Whip me
into shapes
of low, submissive
apology;
put your name
on each corner of the cudgel
you scour me with.
There's a reason—when it comes from you:
harsh reflections drawn from your own
dissatisfaction and insecurity,
the daunting vacuum of the future—
there's a reason it feels right
for me to take such heavy-
handed excoriation.
I deserve it.
When you hold peril above
my head, I remember my mother
pleading, what could she do for me,
and my barbaric answer,
kill me.
I look (admittedly with shame)
at the several scars up and down
my wrist and arm;
I recall
the frenzied self-inflicted batterings.
Life before you resurrected me,
I've told you, though it's impossible
to really know; but when your eyes
widen with insanity,
with mania,
with sick rage,
it's a mirror to my history.
Not only do I deserve the castigation,
you deserve the patience I got.
I had wanted less and less,
to be distilled into nearly nothing.
You want more and more,
to overflow with endless bounty.
Neither of us excelled to such extents,
but in self-abasement our tears are one.
Bash me with disdain
for wanting nothing more,
you have the right if I believe
that you should humble your expectations.
What's more difficult,
to grow from nothing into something, or
to shrink from dreams to a single datum?
Hopefully somewhere
in the middle,
where we draw each other,
is the right place for us.
Certainly it's more difficult
to be found in your circumstances,
nomadic, isolated, uprooted;
I can never fathom the horror
of watching your mother deteriorate,
jaundiced and dessicated until
she finally passed away.
Without Mom I would
have self-destructed.
You're right
when you tell me I don't know you.
We have our differences,
but I want to give you
the things I have that you never did.
Tag: mental illness
Changeling
The world is cold for babies born on fire,
Born to an addicted open secret.
The arbiters of order do not weep,
Their rule navigates on a tearful sea;
They're blind to them. A world with eyes downcast
Hurries along, greasing its gears with blood.
An inheritor of doubly-cursed blood,
But still a child with the spirit of fire;
Yet convinced their being is void, downcast,
Born a refugee of wars kept secret.
Childhood, an island in the stonefaced sea,
Smacks with wonder, but fear enough to weep.
And so he grew, differently, he would weep,
Afraid of a chill that runs through his blood,
Barely comprehended deep in the sea
Of adults' opinions and burns like fire
From other children's glances. Some secret
Rift separates, blown by a bolt downcast.
What does it mean—human—for one downcast
From ideal oblivion? All kids weep,
But tears like oil slither with a secret:
That he will not continue his line's blood.
While they could share the creation of fire,
A dirge beckons him down into the sea.
He snatches a breath, choking as the sea
Submerges his ears and nose; lost, downcast,
He crawls pronated to each distant fire,
Specters in the glittering sands which weep.
Can he even have what runs through his blood?
His unreachability his secret.
The mirror's years refused to keep secret
The prognosis of loneliness. A sea
Of whiskey and narcotics in his blood
Carries him from his own body's downcast;
Failing each time he tries to love, he weeps.
Did he wish for an all-consuming fire?
For fire it was—it burned every secret
And leapt, weeping, into memory's sea:
His downcast grimace in a pool of blood.
This Living
I won't refuse it, this living of mine.
Frustration glares at me like a sign:
My era is ending; I'm losing my way.
That's been true, but why decay
When once I bloomed upon this vine?
You know, once I would decline
Handshakes out of terror. How fine
it is now! Kenny drops by and says hey;
I won't refuse it.
I thought I had to change my line.
I thought I had to leave behind
This chapter. Before I never ate,
Now I do with laughter. Why say
That now this humble life's supine;
I won't refuse it.
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.
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!
You
You may not think highly
Of your lot, but blink away
The tears of now. Look ahead,
Peer into how struggle strays.
Turn forward to a new
Force that can burn through a phase,
Work and time to find you've found
The circle you'd roundly raise.
Open your mind, even
to slopes and blind, snaking slants.
Emphatic mood resonance:
The attitude makes the man.
There are some, very few,
Who are coming. Share your hand
Fearlessly and even-willed;
They'll appear, you'll build the band.
Someday a collective
Will plumb technics you design.
You shall aid their creation,
Trade views from your mended mind.
So for now, don't dismay;
Don't throw down your efforts through
This blue weave of depression.
I do believe. Yes, that's you.
There was no fortitude, no wit
There was no fortitude, no wit;
When I was sick there were demands
To spend a decade in the pit.
Only despair was definite
As sanity slipped through my hands.
There was no fortitude, no wit.
An awful, furtive reprobate,
No other form of fool could stand
To spend a decade in the pit.
On the cave's wall I saw it writ:
Lonely are those in a foreign land.
There was no fortitude, no wit.
Then I was blessed with an intimate,
And it had all become so much sand
To spend a decade in the pit.
It's all for him that I commit,
To climb together for something grand.
There was no fortitude, no wit
To spend a decade in the pit.
Hypochondriac
I used to be a hypochondriac,
Terrified of every blemish or spot,
Until horror became insomniac
Episodes wherein mental illness fought
To drown me in its accreting onslaught.
Now you fret the appearance of a mark
On your hand, inconsolably distraught;
Compelled by anxiety to embark,
Downwardly spiralling into deep, dark
Ruminations on if it's cancerous,
Locked in deathful thoughts' inhibitive arc.
The dermatologist will answer this.
When they investigate all will be well,
We'll move on to the next paranoid hell.
A place for my poems 