Deathmatch Poems, WorldCon Seattle 2025

[Note: Last week, at the World Science Fiction/Fantasy Convention (WorldCon) in Seattle, Rebecca Demarest hosted a boisterous session in the poetry track.  This was a Speculative Poetry Deathmatch featuring a series of prompts/challenges, with genres and key phrases supplied by the audience.  Five panelists and three randomly selected audience members competed in pairs through several elimination rounds, judged by volume of audience acclamation.  I arrived a couple minutes late and did not put my name in, but like the rest of the audience I responded to the prompts with my own little poems, which I’m presenting here.]

 

1.     Prompt: 4 lines/4 minutes; magical realism; energy drink

 

Your favorite energy drink:

Citrus bubbles full of fairies in the basketball court.

Wait for tomorrow, the children say:

No more free throws for you!

 

 

2.     Prompt: 5 lines/5 minutes; cyberpunk; hairless cats

 

Virtual punk cats,

Bald since last week’s security upgrade

Leave null lines of code

For hacking their litterbox.

Naughty kitties will have to learn Ghost Fortran on their own!

 

 

3.     Prompt: 7 lines/7 minutes; space opera; pickles

 

Cucumber pickle-shaped star cruisers

Span the stars, colonizing all worlds as they go.

Three hundred years later chip-shaped saucers

Start a light-years-spanning rebellion

Over fast food franchises:

Chicken wings or hamburgers?

Drowning 10,000 worlds in mustard and catsup dipping sauce.

Blurb notes for A. Pascual-Leone, 2026: Principles of Emotion Change

[Notes: (1) I get asked to write blurbs for forthcoming books, in exchange for getting to read an advance copy. It’s always a challenge to boil a book down to 2 to 3 sentences, and I often end up writing a couple different versions for the marketing folks to pick from, plus some of my other favorite bits. (2) Reference: Pascual-Leone, A. (2026). Principles of Emotion Change: What Works and When in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life.  APA.  Book details: Paperback; Publication date: November 2025; ISBN: 978-1-4338-3660-2; 656 pp; US$54.99]

 

Short blurbs:

Brilliant! Elegant, clear-thinking and highly practical at the same time. Provides the empirical and conceptual foundation for the next generation of Emotion-Focused Therapy theory and practice.

 

Lovely writing, highly quotable, chock full of concrete, wide-ranging practice suggestions with a range of compelling metaphors and entertaining case examples.

 

  

 

 

Longer blurb:

Serious EFT therapists and practitioners of related emotion-based approaches will want to read this book, because it provides a solid, clearly stated scientific foundation for five key kinds of emotion change processes. The author has produced a tour de force based on a rigorous, decade-long systematic review of a wide range of applied emotion research, producing a fresh look at the key therapeutic tasks such as empty chair work, grounding them historically and in the wider field of applied emotion research.

 

 

Other favorite bits:

 

Antonio has done us an enormous service by developing and putting forward a unified grounded theory of the specific emotion processes that drive change in psychotherapy and people’s lives more generally.

 

One of my favorite things about this book is the humility of the author: At the end of an enormous and masterful review, the client is the hero of the story, choosing the emotion change processes that make the most sense to them and using these to change themselves. This book then serves to help therapists support this process.

 

Favorite quote: “While the therapist chooses the intervention, only the client chooses the process” p. 45

 

 

Additional note: This book is due out a couple of months after the second edition of Elliott, Watson, Goldman & Greenberg. (2025). Learning Emotion-Focused Therapy: A Comprehensive Guide. It’s a great complement to Learning 2, essentially providing the basic science underpinning Learning 2, and maybe pushing its edges in places. Antonio has been working on this book for 12 years, and it’s massive, a real magnum opus!

 

 

Bubbles All the Way Up and Down: A Dream

 [Note: This poem, inspired by Gene Gendlin’s approach to Focusing-oriented dreamwork, is a follow-up piece to “Postscript”, which I posted here last November. It was drafted shortly after that piece, but for various reasons I put it aside at the time and have dipped back into it several times, letting it sit with me, incomplete. Recently it occurred to me that (a) “Postscript”, (b) this poem, and (c) “Seventy-five” (which I posted here in June) combine to form an emotional sequence, with this piece connecting the other two. Together, I see them as marking a “time of turning” in my life.  If you want to read them in sequence, you can do so by following the links at the end of the poem. -Robert]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1  A Dream of Fragility

 

Another night, another dream:

 

I’m running a training session,

A small group, about ten people,

In someone’s house, just as we did

In the old days of the approach.

