You can make me smile
On a dark and stormy night
Or on a warm day

In a moment of life, sweat running down my face
Bad case of shyness, silencing ones tongue from race
No sleep at nighttime, just seeing the sun rise
My senses all failing and my mind freezing over
A look in the mirror I didn’t recognise
Then it appeared as an hallucination
I heard her call for me
I had to slap myself over and over
This could just be a dream or this might just be heaven
Then it occurred to me, that I was on strong medication
The images and voices I heard that day
Were just from my imagination

Understand the Black Dog Illness
Not our choice (Not our choice)
Not our choice
Heaps of people with the Black Dog Illness
It doesn’t discriminate (It doesn’t discriminate)
It might just be lying in wait

Your mind is racing quickly, then goes into a frozen zone
You’ll have struggles daily, yearly, maybe to your gravestone
How you control yourself in the moment of the bark
Some handle it well, some can’t handle it at all

So phone a friend if needed
Say hello, was the answer what you’d expect?
They said, “How are you coping and sorry I left you, I shouldn’t disconnect?
And still those friends don’t call me, any day of the week
Sit by the phone, morning, afternoon and at night
Just to hear them speak

Understand the Black Dog Illness
Not our choice (Not our choice)
Not our choice
Society needs to talk to about the Black Dog Illness
So no one’s alone (So no one’s alone)
It might be you one day, ok

Moments of frustration
Retirement not an option
Some say, "You aren’t really sick, just your minds full of toxin”
And in the family circle
They gathered for an intervention
Some still don’t get what it controls
And they think it’s my own invention

Last thing I want to address
Is the way family and friends that you adore
Just think it’s easy going back to the way I was before
"Time will heal," said the bible man
"We are promised our own path
You can work it out, in your own time
But you have to believe!"

Sadness is a badness
A disease of desperate unease
An ugly difficult anomaly
That brings me to my knees

It enters the room
On its own terms
Without a warning
As welcome as germs

Like a kick in the ******
It hurts like hell
Bringing on the confusion
Of words misspelled

I can't ****** help it
What do I do
It grips on so tight
Like a terrier with a chew

A minute, an hour,
A day, sometimes a week
There's no rhyme or reason
For how long I feel bleak

And bleak is how I feel
During the spell
Bleak, numb, disabled
Desperately unwell.

Single, solo
Alone, on my own
Deeper and deeper
Heavy as a stone

I don't want it to happen
Not ever, at all
Like rabies, like syphilis
Like headbutting a wall.

It changes my mind
And the way that I act.
It makes me go silent
I feel like a ****

I cancel appointments
Welch out of dates
Then worry for ages
That I've upset my mates

My pain, my heart ache
Nobody knows
They may have similar
But they don't have my foes

So next time you see me
And I'm not quite myself
Please give me some space
And wish me good health

Please give me some time
To get back to being
To get back to feeling
And hearing and seeing

For when I am happy
My world is amazing
And when I am sad
My world is hell raising

Sadness is a badness
A disease of desperate unease
An ugly difficult anomaly
That brings me to my knees

How does it feel, knowing that the world long ago
figured you for a suicide?  Do you ever
get the sense that you're
disappointing your audience?

Start smiling more;
     it could make a difference.
You never know what could be in store,
     so show off your radiance.


Start trying harder;
     it could even surprise you.
You can always dream even bigger;
     so now, think how-to?


Start living askew;
     it could do you some good.
You mustn't always just stay true.
     Start before this becomes overdue.


Please start now,
you will prevail somehow.