Poetry

Battered and bloody locked up locked down in your broken down hallway “where is the exit?” I ask “Its in your hand” says the nurse “the little yellow pill” “Take it...

There’s a beauty in madness That most will never understand A love that opens up your heart To those you never met, never knew, never saw before. And...

Dear Doctor, Can we please rewind, slip back in time? To the first time that we spoke. You say you don’t remember me It’s no trouble, Let’s refresh your memory I’m...

I want to write a love poem for the girls who have been branded with, “Borderline.” I want to write a love poem for the...

I can remember certain feelings, but I can’t feel very well. I can’t hold someone’s hand because my hands over grip. They squeeze very hard....

Some say I am explaining the anti-psychiatry movement to my psychiatrist, but I can only tell you: On the kitchen stove a tea kettle is screaming and no one is...

What if we all became preachers? Us madfolk Who’ve been locked up, lobotomized, and drugged into a living death Who’ve been tied to trees and left to...

Me alive apparently - not sure. Jonah potential danger Dr. Ivorchuck is being paged. That's Shawn's voice. Dr. Oram- or him? I might have HIV so...

I wish you had tried to understand what had happened to me, but in the end, you lacked empathy. I tried to convey to you...

Inside my brain Inside my brain are pitch black bits, They cause me to forget. I got them many years ago, Do I hate them?  You bet! All sorts...

Love we shared with exquisite tenderness With the Dr’s scripts has long since vanished. They say it wasn’t my responsibility Not guilty because of acute insanity. Yet they...

Peace to those who are not safe whose locked doors do not hold whose words are given no meaning but are taken for authority to smash and enter and...

The psychiatrist sits across the room While asking me questions about how the Medication is going Seldom looking over at me As she types my responses at her...

An Ode Against “Recovery”: Flourishing After Childhood Trauma by Rebecca Donaldson I remember when a therapist of mine once told me I could “recover.” The...

If you have never dropped out of school for mental health reasons, you probably won’t cry tears of joy on the car ride over to...

Having an internal working model of secure attachment from childhood is a privilege. Yes, it’s a privilege.  It’s a privilege to not carry this hole. It’s a privilege to feel you truly know who you are.

She flies with a broken wing looking for a branch to rest on Somewhere safe to lay her head waiting for the warmth of dawn, She knows the branch that welcomes her even in the dark She’s nestled there many times to rest her weary heart,

A rant dedicated to all “seniors” in geriatric wards and nursing homes we’re sick     we’re stuck     we’re fucked we’re labelled     we’re libelled “demented”      “incompetent”

“You are sick. You are unwell,” said the man in the white coat. “No rational person believes 9/11 was an inside job. Alas, You are a very sick man, and we are going to make you well. We can cure you. We used to burn witches, yet we’ve grown more Sophisticated in our methods. Now we leave the body intact - but not The mind. Look at what we did to Julian. No one can escape us.”

At times my vision is shallow and short-sighted as I see my loved-one cope with the challenges we label mental illness. At times through shallow eyes I see a future stunted, my loved-one's possibilities not fully realized.  ...But then I look deeper. ...There I see unnecessary expectations created by me, held by me, and fully releasable by ...........me.    

After 25 years of chronic emergency, 22 mental hospitalizations, a stint at a “community mental health center,” 13 years in a "board & care," repeated withdrawals from addictions to legal drugs, and a 12-year marriage, I plan to live every last breath out as a survivor, an advocate, and an artist.

Schizophrenia, to me, is nothing more than a word. All it really means is that you experience psychosis on a regular enough basis that it’s a factor in your life. And that you actually do, as the word “schizophrenia” indicates, have a mind that you share with some sort of outside presence.

The Hopkins psychiatrist glances up at me, then looks at my chart. “I remember the first time—and the second—when the depression lifted I felt like a party girl.” How long did that last? “A couple of days…three, maybe.” That’s a couple of days too long. You have all the signs of bipolar II.

A secret city exists in your mind, where left brain and right brain bind. In the center of your eyes, but hidden behind, where your consciousness is aligned. The source of awareness for mankind

I found meaning where it was all along in the living of this moment the breathing of this breath the pictures in my mind in my view of the world