"sanitarium" poems
I don't know what the day was like
But I want to believe that it was glorious
Cold
Clear
With the sting of February on the face of a doctor
A father to be
Hurrying his wife
Probably in labor
Down the steps to the car
For the trip to the hospital
Actually the sanitarium in Clifton Springs
Then, after awhile in the waiting room
The news
And the promise of a baby girl
His first child
The first of five
The child who won't die at the hands of a drunk driver
The only one who won't be a doctor
Who will marry
Have three children of her own
Loose a husband
Gain daughters and a son in law
Grandchildren
And who
Sometime later
After the roar of a hurricane passes
Will pass herself
Hiding the pain that ravages her small body
And tells her that she's still alive
But for now
In the sanitarium
In Clifton Springs
Only the promise
Of a baby girl
In the arms of a new mom
His wife
Aug 8, 2012
Aug 8, 2012 at 8:54 PM UTC
Quickly and quietly they come in the night,
slithering, sliding into your room,
under your covers and out of sight.
Soft, scaly skin cold to the touch,
whispering "dear, you mustn't scream much".
Long pointed fingers wrap 'round your head,
they've found you cozy in blankets,
and now wait to be fed.
Can you hear the scuttle of claws in the hall?
Coming to find you,
coming to maul?
Clicking claws and soft little hands that are cold to the touch,
they’re whispering, "fear, now isn't it such?"
Dark little voices in a dark little room,
so often a haven,
now laden with doom.
Eyes shining coldly in the blackness you see,
fangs dripping with hunger
as they shiver with glee.
Dozens all over, waiting their turn,
they've come for your tears,
for your dreading they yearn.
Quickly and quietly they come with delight,
but it's all just a dream
so sweetheart, goodnight.
Jan 9, 2013
Jan 9, 2013 at 4:00 PM UTC
Some days, I wake up flighty and itchy.
Crawling out of my skin and jumping at every last inhale and exhale.
Crying at every last brush of my fingers on my scars.
Whimpering at having to be surrounded by a writhing mass of people.
These are the days when I’m most reminded of you.
Reminded of how you used to love me.
Reminded of how you used to hold me.
Reminded that you don’t care about me anymore.
These are the days when I wish I could still talk to you.
That you would still care about what I had to say.
I would probably ask you to hand me a scalpel and some scissors and the rubbing alcohol,
because I need to cut you and your scar tissue permanently away from my heart.
And even on these days I remember that you would have looked at me in anger and pity for saying such things (i.e. self-harm)
But these are also the days when I want to cut all of my emotions out.
Slice them away from my veins word by word.
Watch apathetically as I bleed the letters out.
All of these words and letters we have assigned to emotions, to try to describe the uncontrollable reactions we have in life.
Anger, Betrayal, Compassion, Exhaustion, Frustration, Guilt, Happiness, Indifference, Jealousy, Kindness, Love, Morbidity, Nervousness, Oppression, Peace, Remorse, Spite, Tranquility, Uncertainty, Vexation, and Yearning.
For, surely, it would be easier to be numb, than to go through all of these and many, many more?
To go through the long, unending cycles of good weeks, good months, and then bad days.
Sure, they’re less frequent than they used to be.
Sure, they’re few and far between.
Sure, it’s only 24 to 48 hours.
Sure, the medication quells the panic attacks and violent mood swings and poisonous thoughts.
But that just makes them worse when they surface.
Makes the paranoia worse.
Makes the anxiety worse.
Makes the self-abuse worse.
Makes me worse.
On these days I remember,
That you ran away from me because I’m broken
,
and you aren’t a handy man capable of fixing me.
I can spend all of my time loving you,
fixing you,
singing to you, worshiping you,
And in the end you cannot give these things back.
You aren’t perfect.
You aren’t chained to me.
You didn’t even want to claim me.
And after all, on these days,
Everything is my fault anyways.
