Mental illness Poems
Different Times
by Russ Wilbury
Do you remember just a day ago
Walking along through the fresh-fallen snow
To the places only you would know
Live and let live and live and let die
Don’t ever stop and think and wonder why
Keep your eyes forward and toward the sky
Troubled man with long dark hair
Flying higher in the smoky air
Mr. Mojo risin’ way up there
......
Drugs
by Helen Brownell
Drugs
Have made you old and me older
Drugs and mental illness
Drugs and mental illness interspersed with accusation, rationalization, retaliation
Arrests, hearings, warrants
Missed opportunities and stagnation
Suicide attempts and hospitalization
I could go on
But it started with drugs
......
Lost
by Helen Brownell
She could lose herself rounding the corner
Rounding a number, rounding up kids
In the embrace of a man,
A manic monologue, a new baby
She could find a melody and hold onto it for seconds at a time
Searching for true notes and faltering
Until she remembered
What she was supposed to be doing
......
The Room
by Sarah A
Haunted by the ghost
of the girl who once lived there,
The Room was a graveyard
of her bottomless despair.
Funnily enough,
The Room once kept her alive.
She couldn’t let them see her secrets;
she must survive.
......
Ego
by Ali Abdullah
She’s tricky
She undermines your progress
Suggesting things based on what you’re weak about
You realize in her absence it was all nonsense
*****
She attacks you, she protects you
She distract you with things you don’t need
Just to get herself stronger
......
Ego
by Ali Abdullah
She’s tricky
She undermines your progress
Suggesting things based on what you’re weak about
You realize in her absence it was all nonsense
*****
She attacks you, she protects you
She distract you with things you don’t need
Just to get herself stronger
......
Bruised
by D G
It juts. An imperfection lying, no, sticking
Out like a stranger spotted on a dark street.
Removal is the only redemption
Worth having. Sterile; safe.
It is pulled. Discharged
And all that is left behind is the dull
Contusion.
......
Uranium
by Lisa Clark
My good girl mouth is used to soap
The rabid foam of rancid hope
I ache instead for languid smoke
To be washed clean with rum and coke
My schoolyard brain too dumb to cope
Its volatile isotope
Decays me slowly from the yoke
A half-life spent in gory choke
Different Times
by Russ Wilbury
Do you remember just a day ago
Walking along through the fresh-fallen snow
To the places only you would know
Live and let live and live and let die
Don’t ever stop and think and wonder why
Keep your eyes forward and toward the sky
Troubled man with long dark hair
Flying higher in the smoky air
Mr. Mojo risin’ way up there
......
It's just grape juice.
by Erica Scott
I look into their eyes, so pure, full of life,
and wonder where I lost that will to learn.
I look into their eyes as I read from the book I no longer believe in,
and I can’t help but silently cry.
I don’t want them to see, in case it might be true,
that this book of magic words never helped me through,
that the words of this church did the opposite of what Jesus would do.
And as I weep inside, I see their faces light up with questions
“How could this be true?”
“Jesus,” I say. Everything Jesus.
......
