Tag: depression

Come and shake the dust out of your hair

Come and shake the dust out of your hair,
You wallower—even in my dreams—
Take a bit of golden glare
From mine and tie it to the sunbeams
Refracting in your eyepair's blue gleams.
Allow me to rest in your plaintive gaze
While outside the sudden sun shower streams.
Thunder doesn't disrupt the rays,
And sorrow needn't cloud our days.
Light can be produced by sharing a kiss;
Warmth can be fostered together in praise
Of each other's touch and soul-tenderness.
All raindrops splash the shield of our embrace,
My treasure plainly hidden in your face.

Something I’m trying to hold onto

Always insisting 
 on the most extreme
  nothingness,

Bitter and afraid—
 not of being ignored,
  you've never been noticed—

But of having to wait
 in the incalculable queue,
  already dwindling and gray.

Unwilling to gamble
 living in vain (until when?)
  you want another nothing? Now?

Nothing is nothing,
 yet here you are:
  something I'm trying to hold onto.

Splashes of colored ink,
 papier-mâché fantabula,
  cryptic libido,

Note taken of the yellow-
 striped grasshopper
  who climbed over your shoe.

Afraid of inertia,
 quiet home days
  indistinguishable from graves.

But we have luck, not pine,
 we have four walls and more;
  we have time.

Though we're aging, yet to emerge,
 bottle up each vintage of art
  with experience and tenderness.

Each episode
 when I call you or you call me
  in excitement, look!

The cardinal in the backyard tree;
 the woodpecker
  rapping on the windowpane.

We are small,
 but we have small things
  that can sustain us.

Since we weren't born
 into great things,
  let us accumulate

These tiny, common
 miracles anyone 
  can have, yet these are ours

And ours alone;
 when you dream of blood,
  wake up beside me.

That’s How it Goes

That's how it goes when you're not like the rest:
They lay down the rules that suit them the best,
But some of us play from a different book.
I don't think I'm above it, I'm no crook;
An addict perhaps, if I have transgressed.

Those of our kind, our static's possessed
By demons of sickness set to divest
Us of joie de vivre by their seething hooks.
                            That's how it goes.

How can one live at the system's behest?
None can be civil with spirits oppressed
By an inner void which hurts just to look
At, let alone have the courage to brook.
I have nothing to add nor to contest,
                              That's how it goes.

I am the corpse no one expects

I am the corpse no one expects,
One of those whose demeanor affects
The pleasantries of happiness;
But underneath there snaps duress,
Whip-like in vicious dialects.

A melancholy which vivisects
The soul. Simple becomes complex
For the wretch whom no one would guess
           I am.

Misery in stasis directs 
Toward a grave; emotion collects
In a gutter where I compress
From our dimension down one less.
As one of secret derelicts,
                                             I am.

Reflections on how I got here

"Beware this reckoning,"
Glares a spectral pair of eyes.
Blood quickens in frozen veins,
Stricken as though paralyzed.

Leering back from inside 
The mirror, a crack which grows
The distance facts drift at one's
Insistence; then slackens, slows.

And crawling over shards,
Wounds are all to show for wants
Slicing black weals of static
Lack of any real response.

The daunting pain of silence
Spawning deranged interviews—
A prison with no orders,
Visions thrown to trinkets' truths.

Worst is when it's within 
The first sentence of doom speaks.
Overpowered by black bile,
Loathing and foul wrath it wreaks.

The dreadful sensation
In the head made manifest:
Seizing trips that mark the sick,
Squeezing grip of panic's press.

Heaviness dimly drapes
Every limb, as though submerged 
In water's lips; every move
Murmurs, stripped like a soul scourged.

Beneath this awful weight,
Seething, clawing to maintain;
While fearful of this deep hole,
Here the soul can greatly gain.

It's a cage, and no skill
Engaged will, it confounded
Me; but blessed with room to pace,
They dressed patience around me.

Basically life support
Is the grace the dice produced
To hand me a family
Withstanding my sorrow's sluice.

To think they looked at hell
Without blinking, it took more;
More than courage, more than faith,
The surge of strength love looks for.

Looming death, fate diseased;
Assuming the weight of both,
How they faced it despite dread.
They allowed my glacial growth.

They paid for my prices 
As I laid, a dying mind,
Withered body torched in hate—
Delivered by a fortune's find.

They believed in a time
When even I am able,
Condoning this path to shed
Loneliness's black label.

It was pure chance to meet 
Him, to endure and advance
Past privation and piss-drunk
Starvation's soul sunken stance.

My family props the sky
Up while hammers drop on nails;
And my head has turned up for him,
Ready to earn grace's grails.

Am I a wretch reborn
By a lucky catch? Of course;
Without either my life's in
Doubt, but strife still stalks its source.

His presence builds me up
A pleasant hill to defend,
But misaligned spheres can soon
Find my spirit brought to bend.

We've grown this better sense,
Sown medicines, worked what found
Subsistence, a miracle
System sheer as sculpted sound.

Our one-room made of smoke,
Blunt and bespoke, fleeting home;
In a flash what saves me could
Crash like waves of frothing foam.

I cannot guard, protect,
By forethought or by power,
Against illness, accident,
Killing events' furled flower.

There's much I can't make kneel,
A touch could steal all I care
About. My dear, meekly tread
And scout ahead. Best beware!

All we know’s falling

All we know's falling
Into troubled feeling,
Every minute filling
Conquest's dreams with kneeling.

When one feels alone,
Two depressions align:
One, the separate ailing;
Two, the need for a sign.

Belief is crucial
In the face of crushing
Monotony, cruising
Along with bleak rushing;

And if you believe
In the soul that belies
The sordid facts below,
You can let lives be lives.

About C

A pain to linger
In the darkness longer,
Yet possessed by languor
Which proves itself stronger.

Longing grown severe,
Desperate for some favor,
Praying to the savior
That things not get graver.

We want to go home,
A dream that could becalm.
Teach this one the anthem
To be a true bonhomme.