Dear old me;

______________________________________________________________________

 
Night Terrors

Did you know? It could be a very good
night to be dead, what with
the stars turning their backs
and the drunken cars colliding
somewhere a few blocks away.
There are people bleeding and sirens
doing the same, and screaming –
the saviours are the victims until
they meet and they become one,
much like my wishes and reality
this fine night during my 2am jog through
the roads I once fainted in from
a wish to die, fit to be buried as frail
and dainty as a girl in modern times could
ever strive and hope to be. And did you know?
I think I may sweep away my breadcrumbs
instead of leaving them for the scavengers
so that they won’t be to blame for this horrid
sight you will behold. And did you know? This
is all that’s made me smile, all week.

______________________________________________________________________

Being Bipolar

Show me
this black and white.
Tell me
there are shades
of silver-greys
to line these clouds
that give way to sun.
The sun
lasts for days
until it falls into a hurricane
and it’s swept away.
Then there is only the darkness
of the thunder storm
with no lightning –

only the silence
halted
with the sound of sobs
that ebb into the nothingness
                                                      you are, you are.

_______________________________________________________________________

Paramedics and Paraphrasing

I have a prosthetic heart
that pumps chemicals
with traces of blood I drown.
They join in, telling me
something about glucose
and water and veins
that echoes, meaningless,
as I cross my heart and hope to -

Where stretchers stop racing in the sun,
asking neighbours ‘move, please, thank you kindly’,
and let you drift into sleep instead of carrying you off
into places you don’t know and people who cared once,
but stopped letting the misery embed itself
into their learned skulls before they end up dead inside,
carving feeling into traces of themselves left breathing,
never living,

and
one day,
never breathing
this mortal air with heartbeats
torturing them with monotony.

_____________________________________________________________________

The Ward

I remember the people in this room.
I remember living with them, watching
as their moments moved with mine.
They are not stuck. They do not sit
eternally upright in white sheets
with clear walls daring me to breathe.
They do not see their little habits
as they sit here and force the talk
(nervous hair flick – bite left lip -
touch the nose and eye and brow)
They have other things to think about,
not trying to forget themselves so much
that they sit, watching other people
before they see themselves and scream
and scream
and scream
until the people
take you away
and the others leave,
no kisses goodbye,
no hugs and tears