"clinical" poems
Everybody has their story
I want to here them all at once
To feel them all at once
With a curious disconnect
A clinical warmth
To compartmentalize with a surgeon's precision
Then when my heart is full,
Burst open and bathe everyone in empathy
But not emotion
Jan 24, 2015
Jan 24, 2015 at 12:49 AM UTC
Found myself at a dental clinic...
He was the best there was.
Unorthodox and eccentric,
But to the specialised craft, he was boss.
Ran through the bits and bobs
Like any normally would.
The poking and prodding and the mandible X-rays.
Everything cold and clinical, so was the mood.
Strange was what happened next...
Specialist and I then stood facing each other.
He leaned close and pressed his palms against my rib cage.
Held them there over a few breaths before it was over.
Then a brief chat, small talk initiated by the man.
Bespectacled and exceedingly chatty, small in stature.
Talks of politics and odd human behaviours...
What started off as friendly turned into a heated banter.
I then realised that along with his decorated credentials,
Was his propensity to be condescending and arrogant.
Him being the best, I thought I could let it all slide,
But soon enough I opted out of being a willing participant.
Couldn't stand his abrasive cockiness!
I snapped out of being cordial and passive thought.
I wanted him to just stop talking!
I went, "Well, are you going to fix my teeth or not?!"
He was stunned momentarily...
I suppose he hadn't seen that coming.
Then his features softened to a blank
I could almost read the unspoken words he was conjuring.
With an exasperated sigh of resignation,
He uttered his next words swollen with regret
"There's no need...for you only have four years left."
It dawned upon me that my timer has been set.
And then I woke up...
Oct 25, 2014
Oct 25, 2014 at 2:21 PM UTC
THERE'S RUDOLPH, FROSTY, SANTA CLAUS AND GOOD OLD EBENEEZER
THERE'S CAROLS SUNG BY EVERYONE FROM KISS ON THROUGH TO WHEEZER
THERE'S CD'S OUT FROM NAT KING COLE, THE BOSTON POPS HAVE TWO
THERE'S ONE OUT NEIL DIAMOND WHICH IS STRANGE BECAUSE OLD NEIL'S A JEW
THE STORES HAVE TINSEL EVERYWHERE, THEIR TREES TOO,LOOKING NICE
THERE'S WRAPPING PAPER, CHRISTMAS LIGHTS AND EVEN PLASTIC ICE
THEY ATTACK YOUR SENSES CONSTANTLY, THEY MUST THINK I'M A FOOL
FOR ALL THIS STUFF IS ON DISPLAY, BEFORE THE KIDS GO BACK TO SCHOOL
THERE'S A RASTAFARIAN SANTA CLAUS WITH DREADLOCKS KNOWN AS "STONEY"
GENETICALLY ALTERED TURKEY MEAT THAT TASTES JUST LIKE BALONEY
PEOPLE DON'T BUY CHRISTMAS GIFTS THEY SEEM TO JUST GIVE MONEY
SO THEY GO SHOPPING BOXING DAY, AND THIS I FIND QUITE FUNNY
THE CHARITIES ARE ON THE PHONE AND AT YOUR DOOR EACH NIGHT
THEY WORK YOU WITH SOME CHRISTMAS GUILT, AND SAY "IT'S ONLY RIGHT"
TO DONATE TO UNFORTUNATES AND THEIR FOLKS NEED IT MOST"
AS THEY FLASH THEIR SMILES, FAKE I/D'S BEFORE THEIR PHONY BOAST
PEOPLE SHOP AND BUY AND BUY AND THEN THEY ALL RE-GIFT
MOST TIMES YOU'LL GET CHRISTMAS CAKE, THAT'S REALLY HARD TO LIFT
YOU WORK O.T. AND DO YOUR BEST, YOUR CHRISTMAS CASH TO SAVE
AND YOU SMILE WHEN YOU GET YOUR GIFT, AND IT'S THE ONE YOU GAVE
CHRISTMAS IS LESS FESTIVE AND TO ME IT'S GOTTEN RATHER CLINICAL
WITH SCHEDULES MADE AND SALES AND THINGS, IT'S MADE ME RATHER CYNICAL
TO SAY WHAT CHRISTMAS REALLY MEANS, I READ THOMAS ACQUINAS
BUT INSTEAD, I'LL USE A QUOTE FROM SHCULTZ'S PROPHET LINUS
..."AND SUDDENLY THERE WAS WITH THE ANGEL A MULTITUDE OF THE HEAVENLY HOST PRAISING GOD
AND SAYING "GLORY TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST, AND ON EARTH PEACE, GOODWILL TOWARD MEN.""
