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Rochelle Roberts Apr 2016
I'm stuck in this room
Trapped by the decaying white walls
That I scrape away at,
Mindlessly, as I shift
From medicated dreams to
Manic insomnia.
I thought the last thing I said to you was
Don't leave me here.

My eyes bleed
As I try to remove the demons
Infesting me,
Creeping through my lashes
Into my irises.
The droplets stain the walls,
Fingerprinting my frenzied panic,
Echoing the last thing I said to you.
Why did you leave me here?

The air is intoxicating,
Shifting from breathlessness to weightlessness.
I'm sure they poison me here.
And you, the fallen angel of my thoughts,
You fiendish whisperer,
You have felt my fear,
Witnessed its brutality
In its shifting manifestations,
But still you left me here.
This poem was inspired by artwork by Tracey Emin of the same name.
Underland Mar 2016
You're insane
You're crazy
You've lost it
You're mad
That's what they tell you
That's what they say
But maybe it's them
Maybe they're crazy
Maybe we all are
And maybe it scares us
So we lock up those who make it obvious
Or maybe they're the sane ones
Maybe we all just refuse to hear the voices
Or see the people
Maybe it's driving us all insane
If you really think about it
If you really do
Who's really more insane?
The poor mental boy
Or the sick excuse for a doctor
The one who claims to cure him
The one who 'heals' him with electricity
With eels to his head
Or who boils him in a tub
"Hydrotherapy" he says
"It helps" he says
Laying it out makes it obvious
Laying it out makes it clear
You'd be insane to believe that those could work
Insane!
But that was then
This is now
Now we use drugs
Now we use words
Or do we?
There is still pain
There is still torture in therapy
And the patient in the ward has no say
They are locked
Stuck eternally
Hearing the same thing over and over again
You're insane
You're crazy
You've lost it
You're mad
If you stare out of a window
Across a bleak garden some September morning
If the neem tree in the garden reminds you of home
Vast, old, timeless
If you remember playing under a neem tree in Allahabad
And you can almost hear the laughter of children as they play
In the heat of a sultry afternoon in June
And because the window is small and barred and cannot open
Because you want to breathe freedom
Because you want to shower without them watching
Because you silently swallow your screams
Because your mind is starting to get fuzzy
Because your tongue is starting to slur
Because you have started drooling
Because your fingers shake when you write
Because the words Ritalin Prozac Depakote Lithium
Have started sounding like poetry
Because you feel your resistance slowly dying
Because you start to say the words they want to hear
Because you know the glazed look in the eyes of others
Is in your eyes too
Because this confluence of muscle and bone is wasting
Because you sleep for hours
Because you now smile at your doctors
Because you scream when the ECT paraphernalia is wheeled in
Because no one cares
Because once you’re labeled, you will be forever
Because asylums were once freak shows
Because asylum is not what it means
You go back to staring
Staring
Staring
Staring
Staring
Staring
­ Staring
Staring
Pauline Morris Jan 2016
Sitting on the soft floor surrounded by white
Hugging your self wither you want to or not
The light is so very, very bright
In your head your screaming stop

Because they're buzzing so loud
And it's the only **** sound
But the voices in your head are starting to crowd
In your brain they are circling and twirling around

How did I end up here
I don't remeber a thing
There is nothing at all that is clear
Did I finally snap, that one final little string

Oh those ******* lights won't they stop
My voices yell in unison, it's causing them pain
That buzzing is gonna make me blow my top
If it don't stop, the buzzing will dive them insane

And if they go nutty what will happen to me
**** it's been hours, or has it been minutes
I'm not sure, seconds it might be
I'm being pushed past my limits

Still, tho I can't see a clock
I can feel time ticking by
Or maybe it's not
I would know if I could see the sky

But that is impossible so I just rock and I sway
The buzzing has now become my back beat
I know it's been years now, or maybe just days
I can't tell this room is dripping with deceit

I know when they open that door
Drowned in my own drool
Right there on the floor
Just another crazy fool
Phoenix Jan 2016
We are the "minority"
We are the "weird ones"
We are the "crazy people"
We are the "Oh, they should be locked up!"
We are the "Honey, let's go somewhere else. SHE is here."

We are the light
                    in an otherwise dark world
We are the color
                    in an otherwise grey world
We are the art
                    in an otherwise lame world
We are the curves
                    in an otherwise straight world
**We are the poets of the world
In the recent New Yorker, writer Elizabeth Kolbert has a great article on rising sea levels and how they will especially affect south Florida. Here's a link to the article: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/21/the-siege-of-miami
In the penultimate section of the article, Kolbert writes that Bruce Mowry, city engineer of Miami Beach, muses, "I'm sure if we have had poets, they'd be writing about the swallowing of Miami Beach by the sea."  

How very odd that he thinks Miami Beach does not have poets and that he also feels their lack in new poetry about sea level rise which truly threatens their city. We must help! Let us step in and write some poems on their behalf. Write a poem about Miami Beach (I've never been there, but I won't let that stop me), the rising sea levels, climate change, flooding, or the strange ignorance of the poets in our midst
Anthony Perry Dec 2015
Religions persist on personal prohibition, it puts all the blame onto you for someone else's sinful personification.

 Ideological love is how they live but there's no restriction on perdition of a mythological god above. I'd rather be the son of perdition than the folly of lambs.

Too exhausted to audition for a man of clay puppeted by people who belive in the same puppet that once traversed their lands.

To die and be locked in the Land of silence, Land of desolation,  a World in December, Purgatory is sounding better and better.
Rob Kingston Oct 2015
****** lines paint pictures on the road side of their hell.
From the first day they bleed as the key is turned for the final time.
Not dressed for the journey, each step harder than the one before.
Each sunset sees the reaper, his call, the devils smarting roar.
Every new day like no other they will have experienced,
Each new dawn the mist of many spirits aloft,
those remaining, feeling that no one cares.
Aspirations gone,
Dignity lost
Food,water and shelter scarce,
The queue lengthens
The questions get louder
The queue lengthens the questions
Get LOUDER and LOUDER and LOUDER.

Fences erected,
Borders closed,
Armies lined ready to stall the flow,
Humanity lost !
Hidden in a politicians pack.
The questions get louder.
There's no way back!

(c) Robert Kingston 19.9.15
Another piece written to highlight the suffering going of those in flight for asylum.
Anthony Perry Sep 2015
I get too deep in my own emotions, I never even attempt to try and bring myself back because I know that when I’m depressed they just become delusions. It’s simple to say that friendship can keep you sane but honestly, it’s the comradery the keeps me sheltered in an uncomfortable silence. Hearing about the pleasures someone can indulge in makes my heart break, then to hear them complain about the small demons they face in life just simply makes it hard to agree with their outlooks when I’ve seldom ever seen my happiness at its peak. It’s hard to think of them outside of our time together when almost every moment of my time is hard to fabricate. I love them but sometimes it feels like I have to liquidate and make my escape before I create a situation where I will negate the comfort I’ve created with them, it’s so hard not to express the feeling to leave.
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