Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
stop me if you heard this one before
#1
i was fifteen. people used to come to me
in the morning to give me bread
and pills, which i would bless. i would wash in freezing water
like a penitent, and wait.

i couldn't see the great big stained-glass Jesus in the lobby
but i knew even at night he was there,
and every day i saw outside the buds on the trees become
fat marshmallow blossoms and the sky
growing bluer against the iron window screen.

you won't believe this, but people actually fall in love
in the psycho ward. it's true.
a bipolar borderline and a panic manic
used to stay up until lights-out playing rummy
and sharing fixed fantasies.

my notebook pages were covered with lame figures
and fantastic haikus:
"three birds on a wire.
one sings high and one sings low
the other, silent."

i dreamt i was sylvia plath, at a party
and i spilled my drink all over my silk dress.
i built a ziggurat of cards and someone came
and kicked it down in slippered feet.
one day i met a suicidal Catholic schoolboy who told me
his stories once but we mostly studied one another through
a Klonopin miasma as if we were two halves
of one patched ragdoll mind
and they wouldn't let us hug so when i finally went home
we could only look the other in the eye and nod,
knowing.
oh what fun it would be to blow my mind and fall into the sun
Reply
#2
Wow, that was good.... Thanks for sharing it with us.....


Peace &  :ht:,
Jenni
The Eleventh Doctor: Nobody important? Blimey, that's amazing. You know that in nine hundred years of time and space and I've never met anybody who wasn't important before.
Reply
#3
Poetry is not one of my finer points, which is why I rarely say anything about people poems.  That is good, and I like it.  Thanks //al
We live by each other and for each other. Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much.
-- Helen Keller
Reply
#4
Geez.  This reminded me a lot of the times I've spent on a psyche ward - the cold water, iron grates on the windows, and how quickly you can find a friend while waiting in line at the nurses station for your meds.  I met all of my close RL friends in the hospital, but heaven help me, I don't ever want to be locked up there again.

Thanks for sharing this with us ogimyto.  A lot of people would like to forget they were ever there, let alone talk about it with others.  Personally I'd rather remember and use that as motivation to do what is necessary to not end up there again.  And anyway, forgetting would only cause me to lose the positive things I did learn there.

Thanks again - I really liked it.  Smile

Ez
All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.<br /> - James Thurber
Reply
#5
(05-04-2009, 01:03 PM)ogimyto link Wrote: \"three birds on a wire.
one sings high and one sings low

And the other sang a raggle-taggle gypsy-O.

(sorry...couldn't resist the temptation to bastardize your haiku, or senryu, with a little 18th century verse; at least it rhymes better)
Reply
#6
(05-11-2009, 09:26 AM)adonais link Wrote: [quote author=ogimyto link=topic=280.msg1728#msg1728 date=1241460219]
\"three birds on a wire.
one sings high and one sings low

And the other sang a raggle-taggle gypsy-O.

(sorry...couldn't resist the temptation to bastardize your haiku, or senryu, with a little 18th century verse; at least it rhymes better)
[/quote]

LOL!  Brava/Bravo, Ogimyto and Adonais!
Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)