AND THAT IS WHAT CHRISTMAS IS ALL ABOUT....PLAIN AND SIMPLE.
May 30, 2012
May 30, 2012 at 3:13 PM UTC
Judged
My fate lies in another's hands,
In front of the judge, is where I stand,
Sweating profusely, under my suit,
Waiting to end, this two year pursuit,
Which has consumed me every day,
Nowhere to put, these troubles away,
Clinical depression, grew out of control,
****** my life away, into a black hole,
Clouded by darkness, no light shone,
Desire to do anything, had already gone,
Locked myself up, staring at these walls,
Every glimmer of hope, destined for a fall.
Fighting with my mind, trying overcome,
More obstacles appear, before I’d begun,
Drifting through each day, like I wasn't there
Distant from the world, drawn into a stare
*
I climbed myself out, of this black hole,
To walk tall again, my one and only goal,
My vocals returned, clouds leaving my brain,
Sunshine appearing, clearing the rain,
Like sunny intervals, I had moments of joy,
Localised pressure, fog falling from the sky,
Trying to penetrate, deep into the cracks,
To rebuild my life, and return to the track,
Awaiting the moment, I hear the result,
As I fight from all corners, excepting my faults,
Refusing to be drawn, on the what ifs and whys,
The truth will prevail, and settle their cries,
Fact and understanding, from this broken man’s part,
Will show you his compassion, and the pain in his heart,
Whether it is accepted, my offering upon this plate,
I am ready for judgment, regardless of fate.
I will return to my family,
Regardless of your plan,
No longer..My life in pieces,
No longer..A broken man.
Feb 13, 2015
Feb 13, 2015 at 1:44 PM UTC
we have been blessed with womanhood.
not in a biological sense, nor a societal one,
but a blessing, due to our values.
no man could ever make my blood so darkly crimson
make my heart race, beat
in places within me for which
i should be so condemned.
i live for the subtle pain
of lying down once
you've torn my back to shreds–
it's the ghost of you keeping me on my toes.
i want the wine to hit you like it hits me
like it makes me want you
what it makes me want
to do to you
the way the black and grey lines
make your face in my mind
and the screaming color which
you actually are
and on occasion–i am taken to
that place
where my clinical proudness
(and therefore, reserve)
is gone
and it doesn't matter except
that you are mine and
i simply want to make that
very ******* clear
every time i look at you
i want you to know
that i am thinking about
the most carnal viciousness
and how it might
feel to be wanted
by you
how it might feel to
have you screaming
my name into my neck
how it might feel
sweet god among women
in my bed
let me tear apart the stitches in
your skirt
my dream
is to not have to sacrifice
one for the other–
as in,
you wanting me
for me taking you.
Oct 22, 2019
Oct 22, 2019 at 9:26 PM UTC
The clinical nature of your tests leaves me
A cynical crater of a mess
My interest begins to wane
When your quiz sparks pain
Like little droplets of rain
Falling on the window pane
Of your picture
That once was scripture
But now seems impure
And superficial
Destroying my hope
Like a missile
You probe like a lawyer
And act like Tom Sawyer
And expect my interest
But I have none to feign
When your image is stained
By the grueling test I went through
That revealed your inner truth
Jul 31, 2017
Jul 31, 2017 at 10:57 PM UTC
As I sit and ponder, My mind begins to wander, here are my thoughts:
Mainly at night, as I look at life, "What is it?"
Is destiny just everything between life and death, or are we put in the positions of predicaments for a purpose:
Are poor single mothers and fathers given such a path so they may teach their children to live a lonely life; or,
to show them how to get out of that life?
Convicts, are they truly meant to receive life in prison; or, learn the essence of change, and share that wisdom?
