I have faith in medical science
But little in practice.
Straight spined doctors
Racing stopwatches against
Their appointment books.
Extolling the virtues of thousands of years of medical research
But unable to consider anyone's opinion other than their own.
Kindly, soft-voiced nurses shuffling from
Room to room
Doling out condolences and reassurances
Paired with regimens
Of drugs and IVs.
While Old Time in the ticking clock
Slows
To a dead crawl.
And the noise of heartbeats on machines
And discussions out in the hall
And loved ones distracting and pacifying patients in beds
Layer on top of one another to form a firm blanket of
Crushing. Boredom.
And the antiseptic smell does nothing to ease
The passing of time spent waiting
While the medical machine spins its wheels
To the chime of slot machines.
And the bustling rush outside a curtain
On hard white floors,
Does less than lend a sense a peace
But more of frantic urgency.
Minute long - task oriented visits
Where they know names, numbers, and insurance coverage
And they know how many steps it takes for them
To lend more of their valuable time
In that modern balance of cost and care.
Leaving me wondering,
Where did the connection go?
I wonder where peoples' trust went
And when it was replaced with,
"How much will this cost me?"

at first it's faint, the wailing sound.
almost a mile or two away.
it's a quarter to 1, you stayed up late again thinking about
her or him or what or who.
the sound is loud and you can't come down from the high.
your ears are stinging, your eyes on fire, knuckles are ****** and bruised.
remember that razor you said you would flush?
the drugs?
the pills?
the *****?
all you can hear is that ******* wailing.
your thoughts foggy, unclear.
trembling hands gripping the metal that sets your demons free.
the 3 bottles of *****, the bag of X and
your moms prescription pills.
little did you know, the wailing you heard was no siren at all;
it's your screaming and crying and loss of hope ringing throughout your ears.
as they strap you down
and roll you away,
you're just a siren for everyone in these pasty white walls to hear.
so when you remember her or
him or what or who, maybe
why, when and how;
also remember the faint sirens.
when you woke up in a hospital bed.

I've walked through the locked doors of a mental ward to go and visit someone considered a danger to themselves. Half starved girls make short steps past me and I double take to check if I'd seen a ghosts.
But ghosts are the ones looking for their mortality not the ones looking to drop it. So I turn my face away... And despite the nature of where I am I manage to crack a smile because somewhere on this floor was a small room with lost and found and I had some misplaced love to turn in. The young women on this ward have been here anywhere between weeks to years and they considered it a hell away from home. But the Afternoons I got to spend there will continue to be some of my greatest memories.

There's a lot going on up stairs. Between our 10 fingers 2 eyes 5 senses and 1 voice we're going experience this place one way or another, and your experience will be unlike mine and mine will be unlike his but we can go to sleep knowing that what we felt was real.

So I imagine it's scary being told by a medical professional that some area of your viewing experience is not as it seems. There's dead pixels in your screen. You've been meaning to redeem the warranty on that broken dream of a reality you've been living. But the company that sold you your world is out of business. That is to say when you check into insanity, there's no reception to show you to your room. Every spoon you're fed tastes real, but the people sitting across from you sees no meal. You feel scared.

And yet through all the poor unfortunate souls to behold on this ward one of them taught me beauty in the crazy, and seek these lessons in all of the other people. I want OCD to teach me to arrange my audience in such a way that you all look perfect. I want ADHD to teach me speech. Let me cradle impulse in every corner of my mouth and when it finally flows out let it roll about like a newborn who had it's mother craving haribos and red bull for 9 straight months. I wanna start speed dating for the narcoleptics and insomniacs and see if either can sleep on their wedding night. Watch them grow old together and have no concept of time passed because who the hell knows what time is is when your sleep patterns been ****** with. I want tourettes to teach me that this feeling is uncontrollable let our hearts be uncapped, every open armed come back, every face to face sweet embrace you give to those you love feels so natural that words like 'can't ' or 'no' become unfathomable.

But I can't pretend that these are easy gifts to accept, so many tears gave for the labeled and named, asking what's inside my brain, can I be called sane?

