mechanism to survive growing up in the presence of severe emotional and/or physical abuse. Each of the multiple inner children likely doesn’t know the others exist. (By the way, this is not to be confused with multiple personality disorder which has nothing at all to do with the inner child concept.)

In the early 1990’s I suddenly started having panic attacks, and I went through an “inner child rescue” therapy process that involved a form of self-hypnosis. During the process, I found out to my own astonishment that I had neatly hidden away many inner children to cope with various abuses during my childhood. I had long forgotten most of the events associated with the creation of these inner children, but as the hypnosis revealed them and I got to know them, the panic attacks concurrently disappeared. As a result of this incredible experience I had, I thought about how wonderful everything might have been if I and my inner children were fully visible to each other. I know the concept is a bit abstract, but I wrote A Circle on the Floor to express how the process might work if the inner children were physical beings.

A Circle on the Floor

Deep inside my head there live these separate parts of me,
Most of them just vestiges of conscious memory,
Infants, toddlers, gangly teens, and school boys of all ages,
All the different characters from my life's many stages.

Some are proud and some ashamed, abandoned and abused,
Some are lost and some are scared, and others feel confused,
All are separate entities whose lives seem unrelated,
Crammed inside one body, yet completely isolated.

Wouldn't it be nice if they could come out from inside,
And join me in a circle just to talk about our lives,
For each of them has seen life from a different point of view,
And each of them has secrets that the others never knew.

Yank the phone, turn down the lights and maybe lock the door,
Then sit around, legs folded, in a circle on the floor,
Then we could spend so many days relating what we knew,
Unraveling the mysteries, the past that we'd been through.

And gradually we'd get to know each other very well,
And then we'd merge together when there was no more to tell,
'Cause once we let our secrets out there's nothing left to do,
But travel through what's left of life enjoying it anew.

Steven Pein
July 1993
Copyright 1994
.

Roller Coaster

I grew up surrounded by manic depression. My dad and his dad both suffered with it their entire lives. I suffered from chronic depression, and still do. But luckily I escaped that horrible bipolar torment. "Roller Coaster" is my attempt to project myself into my dad's mindset. I can never know for sure what he felt, but here's my best guess...


Roller Coaster

My life is a roller coaster
One that's moving much too fast
The highs are too high
And the lows are too low
But God how these lows can last.

I feel like I'm riding a coaster
With a blindfold over my eyes
I never can tell
If it's Heaven or Hell
That's waiting to take me by surprise.

Like my Father before me
And his before him too
I'm genetically sent
Through a life of torment
And there's nothing much I can do.

No matter how good the high times
They never can match these lows
In life I've been cheated
And yet I've conceded
Sometimes that's just how it goes.

And I really need somebody
To comfort me and take my hand
I just can't explain
The depth of my pain
In a way that most could understand.

But you seem so much like me
That I'm thinking if it's really true
Maybe you could
Help me feel good
And I could do the same for you.

Steven Pein
23 July 1994
Copyright 1994
.

Wait...A poem for Bonnie

Bonnie,
This one was written just for you!
For the rest of you who don't know how much I loved Bonnie, it was written in 1967 while I was in Germany and it was about the girl I loved and left behind. It's great that we still think of one another as our lives have passed these many decades. It was a love that wasn't meant to be, but it was all consuming to me at the time.

Wait

At times like this I sit and think
About the love we shared
The war went on around us
And yet we never cared
But now the world for us has changed
To dark and misty blue
The Army has taken a love away
Taken me away from you

No matter how strong our love may be
How powerful and great
Three years is just too long I fear
For any girl to wait
But if there is a girl on earth
Whose love can see it through
I’m sure that girl is the one I love
That girl, she must be you

So please be true and wait for me
Through hours that are blue
I’ll come back home
We’ll have our love
A life for me and you

Steven Pein
22 July 1967
.

Imagination - Kid's don't need much to make them happy. Not at first, anyway.

I wrote this double-ending poem as a look into the creativity of little children and how that creativity dissolves very quickly in our culture of "stuff". I grew up playing Cowboys and Indians, but my grandchildren grew up with video games and computers with high speed internet.

Imagination (Two Poems in One)

There was a boy without a toy,
Folks thought he couldn't play,
But he could run with arms outstretched,
And be a jet all day.

And he could close his eyes and see
The ocean or the stars,
And he could soar through outer space
To Jupiter and Mars.

And he could climb up in a tree
And be the jungle king,
Or turn a stick into a sword
And battle anything.

And he could turn a battered broom
Into his trusty steed,
And overtake the bad guys
With unmatched blinding speed.