 

And somehow I’m outside

By a busy road

Speaking into a wireless microphone,

With the signal breaking up,

So I don’t know if the people

In the training can hear me.

And then of course my phone rings.

 

So I go to a brief break in the training;

And answer the phone.

You are there, after 50 years,

Phoning at this precise moment

To make contact.

 

I tell you I can’t talk now:

I’m about to do a live demonstration:

A short session in front of all these people,

Which I always begin

By publicly imagining a bubble

Around myself and my volunteer client.

This protects the two of us

From judgement or distraction.

While the audience watches to learn.

 

It’s a good excuse.

But the truth is,

I’m surprised to find in myself

A fragility I didn’t know I had,

As if your phone call

Was the foreshock to an earthquake

Revealing a previously unknown

Fault line in my world.

 

Then phoning you back

Once the live demonstration

And the rest of the training session are done,

I feel my body begin ease

At the sound of your voice:

You are OK, it sounds like.

 

I’ve been so worried about you,

As if I couldn’t afford right now

To lose another foundational

Person in my life.

(Philip and Margaret are both dead.)

 

Then my alarm goes off,

Insistently beeping in the gathered dark,

And the dream of you vanishes

Like the soap bubble

Wish fulfilment dream

That it was.

 

Yet I’m left with:

You are still out there in the dark.

I know where you are,

But I do not know how you are

Or even who you are now.

 

And I don’t even know if this dream

Was about your fragility or mine,

Or even how to tell the difference.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2  Associations: Professional and Personal Bubbles

 

Where this dream of fragility takes me:

 

As a therapist, I’ve long focused

On other people’s fragility:

Anybody’s fragility…

As long as it’s not my own.

The therapeutic bubble,

Well boundaried and one-sided.

 

But this has always been an illusion,

An avoidance of my own fragility,

Another soap bubble fantasy

Of solidity and safety.

 

This makes me wonder about

All the different bubbles

That buoy my life,

Like a fragile raft

In the middle of large ocean,

 

My life like a brief bubble

In the sea of time,

Mostly spent

On all manner of things

Significant and insignificant.

 

The fragile feeling says:

Now there is far less

Of that life remaining

Than what has already passed;

I’m mostly done.

 

Of course, I pretend this is not the case,

I ignore the truth

That compared to most humans

Who have ever lived

I am on borrowed time,

Beyond my span.

 

I let myself forget

That my life is a debt

That can – and will –

be called in at any time.

 

My little life is like

An aneurysm about to burst,

A blood bubble in my brain,

A fragility on which

My continued existence depends.

 

Many questions bubble up in me,

Have I done enough?

Have I made a difference?

Have I lived a worthy life?

Does anyone care?

Will anyone remember me?

Does that matter?

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3  Carrying Forward: The Song of the Bubbles

 

I don’t know how

To answer these questions.

They leave me speechless

And empty-handed.

So I wait. And I wait.

 

And this is what comes:

 

All I know is to go with the bubbles,

To dance to the song of the bubbles.

 

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble,

We are all bubbles,

Our little lives and loves.

Bubble after bubble:

Bubbles emerging from

Geothermal vents

At the bottom of the ocean.

It’s bubbles all the way

Up and down.

 

Soap bubbles and soup bubbles;

Financial bubbles propelled by excitement or greed;

Bubble tea: floating tapioca beads,

The fad its own kind of bubble.

We are all bubbles,

Our little lives and loves,

Bubbles all the way

Up and down.

 

Speech bubbles evaporating

Into the next frame of my life.

Hope bubbles bursting into despair

Like broken blisters.

Despair bubbles bursting into hope,

Like geodesic domes on the moon.

Our little lives and loves,

We are all bubbles,

Bubbles all the way

Up and down.

