My To Do List



1. go to Hell

Complete

Color

Delete

UpDown

2. fight way back from Hell, yet again.

Complete

Color

Delete

UpDown

3. find some minor comfort in this new, minor Hell

Complete

Color

Delete

4. Add new task

Depression is reading bad poetry
Written by merely dysthymic people
Depression is people which does result in
Hell   
Depression is the pain caused by people
Trying, poorly I might add, to articulate what
'Depression means to me'
Depression is tantamount to hunger
Something we all must suffer
Some will starve to death
You, my poetaster chum
Are only late to dinner
The pang will pass

For the sake of this "conversation" (read: mild power struggle)
You're right. "I don't really mean all that"
I'll agree, concede....Pretend I do not
If it puts color back in your cheeks
And awakens your dead eyes
Sure, I'll fight the screaming of every
Fiber and cell in my body
Lie and say
"People are worth saving"

I have fallen
Strewn, the pieces that are left of me
You I hope  alone
Can't reach this viscera afloat
I will stay below
Observe and absorb this spectacle
You will talk incessantly
While you do just what you're told

A dream in which I'll be engaging in ***
With the loose folds of skin and cellulite
around Maya Angelou's neck
I use the word engage b/c I don't think
It'll be  my idea or if I would even want to be a completely willing
Participant
You know how dreams go: you're able to detach
So anyway, all the while she'll be reciting her verse
In that overly inflected, pretentious and annoying grandmotherly Huxtable
Tone she uses and
Right as the nauseousness becomes unbearable
And I fear I won't be able to keep the contents of my
Stomach from forcing itself out and onto her face
She starts to devour the entirety of my lower abdomen
The sickness I was feeling quickly dissipating and the
Realization that she's no longer speaking and merely
Gnashing, ripping and eating my viscera
I return to an almost homeostasis
A comfortableness




Damon Michael Garrett
Copyright © 1972-Present

I had a dream and in it someone told me that you had died
In this dream I didn't ask why, figured i knew
Didn't want to press it
So having not heard from you for several months
You call me, really needing to talk, but you leave a message
Sorry, I was asleep, busy
Having this dream in which I'm told you're no longer alive
It didn't seem a wise thing to tell you next day
When I returned your call you said everything was fine
I knew you were lying and that to me, you were
Dead, at least unconsciously

Mid- afternoon shadows casting onto cheaply painted walls
Have always given me the doldrums
A depression really,that doesn't lift
Till the sun finally sets
Then it's merely a despondency
That starts to slowly relent
Much after Mid- night
Then I can start to sleep until
The next day when it starts all over again.
The reason nothing worthwhile gets done
I like to think