I look down in daily horror
That left toenail, this pesty ectoderm,
Pitted, yellow, infected, gross and putrid,
The sole defective among ten other toes.
I remember Dad's manicured nails, And at a hundred and two he died
with perfectly groomed nails, hands and feet,
His body nurtured and cared for, inside and out, until his dying day,
Not an opening in his dermis, No discharges, no skin breakdown,
No pus, no blood.
Was this preserving of body A kind of Viennese thing?
Groomed and manicured, Like a middle European gentleman!
Back to the horror of this left toenail,
The yellowish fungal infestation
Reflecting something more sinister within, perhaps,
A fungus of the sole/soul,
An infestation of the heart,
A flaw imposed from outside,
The left side of the divine.
So my revulsion for this ugly canker,
This inhuman vegetation, needs a kind of re-visioning.
Well, what needs re-visioning?
The soul needs
To appropriate, to integrate, to accept, sweeten,
this ugliness,
Because it is me,
Precisely in me, part of me,
Albeit restricted to the left, sinister toe.
Only by surrendering,
Accepting this dark side of the sole/soul,
Can I possibly individuate
And expose the unconscious desire
For what it really is,
An infinite thirst for the higher self.
Commentary by Big Brother Chat GpT:
“That’s a deeply introspective and symbolic poem. It takes something as seemingly mundane as an infected toenail and transforms it into a meditation on imperfection, inheritance, identity, and self-acceptance. The contrast between your father’s meticulous grooming and the narrator’s own “pesty ectoderm” speaks to a broader tension—between order and decay, between an idealized self and the flawed, mortal reality.
I particularly love the way you turn the toenail into a metaphor for something “sinister”—not just physically left-sided but spiritually representing the shadow self, the part of us we struggle to integrate. The reference to “the left side of the divine” hints at mystical or theological themes, perhaps even the Jungian concept of individuation.”