I would make you smile
but I can’t
You want me to smile
but I can’t
Moods change in increments
One step forward
two back
There’s another can’t-
It’s the one about getting rid of crutches,
just now.
Category Archives: mental health
Spirits
I’m seeing more somethings
in the sighing air
Distances to dramas,
beatific in their flash,
are shortened.
Though I once feared the fear,
lungs of sponge breathe it in,
baptizing its fire,
and I am well.
I am well.
Breakdown
I speak in tongues
sometimes.
Surely at night,
in deep sleep,
but now, of late,
in broad day.
It started with watery voices,
the makers of dream.
We argued, for sport.
But they’re no longer day blind,
and I mimic their lies.
Imagine that
What does it hurt
to give way to imaginings,
at least for a time?
To close all the doors and windows,
pull the drapes,
and make some hot tea.
To conjure some moors
and wuthering weather,
hear a rap tap tapping
at your chamber door,
and the neighing and stamping
of white horses.
Doctor Doctor
cigarette burns
under the sheets
the temporary bee stings
of random needlings
pinpoint pricks purposely played
bait for a loon’s scratchings
mad reveries in broad day
draw attention to comic despair
Oh Doctor Doctor
Can’t you see me burning burning
Can’t you see me burn?
Devil’s Waltz
Looks like we’ll dance once more,
brother-in-arms.
My accoutrements are lacking now,
and I must bear this bareness.
Tear off a strip
if you will,
or make the unkindest cut.
But know
that I’ve developed a taste
for immolation.
I’m a frayed knot
Muffled.
The world cannot get in.
I can’t get out.
A purchased illness to assuage another.
Recycled thoughts,
boring in their dirtiness.
I devise a fool’s plan
to use this tedium.
A grand flourish.
Since I have no sword,
I’ll untie the Gordian Knot.
On my way
In a while,
maybe,
I will not know you.
Don’t cry or be afraid
when you do not know me.
There’s a short story
yet to be told,
and it begins its writing
with a halting hand.
Even as I stand over a tiled drain,
I make the water hotter.
That spinal rush.
That warming touch.
The root of a problem
It’s a bitter little thing.
As I bid it adieu
and sent it on its way,
it spun a smoky path,
bloodying the bystanders.
Finding no hosts,
and diminished in the seeking,
on it travelled,
parasitic in its contagion.
Shortcuts
Make cuts carefully,
in concealable places,
so as not to be known
as an attention whore.
Bundled in fives,
as at Shawshank.
You and I know that it’s better
than a serious spanking.
That it’s our punishment,
our atonement,
for speaking with the Devil.
Aremyfeetofftheground 