So my friend in the lost and found department of the ward taught me, recovery and stability are part of the beauty. Her dress size was the fine line between happier times or a cut short life. But now the time she's kept out of hospital grows like her smile. She's come miles and miles and and all the while is a living monument to the phrase 'things get better'... and that's all this is. Despite reality itself being an uncertainty and and the skies throwing all kinds of weather in the end, we're all birds of a feather that flock together and we need to remember that the sad times aren't forever, so this is a handwritten love letter to the things that get better.

All I need is some air
air
air
I used to walk over there
right over there
but now the hallways depress me.

I stretch and yawn
the hospice just fare
fare
fare
always cold and still,
white. Bare.*

My mother's questions
lodge crystals in
my colon.
Now we'll know
an emerald city.

The Coat
(Unsurprsingly) says
"It's my first day"
My cocktail of
tiny hard whites
and oranges,
yellows, blues;

A declaration I am not new.

In fact,
I
may never be through.
More white Coats
await corners as
mini-bosses do.    

*The controller breaking
in my palms.
I haven't lost but if I did where would I go?
The answer is, nobody knows
knows
knows.

One year ago today I tried to **** myself.
I called you crying on the phone, begging to see you, saying I needed you. I did. I did need you. You said you had other things to do, and that included her. And you hung up. I went into my room and I couldn't stop crying. I couldn't breathe. I saw the bottle of Tylenol *** on my headboard. We had a conversation in my head. I finally took the bottle and chased a handful with water. It came down hard. But I waited. I texted you a couple times and got no response. Then I fell asleep for a while. Then I woke up and I had to go to work. I left and started letting the animals out but the entiretime I was in so much pain. My stomach, my head, my heart, my lungs, my legs, my hands, my eyes. It was all useless. Ifelt like I was going to throw up. I thought I was dying. But I didn't. Tricia texted me and I told her everything. She called my mom. My mom watched me work for the next couple hours. She never said anything. When I finished, we went home and I locked myself in my room. Thenext day I called into work. The next day I went to school and I had an anxiety attack. So I texted my mom asking her to come get me. She did. She tookme to see Stacy, my therapist. They convinced me to go to Research. And after an hour of saying no and crying, I went. My first day was what would have been our one year anniversary.

1

Monday Night Football on a Thursday.
Preseason. Johnny Manziel, running.
The nurse is a signal caller, too.
She flicks the wrist like Rodgers,
puts spin on it like Manning.
Once a rookie, now a seasoned vet.

2

Monday Night Football on a Thursday.
Network glitch? John Gruden, talking.
Anxiety lurks in the tall grass
still licking its paws. My head's out the game.
I've become an easy meal.

3

Monday Night Football on a Thursday.
If I had another John he'd go right here.
I miss my mother, and how she smiles
like my illness only increases my value,
puts gold in my veins instead of chemo.
Rex throws his clipboard, I lose my appetite.

4

Monday Night Football On A Thursday.
No more John's. Get over it.
Game's almost over. My head fresh from
the toilet, pieces of everything falling out
of me. Broken. Stumbling. At this moment,
football is enough.

I have cancer, but that's not what I want to talk about.
Nor do I want to talk about the cold bouncing in
  from the sliding glass door of the lobby. (The lst
   floor lights give off deceptive warmth.)

I don't want to talk about hospitals, or illness for
that matter because, truthfully, its become a game
  of things I'd rather not discuss.
   If you have an imagination, you get it.

I don't want to talk about the thirty day hospital intervals,
or the way my heart turns seeing my mother watch her son
  soldier through. I can be brave and not feel like talking.
   Because why talk when I have you here, next to me, smiling.

My friends been depressed,
there a wreck,
and they go through all sorts of tests
what a mess,
because the only outcome is things they suggest,
giving prescriptions to digest,
like you say it's genetic as you pull out cuffs to arrest
you say they can't help it as you ******* their vest,

now claiming,
sometimes you're born with it!

My friend has frights,
and they shake in the night,
as time goes on he gets closer and closer to touching the white lights,

left alone all day wonder
what is so wrong with me? who can I blame for this!

My friend, me well I'm well,
but I mean to say were in an actual hell,
but thats in the past because at least I've got my health and no one to hear me yell,
were if wellness is this, I can't picture the sickness,

my friend we must manage our misery,
or mange in the misery,
Don't run from the misery,
you can't run.