"thorazine" poems
Way up there
In the thin, thin air
There sits a man
Who laughs and grins
And fiddles with his double chins
A lunatic, if you must know
He paces, paces,
To and fro
Not love, nor hate
Does Steve perceive
But TV programs make him seethe
Xanax, ****** amyl poppers
None of these are Steve's show stoppers
Thorazine would do him good
But he won't take it
Like he should
So Mumbling Steve will grimace/grin
Until it's time to cry again
His mother loved him not a whit
Flushed Steve away, like so much ****
He killed his daddy, uncle, too
He killed that man, with Devil's Brew
Mumbling Steve drank up the rest
Of that that killed the old ******
Then laughed and laughed
And flashed a grin
Then burned off his extra chin
JNc 3-16
Mar 26, 2016
Mar 26, 2016 at 11:38 PM UTC
My grandparent's house
ten-kid-large and sinking
on the corners of remembrance
Remodeled now, to
...tenements
Honeycomb
...the remnants
Irish immigrant and Scottish orphan's child
She sang on the ferry
He fell in love
"The rest is the history of us...."
Wide
as the Connecticut River, grieving--
in their sunset....
________________
This-- chair
is his
I am afraid of it-- of his learning
of the shiny badge pinned to his coat
of his dying...
Golden leather of it
soothes
his memory--
of another continent
of the once warmth-- of a distant hearth
so darkened now--
where his head once rested
...his hands
and,
I fear--
his mind....
I will not sit in it
as if he will come back, to take his place
I am afraid of him--
with his chair--
all worshipful and empty
like a high place, abandoned
to the heart attack
not for grandchild play
Seat of Authority
still stamped
beside the standing cold--
brass ashtray
Pipe smoke imagines itself
against the ceiling in the words
of Yates and Milton
He read to them
and somehow--
Paradise is Lost....
_______________
This house is cold now-- even in the summer-- cold
Worn as only large families wear
The War
of waiting shadows
--four brothers who were spared
Anna Mae, in charge, too young,
worries in abrupt dark
of dinning room
Her face, haunted--
an archway-- ever empty
by the large and ghostly table
covered by its web of lace--
a bridal veil
of Catholic impossibility...
Anna Mae, held hostage by her thoughts
of darling, Sean...
Aunt Lil's “breakdown”
with cigarette and thorazine
quaking quiet in her corner
Aunt Nell,
as blind as ******** hell
ironing, darning
with threads that thatch
the wounded socks
Holds it all together, scolding--
Brought the welcomed jelly donuts
sneered as Yankees clobbered Boston
all-- while drinking yellow ale
Uncle Eddie-- laughing hoarsely
cracks nuts over a wooden bowl
Sep 19, 2017
Sep 19, 2017 at 10:52 PM UTC
He started feeling sorry for himself
long before he had seen his reflection
in shimmery linoleum tiles
that stretched into blind corners
before the snap of magnetic doors
woke melancholy macaroni people
strapped to rolling recliners
staring past Plexiglas TV's
He wore yesterday on his shirt
a step at a time...
one two, one two
felt breaths collectively stop
when he walked the halls...
one two, one two
like watching a one legged cricket
with your hand over your mouth
As cold as this place was
his head had been on fire
slammed into paper cups
filled with pastel colored
blues and pinks and
why pills
rattled at him like a baby
He fell face first into tomorrows
slobbered on wooden spoons
for vanilla ice cream
that he said tasted like Wednesday
He would get animated
when they ran out of Wednesday
and had many rattle cup nights
****** up through a syringe
hands and thumps
pressed him up against
heavy beds of oak bolted to the floor
gloves pulled his hair
when he smelled like yelling
into plastic mattresses
the same color as his *****
and no one wants him *******
while their eyes are closed
they want to see it
they want to say things like
"we'll talk about this later"
wrap his wrists in sheep's wool, in skin
from his ******* clasped by buckles, pulled
tight enough to close his eyes
He should have **** his pants
because chocolate doesn't have a taste
and neither did feeling sorry for himself
Sep 5, 2017
Sep 5, 2017 at 9:26 PM UTC
You probably think this poem is about
Lisbon, Portugal, where women
dangle your imagination like
a necklace of sun-dried
currants. No,
Lisbon, Iowa, a town twenty-two
miles removed from the 21st
century, where I stopped
for coffee, flipped eggs
and a place to ****
on my way home
from god what a day;
a man ordered a plate
of Rice Krispie bars
and tea—shuffled
his wallet for ten minutes,
made me nervous
like he was on
Thorazine;
it was the last
time I visited
Lisbon.