Gangsters and thugs, call them what you will, are they only to have a short life consisting of death and sorrow; or, come out of the grind so they may one day return to help change the places and people of which they came?
Are those with clinical depression meant to remain on a medication for the remainder of their days; or, are they to learn that the deepest of pain allows one to truly appreciate joy?
These are just a few of the things I contemplate as my mind wanders, while I sit and ponder.
Sep 12, 2012
Sep 12, 2012 at 3:45 PM UTC
He lives in a time of plague.
The tag team of cholera and dedication killed his father, for all Dr. Juvenal Urbino knows, his father was faithful to both work and love.
The good doctor knew from an early age that his work would be his love, and from a slightly less tender age he discovered that his love of flesh and the body ran deeper than mere science could take him.
He met Fermina Daza in the doorway between clinical curiosity and obsession over her doe’s gait, and as he walked through his heart made room for a new kind of dedication.
He thought his devotion would be equally as precise as his practice.
Fifteen or so years of marriage, between years in Paris they bled together like a Van Gogh after a rainshower, the intricacies of their companionship were jointly held in a contractual cradle, but neither of them felt obligated.
Dr. Urbino was before my time, but my story will know the life of Carlos Mucharraz, Pre-Med major, they both dedicate themselves to their love. I’ve never seen her, but I can imagine Carlos likens her gait to that of a doe. He fawns over her from 17 hours away, for nearly a year.
Like a Texas dust devil, he sends his love through the air to Minneapolis to brighten her phone screen and her day.
They’ve only ever spent time together twice.
I’d like to think of his devotion like a boulder, immovable, but twisters slither across prairies as wicked winds push them towards seas of lust, but I’d like to think his love flew above turbulent skies.
I thought Dr. Urbino as a rock.
He must have thought of his fidelity as a disease. His father died fighting cholera, and Urbino would not let his affliction of faithfulness **** him. He thought himself ill, and the mantra of his practice taught him one thing only: cure.
In a slum of San Juan de la Cienaga, pants around his ankles, holding a mulatto girl’s legs around his waist, he crumbled like stale bread as he plunged himself into infidelity.
This man of granite broke and fragmented, his sin etched a crooked cobweb of fractures into his back, I wonder if the beads of sweat stung his spine, or dulled the pain.
But maybe I should put my faith in dust devils.
Humans may be able to shatter the hardest stone, but no one commands the sky, for it straddles North and South, East and West, Fort Worth and Minneapolis.
Jul 1, 2013
Jul 1, 2013 at 7:20 PM UTC
Commercial's playing in office about A.D.D treatment drugs making
some boys grow female breats. What in the hell and what's up with that?
Yo FCC! Is better to have a freaking disease or embarrassing side affects?
Something took my mind off who I've been thinking about for weeks,
even if it is ***** ups by agencies allowing drugs on the market
without enough clinical studies such as, you take meds and you grow lady parts.
Nov 22, 2013
Nov 22, 2013 at 9:38 AM UTC
Hello Poetry
Yearned.
Ached.
For so long, for a community,
That values the ineffable wonder
Of a wordsmith's creations, intended to
Repair himself and the world with bullets of
Verses.
And here you are.
Like/Dislike, matters not,
So long as we value each others work,
And the the heart echoes within
What the eyes read and the mouth whispers.
The array and disparity of your names,
A delight,
Each name a poem
In its own right.
So I resubmit a question for your consideration,
The answer is now known,
The answer is all of us.
May 2013
---------------------------------------------------------
Who's Who In Poetry
T'is a curious thing,
these verbal peddlers, tribal members,
famously well known to no one,
perhaps at best,
a kindred few, fellow-travelers.
Each a troop,
bloodied, purple hearted,
word-wounded,
anonymous unto each other,
yet all bonded intimates,
in solitary struggle united,
yet sea-parted by the very nature
of the solitude of composition.
All poets are Cain scar-marked,
purposed for everyone to see,
a warning to rabbled boors,
imagination suppressors!
World:
cherish these flawed ones,
gentle these frail but gritty,
the Lord has tasked them
to be prophets in one tongue untied,
undo the strife of Babel's division.
Poets!