 

My life bubble surrounded by the time

before my birth and beyond my death;

Quantum foam, constantly flickering in and out of existence,

No solidity anywhere, afloat and adrift.

We are all bubbles

In time and space,

Our little lives and loves;

Bubbles all the way

Up and down.

 

 

 

                                    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 -Pleasanton, Oct 2024 (revised,  Lodi, July 2025)

-Images generated by AI using Adobe Firefly Image 4, using selected verses as prompts.

-The whole sequence in order can be read by following these links (paradoxically, the first poem is called "Postscript"):

1. Postscript: https://pe-eft.blogspot.com/2024/11/postscript-2024.html

2. This poem: Bubbles All the Way Down & Up: https://pe-eft.blogspot.com/2025/07/bubbles-all-way-up-and-down-dream.html

3. Seventy-Five: Questions and Answers: https://pe-eft.blogspot.com/2025/06/seventy-five-questions-and-answers.html

 

Tibetan Prayer Chimes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 Trainers’ Tools

 

I’ve long believed that any large EFT training

Is in need of some way of getting

People’s attention at beginnings and breaks.

 

Twenty years ago, I saw

My favorite Focusing trainer using

A Tibetan singing bowl to start a session.

 

I asked for one for my birthday,

Settling for an inexpensive model

Tuned to middle C.

 

This bowl served me well

But sounded more the dinner bell

My mother used to call

Her wayward children home.

 

This led a generous EFT colleague

To buy me a more elegant little one

With a penetrating, bell-like tone.

 

A musical instrument, it was,

But also a bit heavy

And prone to being knocked out of true

In my luggage.

 

Another EFT trainer, since passed away,

Had the solution to this problem:

A little pair of shimmering

Tibetan prayer chimes,

Tethered together by a rough bit of rope.

 

I took these two trainers’ toys

To many trainings,

And they became a fixture

At EFT conferences,

 

Helping sessions run closer to on-time,

Without yelling or shouting,

And flashing former participants back

To earlier trainings

They had done with me.

 

2  Lost Chimes

 

For my most recent trip, I packed light,

Took only my set of chimes

And used them well

For the training I ran

In Switzerland.

 

After a stop in Poland,

I arrived in Romania.

First day, EFT trainer meeting:

Loud buzz of excitement.

 

At this point, I usually pull out my chimes,

To mark the start,

To penetrate the din.

 

But when and where did I see them last?

I went through my backpack: nothing.

Upstairs, I rummaged through my suitcase:

Not there.

 

I repeated the search of backpack,

Slowly and carefully.

But they had pulled a disappearing act.

 

What happened to them?, I wondered.

Did I leave them in the training center

Or my hotel in Switzerland?, in Poland?

I grieved them. Trainer meeting and conference

Went on, noisily, behind schedule, without them.

 

 

3 What Happened Next

 

Conference ends. Singly and in small groups

People go, leaving the usual

Post-conference emptiness.

 

At the airport,

Security pulls my overstuffed,

Black backpack aside.

They take out many things,

Putting them Into another tray,

Checking, checking:

 

Phones, wallet, hard-drive,

A little metal tin of cocoa nibs,

A suspicious small notebook from Canada,

Which they bang repeatedly on the table.

 

Clearly checking for something,

They put my bag through the scanner again,

But the mystery remains:

 

Like digging deeper into a magician’s hat

(Are all EFT trainers magic workers?)

They pull still more things out of the bag:

 

Shirt, keys, masks, food;

They heft the large Granny Smith

breakfast-apple-for-the-teacher

Fervently offered to me

By an Asian EFTer.

 

Until, at last, from the darkest recesses

Of an outer pocket, unexpectedly

And to everyone’s surprise and relief,

They pull the Tibetan prayer chimes,

That so perplexed and worried them.

 

We all laugh.

“Thank you for finding them!” I exclaim,

They hand me the pile of backpack and trays.

 

No time to explain the back story

Which has taken me many hours

And thousands of miles to lay out here.

 

I go on my way,

Still laughing and shaking my head,

Full of wonder and joy

For all the small things

That make our lives magical and full.

 

                                    -5 July 2025, enroute from Bucharest to San Francisco

 

 

 

Dream: The Bicycle Cop

[Note: The poem was seeded by a dream I had in the morning before I left Romania, at the end of three weeks in Europe.]  