Nov 4, 2016
Nov 4, 2016 at 10:32 AM UTC
Blowing a plume of toxic smoke. Into the nebulous reflection of a pallid wasted face He grinsfrom ear to ear. The blood painted vulpine smile of a lunatic clown. The mirror image confuses the conflicted. Yet it speaks rancorous truths This is a very special day indeed. Fruitcake Day. We have all been released from the cages The human zoo has opened the gates of hell. Party hats are donned by the very special people as they walk about doomed to mortality. Let them enjoy brief moments of light. Placid and placated. Walking in a daze. Give them Thorazine lollipops and free passes. The bat cages are lying in wait
Apr 1, 2014
Apr 1, 2014 at 7:38 PM UTC
*You know it's just Mischief,
whispering his own feather
tipped voice through your lips,
setting you inside a bushel of roses
testing your thought process
and waiting for you to get pricked?
You know that right- Hey, kid!
Hop down from that fence
We can't have you acting like this
Don't you know want to know the feeling of home?*
**Yes, I'll go.
I'll know.**
Maybe soon but not now.
In my imagination of perpetual rhythm,
They administer poems intravenously
We are a part of our own systems, shouting
I've no need for your Thorazine!
In my imagination of perpetual rhythm
She needs three ccs of words unfinished
And yet hopeful remedies, more like prisons,
Leave my hands from the rebellion
With no choice but to idle.
Nov 18, 2011
Nov 18, 2011 at 12:04 PM UTC
I didn't choose to be son of a scared Jew
and angry Irishman
who never laid a hand on her, even when
she turned the butcher knife on him
when he tried to stop her from slashing
her red wrung wrists
this spectacle in plain view of 5 children for whom "woe is the world" was daily refrain
I recall Father's blood trail on the concrete between our house and the neighbor's, a surgeon not expecting a bleeding Sunday guest,
but my mother's madness didn't rest on the Christian Sabbath, nor on her own
after that, the shrinks did their magic: Mom did the Mellaril march, the Haldol hop, the Stellazine stomp, and the less alliterative Thorazine shuffle
none of those chemically induced dances did a thing to increase the chances for my mother's salvation
soon she was behind the locked doors of "Ward 30," where I visited and Mom told me she had found Jesus
a befuddled revelation since I didn't know she was looking for him--her kin had hung him from a cross and taken the heat ever since
the doctors released her to the street, where she made misty retreat to the hills of Saint Francisco's bay
though she found faint solace in Pacific waters, she would never again see her sons or daughters
half a lifetime later, I found a long lost cousin my mother agreed to see, though not with me, for I was too much a reminder of scars which never heal
she sat with Mother near the end of days, sharing silence, the scent of Salisbury steak, and a view of the distant shore
as my patient cousin rose to leave, my mother finally spoke of a sea she watched turn from cerulean to indigo dusk
childhood beaches my mother did recall: the castles she did craft, the crawling ***** she did follow, the sun bathed sand where she made her bed
far from the one where she now lay, the one in which she would go smoothly into the night, perchance returning to blue waters, where hot blood trails cannot follow
Oct 9, 2017
Oct 9, 2017 at 11:57 PM UTC
She was a shy, detached woman
shortchanged at birth
In all her life
she never opened her arms to anyone
never returned affection
her heart an icy chamber
stoic, closed
Half the time she was penned up in isolation
trapped in an asylum
a life cruelly altered by thorazine
and shock treatments
her soundtrack a choir of madwomen
their voices running riot
in her only home -
a snake pit
She was trapped in a Bronte novel
her mournful eyes fixed
on some distant invisible point
She remained disconnected
unknowable
a doomed woman
a doomed time
Jan 14, 2017
Jan 14, 2017 at 4:27 PM UTC
his mind a shatterbox of edges
his thoughts weary and dull
limp along like thorazine smiles
appearing one after another to be following him down the hall
begging him for semblance of inner peace
stop chasing me he whispers mock harshness to the darkness
hoping to frighten the thoughts away
he closes his door shutting out the dark hallway
and escapes to the exact center of light in his safe warm room
mind a shatterbox
full of slow motion detonations of thought and flashes of fragment memory
scary things in his head he keeps wrapped in wool sweaters and mittens
like little children sent out to play in the bitter cold
their voices scratchy with distance and time laughing at him
soon enough with runny noses they go home for cocoa and cookies
leaving him in the exact center of the room
as alone as he has been all night
all of his life
in the exact center of nothing
a shatterbox filled with mystery things