Be the harpooners
of the unexamined life,
with unfettered rhapsody,
comfort caress us,
exhort the loopy
to light their illusionary candles,
turn the sad eyed lowlanders
into crinkly eye-lined smilers.
With clinical observation,
dense and demanding,
make us laugh at
the comedy of our situation,
teach us our free-to-see peep show,
reveal, unseal us
with **** empathy!
For who's who in poetry
is all of us!
saviors and failures,
recorders and decoders,
night writers of the oohs and aahs
of dreams and nightmares.
When this poet cannot,
no longer, anymore,
tastes his poems upon your lips,
keep your poems within his heart,
then he breathes no more,
and becomes one who was,
yet is,
because of you,
in poetry.
---------------
Postscript (1/25/17)
Even more true today, than four years ago.
Thank You.
May 22, 2013
May 22, 2013 at 1:40 PM UTC
i am the controlled group
i expected interferon and
i got a saline injection
hepatitis c is the
monster
hiding under my skin
i've called for 300,000 favors
from faceless friends - IRC, IRBs, dietitians, physicians
to try to cheat the system
and to cheat the 4 horsemen
harbinging my own internal apocalypse
"If they don't give me anything,"
I began calmly to my wife;
"the scars on my guts will generate another
Chernobyl out of frustration;
out wanting to see my son graduate."
my white blood cell count is 3
and i will wreck this study
go to mexico
and buy as much real medicine
as i need to survive
rudely refusing the FDA's
50% miracle drug
the ingenious intravenous
sugar pill
i only have 3
white blood cells
circumventing valuable scientific knowledge
is not off the table
i will walk away in slow motion
after saving my liver from
hepatitis hellfire horse jockeys in lab coats
with the entirety of clinical research
burning behind me
Jan 1, 2014
Jan 1, 2014 at 8:02 AM UTC
Our summer fellowships are over! We learned a lot - for instance - how summer’s a lot less fun when you’re hemmed-up, inside working. I mean, we preesh’d the clinical experience, the learning, and especially how good these fellowships will look on our med-school applications - seriously - but there were a hundred rules - aren’t rules incompatible with summer?
Hmm, Ok, let’s see, something poetic..
As the summer sun's blistering radiance waned, shadows,
muscled by sunrays to the marginal edges and corners,
gradually spread, like water - soothing, lenifying and assuaging
simmered nerves with their refreshing, canopied touch.
If sunlight scorched with heat, twilight soothed and gentled,
while varnishing, the dimming world with rainbow, event-horizons,
larger, more inventive, colorful and glorious than any mere mortal art.
Night gradually squeezed, unseen, through those vivid sunset cracks,
and refreshing night-air, drawn in by the last, escaping updrafts of heat,
rustled cooling relief to weary workers seeking the solace of evening and home.
back to unpoetic realities..
When work was finished, we’d retreat from the heat, racing up to the rooftop pool, like two happy porpoises out of school.
Whoever invented poolside food delivery, should win the Nobel Prize for ‘thank you very much.’ We wouldn’t go back to our rooms until it was dark and we’d started to prune.
Now, we’ve a month to relax before our Junior year begins. We got letters from Yale that said, “As upperclassmen..” “Upperclassmen!” We shouted as we danced in hand-holding circles, singing, “Upperclassmen, upperclassmen, upperclassmen, upperclassmen. upperclassmen.”
We’ve grown so much at Yale.
Aug 2, 2023
Aug 2, 2023 at 12:05 PM UTC
Do you know how ******* hard it is to have a disorder with no cure?
“It’s all in your head.”, because it’s so complex that doctors can prescribe anything for you, of course shock therapy isn’t a thing anymore.
I look down at my hands and think, “Is this real?” Of course it’s ******* real, stop being irrational.
But, why doesn’t it feel real?
I’ve been eating fine, sleeping ok, taking my medicine. Why do I feel as if my brain is not connected with my body?
Well, maybe it is. Maybe a part of me just isn’t here anymore.
I don’t know how to explain it. I just feel, off. I’m not me. I’m not anything. I can feel the oblivion in my veins. My sense of reality is gone, and I don’t know what to do with myself.
I can see what’s going on, and I do have control over my actions, but my thoughts are a jumble and some tastes, smells, etc don’t feel the same.
I miss myself.
