Mental Health Month Poetry

It's been a while since I've been here. I almost forgot about my blog.  But I'm back.  I've had a bit of a rough time. It's not easy being insane even when you are stable.  A few months ago I participated in a poetry contest specifically open to people with mental health diagnoses.  I won second place with this piece. The responses were wonderful.  I submitted this poem to an open poetry contest before and it was returned pretty much unread with the "um, thanks but no thanks whacko" letter attached.  It's gone through a few incarnations but I like this one the best so far.

Cement by Sascha Fink (2013)

My brain wins and loses and creates and destroys and cheats and lies and loves and has ideas that repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat; trying to keep itself hole and functional, breaks down without warning, cries havoc and burns the grasslands down to the scorched earth because it was ignited by a single spark of divinity from inside the self which was too much to bear too much to bear too much to bear too much to bear. My brain collapses in on itself because its ache weighs as much as the whole of humanity.

But they give me cement in strange round shapes that give hard form to the collapse from the ache. Sometimes I wait for the cement to be brought by ghosts with bleach white needles as I  beg for a blue pill and the black draught that wakes me up and spews the poison from within and from without.  I smoke and shake and wait for the dilation and curate to rid myself of repetition’s rape.  We all wait for the ghost to scour away the skirmishes from inside our minds as they become heavier and heavier, eyes darting and swaying blindly from the unbearable fog.

And we sit and we rock and we fall into ourselves caught in a maze of memory and garbage, vomit and vitamins, love hate betrayal anger sex razors and knives slicing little notches into our soft skin the blood dripping creating cosmic chaotic patterns in the grooves. Searching searching searching for a way to shade ourselves from the blinding light that is ourselves and that is unique and that seems dangerous to all to all to all to all.