 

Dream: The Bicycle Cop

 

I fail my bicycle safety test.

I get my bicycle fixed;

This time, the bicycle passes

But the police officer fails me:

He’s obtained my medical records

And an x-ray of my back

Shows too much arthritis there.

 

He says my bicycle riding days are over;

It’s too damaging to my back.

 

I’m outraged, how dare he take away

My right to ride my bike?

I fear I’ve lost another bit of me.

Maybe I’ll defy the order,

Ride my bike anyway.

 

But here’s the thing:

I don’t even own a bicycle;

I gave it to a mental health

Bicycle charity in Glasgow

Before we left Scotland.

So why does my heart break

At this loss?

 

 

As I drift in and out of sleep

In the early morning

I imagine getting a bike,

To ride around Lodi

Like the unhoused folks do.

Or maybe a three-wheeler,

Like my old English teacher,

after he retired.

 

A young Romanian student

Drives me to the airport.

She has her bicycle in the boot.

She thanks me for the words I said

Proposing a role for poetry in EFT.

I read her the first section of this dream-poem.

 

We reflect on the feeling of riding a bicycle,

Scenery sliding by,

The sense of freedom;

I say, running is like that too.

She asks if I’m planning to return to Romania.

I don’t know, I say. 

 

 

The unspoken truth is this:

Although the spirit is willing,

The knees are weak;

The hills are steep,

The bicycle passed to someone else.

I don’t know how many more

Of these trips I have in me.

 

So: When will I come this way again?

Maybe never;

There are so many places, after all.

And now I walk instead of ride my bike.

 

But the words I’ve written?

I do think, some of them at least,

Will be read here, will safely cycle

Through this and many other places.

 

I want to say to her,

Here: I leave you my words,

Hoping they will help you find

Your way forward,

Even if I come no more

This way again.

 

                      -For Oana; July 2025; Bucharest-Lodi

 

For Bernadette Walter: Brave Mama Bear

 [Note: Off and on, formally and informally, Bernadette Walter has served as the Executive Officer of the Society for Psychotherapy Research for most of the past 20 years. A couple weeks ago, during SPR's annual meeting in Krakow, Poland, we celebrated her for her long service, as she stepped down from this position for a well-deserved rest.  Two friends and colleagues, Felicitas Rost and Shigeru Iwakabe, asked me to say a few words to her during the conference banquet, and the result was the following poem. -Robert Elliott]

Like me, you first came to SPR

Wide-eyed with wonder,

Like entering an enchanted forest,

And came out changed,

Part of something larger than yourself.

 

As the decades passed,

You grew up, in and with SPR,

Met people important to you,

Made life-long connections.

 

You’ve found yourself a home here,

In this forest of intersecting

Plants, paths and people,

Among the ever-branching lines of research:

Some of them are passing fads, like ferns

That rise up for a season and are gone;

Others are more like towering redwoods

That rise up out of sight and mind.

 

But I like to imagine that your favorite SPR trees

Are most like mighty oaks,

Generously branching, filling the forest

Providing shade and shelter,

Plentiful with leaves and acorns.

 

For twenty years or more, you’ve roamed

This forest like a tutelary spirit:

Watching, protecting, keeping track

Sometimes officially, sometimes unofficially,

But always there, careful and caring,

loving the forest

And its many different creatures:

Big and small,

Shy and delicate,

Careful and heedless,

Caring and self-absorbed;

You’ve loved us all.

 

Like a mother bear,

You’ve watched over us,

Recognizing and appreciating

The wise and foolish of us,

Fierce and determined to do what is right,

To deal fairly, to meet crises, losses,

Opportunities and possibilities.

 

And as you’ve done this,

You’ve grown wise, strong and brave,

And we’ve grown, too, under your watch,

Living out our potential to use

Our knowledge and skill

To make the wider world better,

To use our many gifts to help

Those suffering in mind and spirit.

 

But now after many seasons

It’s time for you to step back,

To open the way

For a new generation of guardian bears.

 

And you’ve left the forest in good shape:

The paths are there, the scary dark places

Have been thinned and opened to the light

As it slants down through the trees;

The risks and possibilities have been mapped.