Some days,
The days when I wake up,
Begging to be locked in a sanitarium,
Sobbing and biting and kicking and screaming,
I’m reminded that you,
And no one else,
Will ever love me.
Oct 1, 2013
Oct 1, 2013 at 11:45 AM UTC
Finally i'm free, finally i am
Away from that cage, far from that hell stage
Been two months since I'd stopped chatting with them
They've never ceased stalking me, talking to me
But I fought them with gallantry
The courage of not making a noise
The bravery in silence
Finally i'm free, finally i am
Away from that cage, far from that hell stage
Might be the last visit of my loved ones that affected me so much
Gave me a true strength to overpower and block
They've danced, sang, even performed a magic tricks
But all are in vain, the coin was finally flipped
Until totally no voice from them, no sightings at all
Finally i'm free, finally i am
Away from that cage, far from that hell stage
It has been twenty minutes since we left the sanitarium
Finally i am away, finally i am far
"His situation is fifty-fifty" said the nurse that accompanied the body
As i looked at him to my curiosity
Oh God! It was my body in an ambulance...
written: September 1, 2014 @ 9:16 PH standard time
Mysterious Aries
Sep 1, 2015
Sep 1, 2015 at 5:15 AM UTC
Despair in the sanitarium!
All lies escape the insane are awake
Beyond the locked doors the echoes bounce across the checkerboard floors
Sigh-lence, day dreaming, stay screaming
Slay on words, motion madness
In jest, cyanide suicide happy faces.
Hisses of those bearing bloodshot eyes, venomous guise
Bystanders walk by, cross the line
I stand firm above it, ne'er beyond the bonding
I'm bound to the ground crystal, looks back at me in the mirror.
Dec 2, 2009
Dec 2, 2009 at 11:16 AM UTC
Rocking your head back and forth
Disbelieving faces stare
As you cry for mercy
Quietly going insane
Dropped through the hole
Feeling nothing at all
As you saw what the world could be
Reality and fantasy kaleidoscoping
When you awoke--
The brightness was gone
Vanished from your mind
And your ideas seemed inconceivable
--to the others
Oh, the others
The disbelievers
The skeptics
The ones that refused to open their mind
Possibility spreads like a tree from a single root
But they are unable to see it
Instead, they dismiss you
Send you to the sanitarium
Where your screams of madness can be heard
Even today
Nov 24, 2018
Nov 24, 2018 at 3:50 PM UTC
My thoughts of her have spilled out of my mind and onto my tounge
creating sentences I never should speak
My desire for her has built into an aggression for the world around
Now I drop more insults than solders do bombs
I cause more emotional deviation than a third world typhoon
Wounding others in ways they have tried to replicate
Becoming the ultimate form of self harm
I have withdrawals from her skin
In which my body twitches palms sweat and
my mind is consumed in a mirage of her touch
But I cannot be detoxed from her like a common alcoholic
Even though I have purged every emotion out of my body
Like the calories I feared would store over my bones
I cannot rid myself of this burning craving of affection
That only she can give me
For she has filled the void left by the generations
of sanitarium prisoners my lineage was cursed with
My fragile balance of living thins the longer she is away
But I am no acrobat and I don't know how much longer
I can tiptoe across this tightrope of stability
Nov 22, 2013
Nov 22, 2013 at 11:31 PM UTC
I walk down the street whisked by the fragrant aroma of a ***** floating above the clouds
Encased in venom but dismantled plumes of disembodied hair gave her a shroud
I saw in her minced reflection the swindled lust of a happy conclusion
To years of isolated rebarbative delusion
To serenade with penultimate swaggers as though I have been fully swooned
Too soon to aim my praise at an adoring moon
Tugging on mutual hearts entwined with the summer breeze
Trying to garner the summer heir and the summer flair
A panache to clothe every armed bear, disarmed by a propitiated care
A crisp lament crashes the party as a heckler gouging for blindness
I clinch a ****** anger as a riotous engine crafted from wineskins
Belonging to an ageless agelast scurried in dismay
I warp the warbled marble sleet a craven disarray
Then I clamber, risqué in fleeting moments a criminal repartee
I wallop the emerging consensus as the 16th hands me over dumped tea
And a ****** tree laughs as the whitewashed sanity of sanitarium ******
I swerve away from the indecency of a pepper enclosed in chosen wax
A gibbous shackle crumpled on a concrete semaphore
An erratic blithe minatory metaphor
Saturnine clout sweeps the dusty apron from the desuetude of homespun lethargy
Rampant clovers distilled from a dreamscape a raspy sea
Trespassing whisper surmounts the lambent alpenglow of a newborn sun
A sleek potter’s spell encumbered by a lapsed pun
Doors ajar and vats wed with an aimless spar
I finally see the fullness of majesty adorned as a breathing star.