The little boy without a toy
Could have such fun alone,
He seldom even thought about
The things he didn't own.

(The storybook ending......)

The lesson that this verse conveys
Is really quite profound,
A child's imagination beats
The greatest toys around.


(The more realistic ending......)

Then he made his first real friend,
They soon became as one,
And less imagination was
Required to have fun.

His friend had many toys at home,
And there it was they'd play,
Erector Sets and building blocks
Helped pass the time away.

Lincoln Logs and G.I. Joes
And cars that raced on tracks,
Electric trains and Tonka Trucks
Amused them to the max.

And so it all continued 'til
They had a spat one day,
The little boy without a toy
Went home alone to play.

And he had trees and sticks and brooms
Just like he had before,
But they seemed unappealing now
And entertained no more.

The hardest lesson of his life
Was sadly realized,
It coldly pierced his child's heart
As tears filled up his eyes.

A child's imagination was his
Greatest gift at birth,
But not until he lost it
Could he understand its worth.
Steven Pein
March 1993
Copyright 1994
.

Only Words and Music

Well, I warned you a while back that another lyric poem was coming. Duck your heads, 'cause here it comes.
I wrote this lyric as a kind of tribute to my favorite musical storyteller, the late Harry Chapin. It's a narration by a singer/songwriter who was never satisfied with his work. But something finally changed all that. It was that special woman. (What a surprise!)

Only Words and Music

All my life I've tried so hard
To find words to express
The kind of love that life's about
The one true love we quest

And all the tunes I've written
Could never quite convey
The perfect kind of melody
For what the words might say

My little ditties pleased some folks
My record sales were strong
But they were always tunes to me
I never wrote a song

Only words and music
In vinyl or CD's
Never really telling folks
The thoughts inside of me

Then somehow you came to me
In answer to a prayer
Just when life seemed loneliest
You suddenly were there

And then I wrote this music
And wrote these lyrics too
Only words and music
They became a song through you

A song to end my loneliness
A song to see me through
Not a ditty
Not a tune
But a song because of you

Only words and music
Thrown together in an hour or two
But the feeling here inside of me
Is a song because of you

Steven Pein
July 1994
Copyright 1994
.

The origin of words...

I was always fascinated with the origin of words and phrases. My dad owned a printing business, so I grew up around printing presses. And when I first started writing as part of my job (mostly technical writing), I ran into a word that was curious. One of its meanings seemed totally unrelated to the basic word itself, and I always wanted to find out how that seemingly unrelated meaning was derived. There are several similar theories about the origin, but I'm pretty certain from my research that I've finally captured the correct one.

1. In the newspaper industry, typesetting was an art form that began with moveable type that was hand set line by line to print newspapers on a printing press.

2. Back in the 1890’s, steel was rolled into plates that were used in manufacturing steam boilers. (And what does this have to do with anything?....Keep reading.)

3. During that old typesetting era, lots of things were not practical or cost effective to typeset over and over again. This included newspaper banners, advertisements, and other things that didn’t change from day to day. To print these unchanging items, the rolled steel was stamped to form permanent re-usable type.

4. That rolled steel that steam boilers were made from was called “boilerplate”.

And to this day we refer to standard clauses in contracts and the like as "boilerplate".
.

Hero

“Hero” is about a child in search of answers. The widowed mother lovingly concealed the full truth about the premature death of the child’s father fearing it might lower the child’s self esteem. The child grew up hearing only glorious stories about the loving, caring, creative, and talented man that he was. But there was always more the child wanted to know, and the child finally decided to find out everything about this legendary man.

Hero

I set out to find my hero
A man so much bigger than life
Mom never spoke much about him
She just said she loved being his wife.

He died when I was a baby
I never got to know him at all
Photos were the only memories
Of this man who stood ten feet tall.

So I sought out my Dad's family
They were close by all along
But they wouldn't say much about him
So I knew there was something wrong.

I found a place among them
Where I knew that I belonged
And I started to piece together
Just what I feared all along.

I learned about Dad's problems
And I learned about his flaws
I learned about his suffering
And I learned about the cause.

I learned about the tragedy
That took his life so early on
And I think I know how Mom felt
After my Dad was gone.

I visited his resting place
And shed my share of tears
Then the mystery started unraveling
After almost thirty years.

I always felt so cheated
'Cause I never got to know him
All the things I couldn't do
And the things I couldn't show him.

But now I finally realize
Just why Mom protected me
She helped me hold my head up high
And become all I could be.

It strikes me as so ironic
That Dad's no longer ten feet tall
And Mom is the one who was bigger than life
It seems I found my hero after all.

Steven Pein
31 July 1994
Copyright 1994
.