 

You have made the forest ready

For whatever comes next;

For the new bears,

Who are carrying forward

Your courage, wisdom, and love.

 

And also for all of us forest animals

You’ve protected and watched over for so long.

We are grateful and carry you

In our hearts and minds.

 

                        -Krakow, June 2025

 

Birthdays and Memories

[My dear friend Art Bohart wrote the following as a present for my 75^th birthday last week. I’m pleased to post it here as a counterpoint to the poem “Seventy-Five”, which I wrote and posted here earlier this week. -Robert]

 

Today

My friend is turning 75

And having a birthday party.

I remember when I turned 75.

I staged my 85^th birthday party

Just in case I didn’t live

Till 85. Robert and Diane came

To help me celebrate.

Sadly, I will not be there today

To help them celebrate.

 

This writing is about some of our times.

It is also about Time. Time,

The great haunter of life.

I think of Time like sheets of wind

Filled with rain. I do not know why.

Through the mist I see “shadows of the things

That once were.” They still are, deep in

My unconscious. I see Robert and Les

Coming up to tell me how much they

Liked my presentation at the Person-Centered Conference

In Leuven, way back in 1988.

Can I really see so far back?

I was 45. I was just (belatedly) starting

My academic career after my earlier one

Of turmoil and neurosis.

Their praise meant the world to me

And gave me the confidence to think

That I had something to say.

I am not sure I’d be where I am today

Without them.

 

Fast forward to 1996. Another shadow

Out of the mist appears.

I am sitting with Robert and Les.

Robert and Les are talking about their new book:

The formal birth of emotion-focused therapy,

A new direction in humanistic therapy,

Perhaps even a saving of humanistic therapy,

A savoring of humanistic therapy.

It is the only humanistic therapy that makes a

Major dent.

Even though I am a person-centered therapist,

It is the one I recommend to most students if

They want to practice as a humanistic therapist.

 

As the slide show through the mist progresses,  

Rome comes into view.

Robert is now a tour guide.

I, who am “public transport handicapped,”

Have planned no trips around Rome.

Robert, who is public-transport literate,

Rescues me. I tag along while he and Diane

Take us by bus and subway and bus

To the see the catacombs.

The next night we roam Rome by foot.

We see cathedrals and fountains and enjoy

A dinner together in the cool evening

After a day of hot sun.

That hot sun brings back the tortured memory

Of how we suffered together on a bus tour we took

In the blazing heat to the Colisseum and nearby ruins.

Diane had to sit down for awhile while I could barely stand.

It was so hot I cannot remember enjoying anything. Did we see where

Caesar is buried? If so, so what? By then I couldn’t care less.

 

Memories of a friend who enriched my experience

Painted into my memory

Coming now as time becomes precious.

I thank him for all the research that has enriched

My understanding of psychotherapy,

All the contributions he has made to methodology

Which helped me escape the strait jacket of positivism.

The development of a revolutionary form of humanistic therapy,

Which has expanded my consciousness of possibility,

The moments of friendship I and Karen have shared

With him and Diane.

If my life were a tapestry, hung somewhere in a

Mythical corridor of a mythical inner museum,

And it is, there would be all these experiences

Painted in, from the years 1989 to the present.

Like those old tapestries that told a story.

He has enriched my life story.

 

And now the show moves forward.

 

Time grows short. In some places hopes for the future grow dim.

The future looks darker.

Still, as we venture into the unknown

I am glad to have him and Diane as traveling companions.

 

Seventy-Five: Questions and Answers

 [I wrote this poem to mark my 75th birthday a couple of days ago. If you prefer, here is a link to a video of me reading it: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/zxk8cfmeyhh6oehky9kl8/20250531_220555000_iOS.MOV?rlkey=ffbj59vwahqro27akepito3n9&dl=0] 

 

1  Memento Mori [Often translated as: "Remember you must die"]

 

I’ve already written so much about my life

And my manner of  dealing with my eventual death --

Ignore? Delay? Bargain? Face?  --

That as this milestone approached I thought

I’d nothing more to say… Wrong!

Death is eternal. It’s always with us.