I miss myself so badly.
Don’t get me wrong, clinical depression and such has kind of guided me towards self hatred, but I’d rather feel self hatred, than feel, this.
Feel everything at once, yet feeling nothing at all.
I’m reckless. I say what I want, do what I want, because nothing feels real.
I even dropped out of school, quit my job, all at 16 and I stay home trying to play video games to distract myself.
Distracting myself always seems to be the best solution. It holds me back from the temptation of just laying on my floor, crying and screaming, just wanting to feel normal. Feel whole.
I can sometimes have normal conversations. Sometimes. Very rarely unless it’s someone very close. Even family members I avoid speaking to in general.
Calen has been helping me, alot. Mostly distracting me. He understands my needs in general, and doesn’t insist on my spilling my emotions to him. He just supports me through it all. If I need to cry, if I need to laugh, he’ll be there.
He’s honestly the only person, well the only thing that has made me think twice.
Now, I’ve laid on the floor, screaming to the moon and to any higher power that might be out there to make me feel sane.
But Calen has seemed to be the only thing that makes me feel, real.
Like, continuing life is actually purposeful.
You could give me a list of things I could do with my life, and amazing things I could accomplish, but all I have to do is talk to him for 5 minutes, even if we talk about nothing of the sort, and I’ll feel the need to live another 24 hours.
Dec 14, 2015
Dec 14, 2015 at 1:48 AM UTC
T'is a curious thing,
these verbal peddlers,
these tribal members,
famously well known to no one,
perhaps at best,
a kindred few, fellow-travelers.
Each a troop,
in the army of orphans,
bloodied, purple hearted,
word-wounded,
anonymous unto each other,
yet all bonded intimates,
in solitary struggle united,
yet sea-parted by the very nature
of the solitude of composition.
All poets are Cain scar-marked,
purposed for everyone to see,
a warning to the rabbled boors,
the imagination suppressors!
World:
cherish these flawed ones,
gentle these frail but gritty,
the Lord has tasked them
to be prophets in one tongue untied,
undo the strife of Babel's division.
Poets!
Be the harpooners
of the unexamined life,
with unfettered rhapsody,
comfort caress us,
exhort the loopy
to light their illusionary candles,
turn the sad eyed lowlanders
into crinkly eye-lined smilers.
With clinical observation,
dense and demanding,
make us laugh at
the comedy of our situation,
teach us our free-to-see peep show,
reveal, unseal us
with **** empathy!
For who's who in poetry
is all of us!
saviors and failures,
recorders and decoders,
night writers of the oohs and aahs
of dreams and nightmares.
*When this poet cannot,
no longer, anymore,
taste his poems upon your lips,
keep your poems within his heart,
then he breathes no more,
becoming one who was, yet still is,
because of you,*
because of poetry.
Feb 22, 2016
Feb 22, 2016 at 4:53 PM UTC
"italicized idleness
illuminated by the
tic toc of time;
fueled fluorescent in
the blue confusion of
flickering bulbs &
clinical corridors of
filler conversation."
Dec 30, 2015
Dec 30, 2015 at 1:32 PM UTC
The machinesed drones droning ozones
made of homogenised genes by replicants
from clinical doctrines and empirical indulgences
Soulless and efficient, bred for duties destructives
Capitalist fodder, programmed ready for earth's ****
Regulate as required, inputted subs with pigs hearts
Made followers with voracious appetite for blood
mechanised barbarians on leash with one track mix
Human shire horses in designer shods and faulty gauges
Manufactured manufacturers limited and corollated
Factories, dormitories partnered with like, watered
and bedded till tomorrow, audiod to the Sterling whip
Given ample ales, keep blinded and chained
Distract and cater to baser instincts, *** *** ***
Free 'love' free *** valueless values, what values
Enjoy kids must return to work desk seven on the dot
Time is money, clogs and production
waits for no man, do or your pleasures denied
Money, money money, honey for bees, honey for drones
Soulless, dehumanised, pale, aged at thirty, heart attacks next
Vacuous ghost programmed dunces
Malfunctioning entities devoid of humanity
Superficial plasticated robots, destruction default
Industrial pieces with industrial minds
Chemicalized drunks with wired brains
They roam around screaming freedom and power!
