Let’s Talk by Howard Kaplan

I’m right there with you
so, let’s talk, in a way.
We can start by talking to the air,
since you and I can’t be here or there.
It’s our usual way, having torn
only what was once stunning,
left to feel that we’ve been skipped of a high.
We wake up grief to open inside, while
it’s not easy, we’ve done it numerous times,
transforming in crazy ways. Always
launching attacks against the seas,
in a spaghetti storm of heavy rain.
It’s not easy to
understand a cave,
from a deep beginning.
We’ve always just passed through,
as recommended by experts,
telling us what’s behind
our insights into crisis,
our worth by age. All the things in
a growing list thwart with junk,
too dynamic to tailor and
thread into changes and apologies.
Let’s take on a double perspective,
a challenge to our
decision-making prowess.
Everyone has something
worse than worse.
Yours is worse than mine, and
mine is worse than yours. So
in a way, you and I are the same,
both of us are worse than worse.
They say it takes time, maybe.
Or maybe, it’s better for some
to go cold turkey.
We can start anywhere,
from there, or from here.
Let’s try to discover actual love,
let’s try to meet our favorite self,
let’s try to not get sucked in, and
lost to the tide.

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Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.