Jun 30, 2016
Jun 30, 2016 at 7:42 AM UTC
there is a cemetery in my heart
a sanitarium in my head
a trailerpark in my soul
lead paint on my toes
arms scared the accident I lost it in
my life is gone
my dreams have ended
my everything is through
all goals aborted
a tornado straight through my soul
I was too crazy for the sanitarium to control
The lobotomy couldn’t save me
It rains in the cemetery of my heart
I’d give anything to go back to the start
Before the world ended
Before this war started
Back when back when my heart had silver lining
And my brain was still sane
When my soul was a mansion, and I was out of room to gain
When my dreams and ambitions
Were far beyond fame
Back before I realized we are all insane
Apr 15, 2012
Apr 15, 2012 at 1:49 AM UTC
Just released from the sanitarium
Cold cruel empty world took me down
Malnourished, tooth abscesses'
Manic Depression
Isolation
Brought me to the brink a bad state of melancholy
I went to a hospital ER for help
They don't do dental work
Dentists are Satan in disguise
The AMA knows this and won't let them in their
Genuine Doctors' tribunals
I got released with the bogus diagnosis of ****** abuse
I told them I took the medicine cabinet drank a quart of ***** and that would be it.
THE END
You have heard of Catch 22 here's Catch 23
If your in the nut house for a failed attempted suicide
All you have to do to get out is say I don't feel suicidal any more.
That easy.
A foreshadow to this poem.
Industry took away my know how
I couldn't make my own shoes
I couldn't make a yoke to mount the ox I don't have
To plow the back 40 I'll never own
If my life depended on it
I can't build a house of logs
Would die quickly without central utilities
Food would vanish after days of no electricity
People protect there own and I'm a lone
So I pray I am not the first to go
I try to be a human being
The best was I can
Trying to see through the muck
With prayers, and great hopes
And Luck
I hope I can continue to be.
A human being
Aug 2, 2014
Aug 2, 2014 at 2:54 AM UTC
where to begin
when the task is so mountainous
when all that can be seen is the unmovable
when the need to wretch comes as result of thought
when a heart may fail from silent screams turned inward
the beginning must begin
when there is no way out
when there is nothing left to give
when love seems an unrequited absurdity
when one more day will surely enable the morgue or sanitarium
the mountain is moved
Feb 17, 2015
Feb 17, 2015 at 1:41 AM UTC
Please me____
(In) the- in -crowd
You lose me
(Out) the- out
Fury
never
works
out with
Gary_____
Don't ugly
goose me
No pretty, please
me so deceiving
Whole entire
City is leaving
Hot fun summer in the city
A curse like a bad omen such a pity___
Face me
Camelian
Stan the evil
man
To the ugliest
Fight at the
Grecian slam
Huncheback of
Notre Dame
The Pompeii fire
flame
Ugly ducking tamed
Modern
Video-game
Chavez
Fizz Roz
Heading towards
The Planetarium
Pretty tragic
Ending up in a
sanitarium
((Magic))**
Strikingly
matched
Twin of topaz
The Solarium Jazz
Going to Saratoga
Song Sara Smiles
But travels all the way
To Minnesota
So drained Rotto
Rooter
At the Polaris Mall
Christopher Columbus
Clockwork on a bus
Oh! Ohio red roaster
Never pretty at the
Bull's eye Rodeo
Rodeo drive*
Devil and Domino
Virgo meeting Hugo
Taurus
The Pluto Bull
of lotto
Gina eating
Italian Alfredo
Mudpack stinks
Frank and Dino
Sammy the
Rat pack
Moms
Baking soda
Dominque
Mystique
Trapeze
Doing Yoga
Please without
the pretty
Bo ditty
Feeling gitty
Not to be flattered
So bloated
fatter
Role Gotta give
Beauty beast wider
On Fox Five
Harley Quinn rider
Arizona
Eating
Tapioca
Life is a ***** not
a beach diet
Never do we pray
Pretty please to preach
May 7, 2018
May 7, 2018 at 5:58 PM UTC
Please! Wait
Feeling so low__
Like his (Blowfish)________ bait?