Dec 7, 2018
Dec 7, 2018 at 8:28 PM UTC
god, words, where do you start?
when i get like this, i just write my thoughts
is that the same as speaking from the heart?
what heart, what heart?
this thing that beats against my ribs
i'm sure it's just a hollow shell;
pumps blood and oxygen
allows me to live through this hell
but there's nothing more to it
i'm not doing so well
do rhymes make pain sound simpler?
i have a bad habit of using them when i'm heartbroken
rhymes are used to undermine meaning, according to my old English teacher
half rhymes and nursery rhymes and rhyming couplets and sentences left open
to interpretation, to ambiguity, to aching wounds and clinical analysis
i'm thinking of pretentious hipsters and all my therapists as i'm writing this
"the mechanism which allows you to feel is broken"
it wasn't the best movie but that line stuck with me
i think the mechanism which allows me to feel is broken
don't worry, Harry, i know how you feel, Harry
i, too, use the adverb; i, too, feel badly.
the sharp things that cut me, the dull things that bruise me
everything i should feel is either absent or agony.
love, they say; let love in, she heals your thoughts and broken skin!
fickle ***** she is, what lies i've heard her spin.
do you love me when you lie to me, darling love o' mine?
do you love me when you trace your fingers over the nubs of another's spine?
love o' mine, love o' mine, that Touch was supposed to be mine,
divine, divine, beloved and reverent and MINE
it's a good thing i don't want to hold onto you anymore
the rope burns were finally sleeping into my core.
my god, these splinters, i'm bleeding from my fingers
as i try to reach out for something that isn't withered,
because the flowers that you bloomed are shrivelled and abused
i refuse to water them, give them life anew
does that make me a murderer?
well you murdered them, too.
Apr 15, 2017
Apr 15, 2017 at 10:55 PM UTC
he promised he'd take her out on the town at a quarter past three
and by a quarter of three she was dead in the living room
with her father's linens draped around her ankles
and below her skin, a purple fountain flowing
he promised her father he'd mend the holes in the linen
which had stained dark after her ascension
after her stomach acid bore craters into the floor polish
after her tongue fell from her lips to kiss the lace
and then men with suitcases took her body away at a quarter past three
they came without breaking or collapsing in the living room
they shrouded her in clinical-white sheets
and walked out the door bearing stoic expressions
leaving nothing but the world behind them
Mar 4, 2014
Mar 4, 2014 at 6:52 AM UTC
Health anxiety.
You google one thing and it says another.
You have a headache and it says its cancer.
Countless trips to your family doctor.
The test was negative, you will recover.
Everything is fine but you’re feeling awkward.
Maybe everything IS fine, perhaps you’re like an actor.
Acting out the symptoms you should get an oscar.
Sue me for feeling like somethings not right, get me a lawyer.
To everyone around me, i’m like a destroyer.
I need to rebuild my life from being an over reactor.
Theres a fine line between normal worry and anxiety.
Theres a fine line between being labelled from society.
Theres a fine line between being sick and being healthy.
But even those who are wealthy are not protected from being unhealthy.
And thats where this fear has developed.
Knowing the highest of classes still are not protected.
CEO’s can get cancer.
The president can get Alzheimer's.
Investors can get tumors.
Is it really so peculiar that I fear that this will occur.
Occur in me? Effect my family? Increase mortality?
Maybe i’m not a clinical case of a hypochondriac, but I feel that sometimes I can be.
Maybe i’m not a maniac, but I know I over worry.
These thoughts don’t keep me up at night, but when I’m sick I always think...
What if its this, what if its that, what if this thing can **** me.
But I guess thats just normal anxiety.
Evolutionary instinct.
Our human kind won’t go extinct.
I don’t need to talk this out with a shrink.
So this cold is lasting more than a few days, maybe i’ll just go to a doctor.
Stop fearing that this is the end, see someone and you’ll feel better.
You can get sick from being stressed, or even change from weather.
Its not strange if you catch a cold, no need to worry it won’t last forever.
When you feel like the doctor is wrong, please try to remember.
A runny nose isn’t cancer, forgetting to check the mail isn't alzheimers, and a headache isn’t a tumor.