 

Looking back, I see I’ve pulled a Jedi mind trick

On myself:

I’ve imagined my death, to get me to live:

To do good, to make a better world.

To touch and be touched by the lives of others,

To leave a legacy of inspiration and connection.

 

I’ve defined myself by this contest with death,

Racing through life to accomplish enough:

As if by running fast enough

I could outrun my end,

Make an end run,

Like going to warp-speed in Star Trek.

 

As if by being good enough:

Faithful, sinless, self-sacrificing,

I could out-saint my ceasing.

 

As if by believing hard enough:

in something else -- eternal life?,

God?, the Eschaton? Some Grand Simulation

Of all of us? – I could out-believe

My inevitable end.

 

But all of this now seems silly,

Vanity, and chasing after wind: 

As if the point was to make

An impressive performance,

To convince me and you.

 

 

2  Vita plena ["Full Life"]

 

Now, as I reach three-quarters of a century

I find this life-long strategy has broken down:

Oddly, I no longer feel so afraid

Of my own and others’ deaths.

This puzzles me:

Where has my lifetime of anxiety gone?

 

Am I now finally inured to my fear of death?

Have I rubbed it down to numbness,

Even worn it out? Has my fear of nothingness

Finally come to nothing? 

Am I even the same person that I was

When I first began my career of fear?

 

Perhaps it’s all that I’ve accomplished

In my own, one life: Articles, books,

Scouting the frontiers of psychotherapy research

The science-y fiction of imagining a new

Kind of therapy, new ways of helping,

Or better: old ways made new, returning

To the lasting ways of seeing, doing,

And being with each other.

 

Or perhaps it’s family: The amazing family

From which I’ve sprung; strong, stubborn,

Visionary, inspiring both me and others

To see farther, to craft better.

Treasuring my siblings, each exemplary

In their own way. Together, we’ve seen

Our parents through their dying, filling

These shared memories with meaning.

 

And the amazing family Diane and I

Have grown up with:

We growing ourselves as parents,

As our two sons grew themselves to adults,

And our grandchildren now grow themselves

Into young adults.

 

Truly it has been a life full of incident,

As if to say:

I wasn’t just sitting around, you know!

Maybe the specifics of what happened are not

As important now as they once seemed:

Who did what to whom, and why?

But I do know that it’s been a life full,

Rich and intense, like a fine glass

Of petite sirah wine.

 

 

 

3  Quid Nunc? ["What now?"]

 

All this now leaves me with more questions:

How will I keep myself motivated to work

So hard, if the stakes are not life or death?

 

As two new-old friends we saw yesterday

Asked us: What is next for you?

What is important for you now?

 

I think what they meant was:

How will you use your remaining time

Between now and your death?

And are those projects that have occupied you for so long:

The psychotherapy and research writing,

The organizational work

(Let Emotion-Focused Therapy thrive!),

The training and supervision, and yes, even

The bits of therapeutic work.  Do you

Really want to continue doing these things

Indefinitely, until you fall over?

 

I wasn’t happy with my answer then,

Nor am I satisfied now: A book project?

To develop my poetry? Science fiction?

Spending more time with our grandkids.

Protesting against autocracy.

All worthy goals but maybe not the point.

 

I told them: This is the very question

I’m struggling with in this poem:

I’m working on it!

And then our time ran out.

 

What I do know is that these are important questions,

Questions worth asking, even if good enough

Answers have not yet arrived, or possible.

 

So I sat and savored this conversation, rich

And intense, like a glass of petite sirah,

And the inkling of some answers came into focus:

 

 

4  Responsio ["Answer"]

 

If I’m honest, I’m sure what’s

Taken the sting from death is this:

A deep sense that we’re all connected,

Each to each, more deeply than we can ever say.

You live in me, and I live in you:

Past, present, future,

Quantumly entangled.

 

Difference, privilege, marginality, imposing

Our will on unwilling others:  All of these

Are vanity, and chasing after wind.

 

Instead, it’s kindness I seek.

The true JEDI mind trick

Is justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.

To look for greater connection to each other,

to make our shared joy more,

And the pain we cause less?

 

This is worth living for,

Even after three quarters of a century.

 

                

-Robert Elliott; Lodi, California; 31 May 2025