Jazzzzeeeey_____
Only temporary Oh! geez
Robin Razzamatazz
What!! All about Love
Candy Pez
((Enter me Expandable))
I need to fish
around so flexible
He
comments
You're quick______**
The Vampire Garlic
RIP I have young-blood
I will just relive again
To expedite
what remains
Love unconditionally
All hired with conditions
The restless young
outbreak
Native New Yorker
The busy talker
draw flush
In the Navy
Fleet week Baby
meeting crush
The Quickie
interview
Gift of gab
stalker
Or the hermit of Hermits
Languages
No demerits
Racing down
her wicked
thighs shower his
muscles
Sprinkle cone
Iced me
mortgages
get
me sick way to
quick to even sigh
Whats up with
patience
Include the Immigrants
Somehow American
women
Not very productive
They had Robot
watchdog like Gods
The money
where your Apple
Mouth I-Yahoo computer
And follow me
All followers
Kevin Quick morning
Bacon
Stallone Rocky_____
____ Expandable
In the native lands
Over the border
The Ventriloquist
Nesquik
Emigrant exhibitionist
Deviant outsider
The Spy Breadwinner
The I pod doing
the podcast
Outcast lady
The rain in Seattle
Hanky Panky
Snoopy hang on
Aboard love boat
so foreign
Her kitten tongue
was wide open
Eye wide but
quickly minds shut
Did it say?
((Too Quick))
((White Doves)) website
Riders of the Morrison
dorm
Ouija board storm
Him hungry
for her
smorgasbord
Stars flu
* Planetarium+
Miss Tory friend
Terry's mouth
of Sherry
Met all their lovers
Sweet Cherry wine
In the Sanitarium
Your words are
not to hinder me
Kiss of an angel
You compelled me
Such a coincidence
The spell too quick
No heart of
citizenship
Walk like a man
Talk like a
foreigner real slick
In another land
Dance like an Egyptian
From the Godly land
No man is
quick enough
To expedite
The quicker man
Beaten by the
bodyguard
No God this is a
Ladies Island
Pulp Fiction absurd
Vanilla milkshake
Saturday Fever
Cons
So many Johns
May 23, 2018
May 23, 2018 at 8:06 AM UTC
I can feel anxiety planting seeds in my spinal cavity
I can sense it ruining my human anatomy
It ravishes my body, leaving me drained
it steals my emotions, leaving me with nothing but pain
I am quietly, patiently waiting for the day
when Death will visit & take me away
I long to kiss him
I long to be with him
He's the one to placate my soul
To him I relinquish all control
Oct 14, 2016
Oct 14, 2016 at 8:59 PM UTC
In that retreat you doled out half
your life, beyond the noise
that engulfed the world, you cultivated
silence wild as the nest of your hair.