Those are all just internet rumours.
Google isn’t your doctor.
Worrying isn’t hypochondria, no need to add that to your self diagnoses list.
While disease is a real thing, worrying is the real *****
Feb 14, 2016
Feb 14, 2016 at 3:33 PM UTC
Depression is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest. Also called major depressive disorder or clinical depression, it affects how you feel, think and behave and can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems. You may have trouble doing normal day-to-day activities, and sometimes you may feel as if life isn't worth living.
Feb 16, 2016
Feb 16, 2016 at 9:50 AM UTC
You ask me to enter to the tilt of your head towards the computer screen
and see, in two words my definition -
bipolar disorder.
You do not look at me, just talk at me
medication? last relapse? severity of episodes?
You count failings, the moments in which I have lost my mind
and you reproach me for them.
You, as you two-finger-type a cold clinical echo of me,
I, on command, recite the past transgressions of my sanity
and you have me – three inches tall on my knees,
in a disease that thrice almost cost me my life
and in your Jobsworth view you tell me I will get ill,
as if this weren't a fact I fight and fear daily.
You with your tunic, blue, cold as your indifference,
announce this, as if calling time -
self-important, unfeeling, with one eye on your watch.
And I smile at you apologetically,
honestly offering up my faith, prayer, medication compliance,
self awareness, begrudged reliance on those I love to wave the red flag
if the waters I get into are too deep.
You are curt with your nod - as if all this is folly between now and the inevitable.
My recovery, my striding, my passion and profession -
All folly.
You are doing the last offices on quick time
because your time is precious and short
and not to be wasted on crazy dreamers with barely a shot in hell
But even with every mental regression, psychotic expression
manic obsession and abyss of depression -
still, still, the world needs more of mes and much less of yous.
So make your disclaimer and write your reports
I'll chant, share the truth in the streets and courts
Sep 2, 2013
Sep 2, 2013 at 1:26 PM UTC
No one told me
so i'm telling you
i expected grief to feel like sadness
but i wasnt told that
that it makes your whole body ache from morning until night
and even in your sleep
and that it makes your hands sting from numbness
making buttoning your jeans impossible
and that some days clumps of your hair fall out
but having a good hair day is the least of your worries
and morbid thoughts attack like being ***** slapped upside your head
hurting so bad you actually pass out in mid sen--
But it's nothing like the sadness i had expected to feel
i've known clinical depression since age 4
and that feeling of curling up in the fetal position
waving the white flag of surrender
trying to make yourself into the tiniest ball of nothing
But grief is a flammable substance
and you can feel it as it ignites the flame of your soul
it feels like being angry in a righteous way
like when jesus knocked over the flea market vendor's tables at the temple
like being so ****** off at all of the scales that are inbalanced
and it is the fuel that makes you want to correct the injustices of the world
and become larger than you are
and shower love compassion and truth over evil
no one told me that grief feels like this
so i'm telling you
Sep 26, 2013
Sep 26, 2013 at 3:46 PM UTC
Skimming through the water, like a bird on wing.
Feeling the currents flowing, water spilling along my flanks.
Surging into the deep sea, searching for sunken ships,
Lost treasures to those above, merely decrepit scenery below.
Perhaps, more, to the sealife that shelters there.
This fantastic ability, to relate to earth's final mysteries in the deep.
Granted me, through a fluke of nature, gills filtering,
Scales protecting, tail and fins propelling forward
To ever deeper realms.
Hardly noticing the increasing pressures
Feeling tides pulling, seeing unfathomed sea creatures.
Appreciating the beauty and the power of the deep sea.
Triton may reside here, only stories to those above.
But the mysterious, deepness of this realm, begs belief in other gods.
Continuous exploration of this vast world,
Only brings me a small portion of its bounty.
Birth, life, death, cycling forever.
Brilliant design of creatures and systems,
Only glimpsed from above.
Denied to those who seek to categorize and quantify.
Life is not averages, statistics, and clinical review.
Being judged in labs by coated strangers.
Life indeed is deep, resounding, complex in every detail.
Microcosms of universes existing in harmony
Beneath waves brushing the sky.
Oct 10, 2010
Oct 10, 2010 at 8:55 PM UTC