Poetry

we have poems about madness and poems written in states of madness no poems yet about the guitar amp buzzing dark electric fuzz of the madness sparked coming off psychmeds we lack poems...

I kept telling her that Carsten Dahl is not Carson Dyle for the obvious reason the former doodles Danish bebop on the piano with a sort of...

An ode to the ‘failed’ attempts Suicide. Even the word is evocative And provocative Charged with emotion and energy, Memories And thoughts of what was and what could have been Had...

Owning just one monkey, if it weighs under 30 lbs., is not illegal in Houston where neighbors saw a little gray face peeking through the front room...

One day I got so smart that I built my own time machine. Right away I went back and un-kissed the girl who broke...

What if couples celebrate pose day instead of rose day? Teaching each other how to stand in front of the camera could be the best...

I look into the dark pool I see colors spinning Inklings Of what has yet to become With one prick of my finger The ripples of change Cast outwards Water cannot...

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....

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...

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.

One day it all seems a little brighter, shoulders a little lighter, head a little higher. Was it the rain overnight, the smell of...

Whenever I do something good, my mother says, I am just like her, my father says, I am just like him They feel so proud on themselves and start loving...

After I went to the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness conference this weekend, I sat down with all the consciousness researchers to...

2am is a bipolar blessing. On the one hand, Her clock ticks, waking worlds away. On the other… Dreams tattoo pulses of heart, Maneuvered by her beaten, brush stroking...

Verse! Wild! Let it be wild and uncontrolled! Consider not whether it passes muster In the logic-schools, Or marks time with the monotonous regularity Of clopping hooves of horses...

How to Be a Mad Poet First, be mad. Then own it. Breathe in the anxiety, use it as fuel. You might have to lie down and breathe through the...

And if you come to me all innocent and forlorn all regretful and torn between the rightery and the wrongery gathered in your multitudes in that field of...

Today I am 27. I spent many years of my life in a very dark place. I spent many years suffering without truly understanding why....

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...

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.

Mad Maddy, I greet you again and say hello On yet another fine day In England in mid-December! May our darling Greta Be spared such summery sun Up north in...

On Becoming a Butterfly Little did I know, the end was just the beginning Like the caterpillar, I shed my old skin as if I was supposed to...

In a basement classroom paid for by the leftovers from a public budget an instructor teaches refugees English she says her first tongue is pidgin and laughs like...

don’t let the trees bloom green again while I lie drugged and still in bed don’t let the world explode with color while I see only gray...

Suicide is a poem, I say, and pause. They do not look convinced. A tragedy, perhaps, reply their faces. No rhyme or reason. No heroic meter. A travesty, at...