Edith, terminal daughter, reticent
as a bird, you perched in a chair
that time we came to see you
at the sanitarium, my Grandmother
chirpy with reminiscence about the girl
who kept her at home,
starting a line now come to rest in me.
A biscuit-tin from our last visit
keeps up-ending on the floor beside me, turning out
a voice crying words that stung:
"you must force the spoon or she'll swallow her tongue."
Nov 22, 2013
Nov 22, 2013 at 12:55 PM UTC
A note I will hopefully send in 2 years.
I've found myself and my very own happiness, but fortunately this "family" will never be a part of it. You always did say we put the 'fun' in dysfunctional but I never understood how disappearing once a year on the very day that you released the biggest mistake of your [life could be a functional relationship.
You say that I fill the very hole in your heart but [why are you digging one in mine.
You say that we are just like any other family, but other families hug each other, weird I know. You say that everybody deals with their pain in different ways, but I don't remember any of my friends telling me that their parents would take their paroxysm and give it to them as birthday presents.
I still quiver with fear when I hear the word love because I link it with pain.
"I hurt you because I love you"
"It is only because I love you"
"Love" is not an reassurance to hurt someone.
I have found out that breaking a cup is not an actual reason to hit a kid.
I have found out that telling someone that your parents words are sharper than shards of glass is not a reason to have liquid soap [poured down your throat.
I have found out that calling emergency services is okay when you do not feel cleansed after drinking PalmOlive, they might have mistaken it for cough syrup demanding to purge me of this sickness but needing to be rushed to the hospital, but it's okay because you love me right?
when they asked what had happened and you said I did it to myself and I was astonished but it's okay because you were doing it for me, -right?
I have found that when you leave tragedy from those shards of glass on your legs that your parents will disregard it and mistake it for comedy but I am not a playwright.
You forgot to notify me that the bedtime stories you use to tell me were fantasies of me {dying.
I have learned it is not normal to send your child to a madhouse when you simply do not want them to go on vacation with you.
I have learned that a trip to the sanitarium is the only vacation I'll get and if you inform your child that they have shattered their family against the very ground that holds them, it will almost always engulf them in their very own straight jacket.
I have finally learned that love does not mean tight knuckles and I have learned that happiness is not painful.
Oct 26, 2015
Oct 26, 2015 at 11:14 AM UTC
We went to the park to sit on the orange bench and devour ripe peaches
And sweet olives
We saw the man who would always be out on his deck admiring his own yard work
And the kid with the bulbous head who sat on his stoop and stared at passersby with a deep-rooted curiosity
The sky became pink
As a girl with a septum ring walked passed us
Is that sanitary?
Then we saw the mother of the boy who was just put in the sanitarium
And wife of the man who works in the bio dome planetarium
As we're leaving we stepped on a manhole cover that read "CoMmUnIcAtIoN "
And unbeknownst to our backs and behinds were now colored orange
People began to ogle us, whisper to their friend and laugh
Jun 28, 2014
Jun 28, 2014 at 3:26 PM UTC
-
Inked sketches of . . .
( Mental Princess )
¤
I'm different
So...
I'm crucified
In Lucifer's eyes
¤
( I A M )
¤
Terrified
Cursed with lies
By
Hypocrites
Cryptic fits
¤
( D O N ' T )
¤
Verify my figure
Inside my veins
Is blood filled vigor
Insanity Vanity
Unsanitary Sanitarium
Skeleton screams volume
Snip snap Mary's creepy hum
¤
( J U D G E )
¤
Not thy poet
Unless her pen
Gives permission
For you to hold it
Ink bled
But not red
Dead words
Slaves heard
Voices in head
¤
Rhythm you give them
A musical freedom prism
Castles
Made with silk tassels
Stale kisses, abusive switches
I have no riches
I'm not free
For "mental princess"
They labeled
¤
( M E )
-
Feb 28, 2015
Feb 28, 2015 at 6:42 PM UTC
I was a dealer
A pusher of ivory bags
And capsule packets...
