Psychalgia Exhumed: A Poetry Book

Psychalgia Exhumed

By Sanya E. Walma

A collection of 20 poems by Sanya E Walma.
Sometimes our potential for growth and our ability to understand ourselves is buried beneath internalized fears and repressed feelings.
Untying the mental knots that distort our true selves requires the willingness to embrace our most intimate anxieties.
This collection of poetry is based on unearthing innermost troubles, finding beauty behind emotional disorder, and learning to express oneself honestly.

Download here as a PDF.
Or order as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Amazon.

Dreaming Splendor

I can’t afford bed sheets or makeup.

Beautified dreams, somehow, still come easily.

Even in poverty, the luxury of abstraction

Soothes me daily, in depression or inspiration.

Streetlights on snowy nights

Hold more potential than money or connections.

Shadows in the urban landscape,

More real than set ideals or purchased thrills.

Somewhere is an inevitability

Waiting to be dreamed into vibrant shapes.

Magenta rain against black skies,

Sleeping bodies forgetting their encroaching doom.

I can’t afford bed sheets or makeup,

But in my mind, I repose against splendid fashionings.

The faintest glimmer of peace and satisfaction

Awakes, and gives me space to keep imagining.

Mary

When I imagine you, My empathy makes a monster of your misery, One I’ve studied often in my dreams And more frequently discovered in reality. I wonder when it breathed, When spark and spleandor clashed that evening, And you saw what it had seen How it found you in your sleep.

I Want To See Your Shining Face

There will always be

A rain cloud sheltering us from the burning sea,

A wave of trembling gray sky

Separating the sunlight from you and I.

In these days of windy shade we shine,

Starlight, moonlight, refractions twinkling in time,

Sharing and searching for truths in each other,

Where faces imbue our spirits with its shine.

Secret Room

Clear your muddled, cluttered head

And have a slice of honeyed bread

To take into your secret room

Where your tea is hot and your flowers bloom.

There, you’ll think and have a smoke,

Text a friend with a random joke,

Watch the birds and people go by

From the window on the other side,

Start the first lines of a poem,

And just feel fully alive and alone.

Transfeminine Spring

Waking up with a patient hunger,

Taking my sweet time to think, body heavy from a long sleep,

I put myself together, slowly, silently in the rising sun.

Becoming aware of myself brings a strange new comfort,

A focus without sharpness, and silent sublimities.

Peace, in its few moments, is shockingly sweet.

Pleasure is simpler and easier to accept,

As are my pains, fears, and many other familiar happenings.

I care more for the thought of existing than the person I was ever could,

As though a portion of my emptiness was washed away,

Cleansing away a brutal year into my first transfeminine spring.

We Could Grow Our Own Life Together

We could have a tiny world, a modest one, all to us,

To paint our ideals, our passions, and secret wishes onto.

Caring for each other and nurturing the land

Our children, a family of colors, scents, atmosphere and earth.

We’d till and sow all our own way,

And grow a living dream, transcendent from every angle.

We’ll compose a landscape tuned to the mood of our time together,

Like living music to the moment we’ve adopted.

Seasons and years renew the youth of our creation,

So every day we enjoy new spaces of imagination to occupy together.

This is the world we birth with our own hands and thoughts,

Held together indefinitely, in reverie and splendor.

Genderless Winter

Blank and white with a frostbitten edge,

Like silver knives stinging in every little breath.

Too cold for sex, but perfect for a touch

From fingers warm that don’t sink too much.

It starts with a trance, to the depths, to the roots,

And the emptiness inside, uncluttered, unpoluted.

A masculine abstraction made with feminine grace.

Insensitive seasons reflecting nature’s soft face.

A hunger in a dream, cutting straight through my words,

A silent understanding, an intuition unheard.

The loss of all heat and the induction of warmth.

Pining for nothing and weighing all its worth.

Ambiguities vanish, there’s only one choice,

To relinquish and recover body, disposition, and voice.

Ugly Angel

There’s a dirty kind of feeling,

A deeply driven repulsiveness

That sits somewhere between the throat

And the far back of the brain.

A moment that seems eternal,

Like a punishment for some sin,

Looking inward to an abyss

Of secretly sensitive yearning.

The reflection of something I cannot see

Knaws and separates myself from their company,

Dirty, deep and seemingly forever

Like the immortal voice of an angel that’s ugly.

Heroes Burning

Scars make martyrs and monsters.

Idolizing the villains who were yesterday’s anti-heroes

Waiting for them to burn their capacity to create.

The angels burn brightly, softly, sensationally,

To follow chaotically into a second fall.

Exactly as dulcetly as they first sang,

They clash crassly against some new foe,

But the only ones standing in their way

Are the ones burning as brightly as they.

Need You to Want To

I need you to want a little sadness,

A mood for solemnity and a mood to let loose.

Have a few drinks with me and read to me from Camus,

And we can keep reserved within a golden light mood.

Cold, like the light reflected on the moon

As it illumines our bodies and tempers, and soothes.

I need you to want a little more

Than a body or a mind like mine could ever give,

With fanciful fears and desires you can’t forget

And a brooding reluctance and passion to live.

Days that should be swept away will come

When we lay collecting dust together, undone,

Till one of us decides we may as well have coffee

And we pull each other towards the day to be begun.

I need you to see my mind

The way I’ve already begun perceiving yours,

To note your weaknesses, strengths, and passions

So I might give assistance when it’s called for.

When I lose my place in space or time

And spiral into cacophonies of dreary thought,

I hope you’ll see the telltale signs

And have the courage to tell me what is and is not.

Romance, sex, companionship, and All,

Is a lot to ask and harder still to come across,

So I’ll ask if what you’re looking for is the same,

Because if it is, we may be able to reciprocate.

Transwomen Have Periods

Remember when everything was heavy?

When candy was sweet and a stare could get you hot?

Remember when music could make you cry

Without a glass of wine to soften your heart?

I woke up hungover without drinking,

Aching, soreness, and strangely giddy feelings,

Sensations in my heart not unlike what’s in my chest,

And stomach pains like little smiles teething.

Transformation entails some rearranging,

Hormones pushing, pulling, and changing.

My moods are growing and almost glowing,

And I’ve never felt more like a woman in the making.