a broken man and his broken mind
he opens the door to the hallway
and with almost gentle grace steps slowly into the darkness
whispering fast prayers to protect from the fingerless hands
that reach but never grasp from the shadows
he moves up the hall to the cold floor bathroom
the chipped tiles are filthy with the tread of feet from up the hall
all the working men from the
burning fields and the crop to be harvested
their language is a song that he cherishes
but their eyes see too much of him so he hides from them
the night wears on as it always will
he repeats to himself that dawn cant be too far off
he only has to survive the silence of night for a little longer
survive the scary things just a little longer
his mind a shatterbox of broken things
protecting the world from the creature within
dawn has come and the new neighbor taps at the door
with the meal he was waiting for
he pulls the door open slowly and without a revealing word
takes the hot food and cakes
darkness is gone to sleep somewhere
hopefully far far away
shatterbox filled with sleepy things
now hunger isnt a companion
*i knock at his door at dawn
and slip the bag of food into him as light
begins to creep into the world
this is his world
each new neighbor passes the torch to the next
'make sure the old man eats
the mans son pays the bill at the store
and they leave the meals at the door
but the old man almost never leaves that room'
i wish i could do more for him
but they tell me that he is happier alone
i never have been happier alone*
Jul 6, 2013
Jul 6, 2013 at 9:53 PM UTC
Her mournful eyes fixed
on some distant invisible point
In all her life
she rarely opened her arms to anyone
rarely returned affection
her heart an icy chamber
stoic, closed
Half the time she was penned up in isolation
trapped in an asylum
a life cruelly altered by thorazine
and shock treatments
her soundtrack a choir of madwomen
their voices running riot
in a snake pit
Jan 12, 2019
Jan 12, 2019 at 3:18 PM UTC
each night
he would enter his boy's room
Bobby's tomb, he had come to call it
and turn the TV off
before remotes, 24/7 programming
and the infomercial, plump with desperate promises
the tube gave a final hail, the stars 'n stripes whipping, the national anthem screaming, and an anonymous promise
to return tomorrow in a perfect world
it would not be perfect for Bobby,
no matter how much thoughtless Thorazine,
hazy Haldol, or mesmerizing Mellaril
they shoved down his throat
now and then
before flipping the **** to off
he would sit with his sleeping son
stare into the screen, listen to its hissing;
he would swear he saw something
in the gray ocean of static
not trillions of senseless electrons
busy bouncing, but a lone sailor, rowing away
in a foaming sea, riding raging swells,
bound for a black horizon
one his tormented son
had reached long ago
Jan 21, 2016
Jan 21, 2016 at 8:22 PM UTC
The Thorazine cocktail is a mean and nasty drink
Chemical sludge, black as hell's deepest dungeon
Enriched with the power of Mighty Thor's hammer
To smash your fragile brain pan and leave your senses numb
Belly up to the bar, boys
Jack Daniels is a school boy writing fifty time I must not
Jim Beam is a bully but he only picks on weaker spirits
80 proof ain't a ********* thang
Thorazine puts them all to shame
Explore new dimensions of bitterness
The Thorazine cocktail is a wrecking ball
You never develop a feel for it
No, it always tastes like half baked death
And smells a pungent metallic drift
Dead animals on the highway, rotting in the sun
Knock 'er back, Jack, drink it to the dregs
The dude in white thinks it's funny when you beg
You plead to take it away, how it's ******* with your head
You can't even remember what any of the voices said
You must be well, Old Jacky boy, don't need it anymore
Then again these things are weird, you can never be too sure
The dude with the cups seems to think it's not time
To kick it cold turkey, the order's been signed
So you might as well resign yourself
To the sledgehammer's blow this fine summer's eve
And shuffle away like a zombie
Hey look, that old John Huston movie about the Bible is on the television in the day room
It's just getting started, the creation scene like outtakes from the last ten minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey
Isn't that a coincidence?
Doesn't that make a lot of sense?
Jack, you might as well be tripping on Owsley's personal stash
May 17, 2015
May 17, 2015 at 10:36 PM UTC
Just in case you
couldn't
guess, it's not a
a fair fight
or a level
playing field.
It's you with
boxing gloves
and them with
machine guns.
It's Van Gogh
throwing his paintings
out the window
to stop the hecklers.
It's Janis falling
down
the stairs, lonely
and
broken
looking for love.
It's Morrison seeing
the game for
what it was,
wanting to disappear
in France and
write poetry,
then dying in a
bathtub with a
witch in the wings.