All to get mine own delirium
Crazy enough for sanitarium's
Trapped and chained in fiend cage
As in god in that time I had forgotten
Though mine creator I must tell thou
Had not forgotten me...
I turned disease
To mine own kin
I stole a lifetime
Of prison sins
I sought the wrong
And in the end
I made a soo called friend
As
Tis
Was he who had set Me up
Got mine dealer, as also me
In a 22 people dope bust
Sent to jail
Than to pickway by bus
As pickaways
An old mental institution
Turned place for all thugs!!!
As In all this time
Tis
Whilst I mention
Alone I was not
As for god had sent me cherubs
Seraphim's against those beasts
I came out better than the rest
Tis mine story
Tis me!!
Jun 8, 2015
Jun 8, 2015 at 11:20 AM UTC
Mother Sun, Father Moon (inspired by Sylvia Plath)
your little girl, like Mona Lisa never smiled
still you breathed me to life
i was undeserving, given center stage
while a hidden pain lay until exposed
i fell off the edge, not back to earth
a sanitarium waited, i lived till i died
-you both have yourselves to blame
by Michael Perry
Jan 9, 2022
Jan 9, 2022 at 9:56 AM UTC
( 'don't worry, be happy' )
Suicidal tendencies?
thoughts like these
disrupt communication
alienate you from the
general population
and end up with you
being wheeled into
a private sanitarium
or even worse
a council
crematorium.
I never think like this
and while life's not
always
a bunch of bliss
I'd rather have a punch
on the nose
than suicidal thoughts
like those
and who knows how it
would have turned out
if only you'd hung about
to find out
and now you'll never know.
Apr 14, 2017
Apr 14, 2017 at 10:22 AM UTC
Can you see it
Or is it just me
I use to wonder
Quietly
If anyone else noticed
The circular rainbow
That glows
Outwards from
The late night lamp lights
But I never asked anyone
Because I was afraid
That I was the only one
To see them
And if I asked my friends
Or family
They might take me
Away to the sanitarium
The fact that I heard
Music
Beating drums
Playing lightly
Behind me
Didn’t frighten me
Because it sounded
So soothing
In my dark life
It was only the light
The rainbow in the night
That scared me
Jul 24, 2015
Jul 24, 2015 at 3:22 PM UTC
there is
a hole
a space
an empty bracket
in me
waiting patiently
to be filled
like a junkyard
a ***** bottle
a sanitarium
a minute
after the minute
you read this
on every clock
and once it is filled
with all the particles
needed
I will rise
like a tiger
released from its cage
like a thunder
freed off the cloud
I won't even care
about the universe
because I decide how
the stars, the rocks
out of the black hole
collide and erupt
and nobody can
stop me from
breaking the lines
crashing the minds
of the constellation
to seek
something out of it
as it is just
a mere sign
that I looked
in solitude and
compassion.
There is a hole
that is
waiting patiently to be
filled in me,
there is.
Feb 19, 2017
Feb 19, 2017 at 5:31 AM UTC
Depression sales into bay
written April 5th, 2021
Depression sales into the bay
our little town is built on
it is a frequent but unwelcome visitor
ominous, malevolent and stifling
Often it arrives in the night
creeping in on panther's toe pads
its sails blocking out the sun
Plants and people sit
in suspended animation
trying to carry on
Some boldly
give depression the finger
as they walk by
While others withdraw
to the sanitarium
dishes are left undone
and children run wild in the streets
Scientists are researching a vaccine
the librarian searches in books
soldiers plan attacks (which fail)
the priest prays and does exorcisms
the green witch burns toy ships in effigy
all hoping to find the answer
Until that day
we fight
we submit
we carry on
waiting
for depression
to sale out of
our petty little bay.
Apr 10, 2021
Apr 10, 2021 at 11:49 AM UTC