It's morphine dreams
and thorazine days.
It's the tiger
declawed and lobotomized
at the zoo.
It's the lobster
cursed with
precious meat.
It's the statue of liberty,
burning her bra
and impaling
working class men with
her stiletto heels.
It's Gogol
dying after a
prolonged fast,
because a charlatan
told him
it was evil.
It's the elephant
domesticated by
the cage, but
still dreaming of
the Serengeti.
It's the dolphin in
a Hollywood
swimming pool,
a shark in your
coffee cup;
it's the criminality
of releasing the insane
from their cages to
wander the streets of
Santa Barbara.
It's pathetic and putrid,
a setup up;
the perfect tragedy;
a crime that goes beyond
denunciation.
It's what they will continue
to do to
you and me
until someone or something
intervenes.
Aug 7, 2021
Aug 7, 2021 at 11:37 AM UTC
12/15/2015
"You, doctor, go from breakfast
to madness."
Anne Sexton
The engine of my amygdala:
so burnt out
I needed coolant, I needed something to prevent my
immolation
a sort of precautionary measure
Rum's flammable
I'd soon find out
In a crowd of hundred dark and
smoke crawled through my shoulders
social little parasite
apologize for being an interruption to everyone
"Wish I could've been there"
Sucrose altruism,
back at the mental hospital id relived
every single second with you
thinking of your anger I read Tennessee William's letters
I loved you
I even loved your hatred.
A girl across the hall screaming
about Jesus and her ****
shouting singing Shenandoah
"But I don't need to be here,"
I turned to my roommate,
a strong figure I still admire,
"Everyone says that, even with a Thorazine needle halfway down their ***
They'd had a name for it
Something about kisses, I don't remember
"Yeah, it leaves a huge bruise on
your *** they laughed in the
tv parlor
there we were
The tristate area's teenage
girls too unstable for the world
a step above "*oh, you know how
teenagers are*"
A girl with grey eyes
Came in my last night there
"Is it normal to cry on your
first day?"
I wasn't allowed to
even touch her shoulder
and so
with the alcohol and the
Lamotrogine I tried to figure
out where it'd all gone wrong
but it'd been hiding in me
psychotic seed,
a virus carrier a patient zero of my own
tepid insanity!
Dec 16, 2015
Dec 16, 2015 at 7:15 PM UTC
I'm in the hospital strung out on phenobarbital,
And Librium
The last thing in the world I wanted or expected was several Democrats seeking refuge under my bed.
Nancy Peloski (forgive me for my spelling, I'm high like a kite as George W. Bush at a New year's Eve frat party) and friends are
demanding gefilte fish and Matzo ball soup. Somehow Bernie Sanders is under there, and he's rattling his cup for more scotch... I'm getting ready to push the call light and ask if they would dose them all with some Thorazine so they would go to sleep. I even think they dug Ross Perot up. Either I need more drugs or they need to get these politicians out from under my bed. Or maybe order more matzo ball soup.
Jan 10, 2021
Jan 10, 2021 at 9:25 PM UTC
The Bible has some interesting characters.
We can see in stanzas and rhymes
How they might have received some help
If they'd been living in modern times.
Lot, for example, had a drinking problem.
The man got drunk and slept with his daughter.
Actually with two! Advice to Lot:
Go to A.A. and stick with water.
An inferiority complex
Must have driven the angry Cain.
No matter what he did, he always
Seemed to incur God's disdain.
In searching for pairs of all animals on earth,
Noah's compulsion crossed the border
Of what today we would call
An obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.
Saul had to be extremely bipolar.
Talk about mood swings! On different occasions
He tried to **** David, who luckily escaped
By the skin of his teeth and with no abrasions.
If someone--like Solomon--had seven hundred wives
And three hundred concubines, we'd tend to say
That he had a number of serious issues,
But we don't want to go there today.
Moses talked to a burning bush,
Samuel and Elijah heard voices that told them
What to do. Now we’d say they
Were schizophrenic if voices controlled them.
Harod was really into himself;
He had to be highly narcissistic.
When Paul was persecuting the Christians,
His behavior was rather sadistic.
Without A.A. or psychiatrists,
Or drugs like Prozac, Zoloft, thorazine,
****** Haldol, Abilify, Lithium,
Seroquel, Xanax, Paxil, and clozapine,
Our Biblical characters were on their own--
To fend for themselves to carry out their mission,
Without medical insurance and someone
To say, "Get thee to a physician!"
- by Bob B
Nov 5, 2016
Nov 5, 2016 at 8:26 AM UTC