William James

William James, that most American philosopher, once advised: "begin to be now what you will be hereafter". One might ask how? Our deepest guide in our beginning to be, is our imagination. Our ability to project, and mold our future selves from the myriad possibilities before us. And to imagine takes courage and effort. But it gives us hope too, hope that we can author our own destinies, hope that rightness of the decisions we make now will be borne out in the future. As much as we can be overwhelmed by the world, we can also draw hope from it. From beauty, from promise, from the simple fact that we have the talent to imagine our future selves from all the possible lives that pass before our eyes. We must imagine our lives well. We must engage our conscience. Conscience is the voice of God in the nature and heart of man.

When the voices of children are heard on the green.

When the voices of children are heard on the green.
And laughing is heard on the hill. My heart is at rest within my breast.
And everything else is still.
Then come home my children, the sun is gone down.
And the dews of night arise.
Come, come, let us play, and let us away.
Till the morning appears in the skies.
No, no, let us play, for it is yet day.
And we cannot go to sleep.
Besides, in the sky the little birds fly.
And the hills are all covered with sheep.
Well, well, go and play till the light fades away.
And then go home to bed.
The little ones leaped and shouted and laughed.
And all the hills echoed.

BIPOLAR

I'm cruising along day by day,
taking everything and feeling in stride,
All intense feelings kept at bay.
No major depression, no roller-coaster ride

Feeling quite content, this bipolar's version of Heaven.
Seems Medications are working and no insane thoughts lurking.
Despite the side effects one has to contend with.
I can participate in life without being an extremist.
All negative behaviors have ceased and are in check.
All falling by the way side in the pursuit of all that is better.
Suicidal ideations are a thing of the distant past.
The scars I wear no longer make sense.

Affection is welcome and
Touch soothes the soul.
Closeness is invited and intimacy seems to heal all.

Then, without warning
Like the Tsunami in Asia
Everything I know gets washed away.
An uncontrollable wave of emotion crashes down upon the coast of ME.
The skies now gray and angry consuming all that was blue.
As I race to save my life.
Everything I hold dear now in strife
My foundation washed away or buried.
Are you beginning to feel why bipolar's worry?

All the tools acquired over the years,
The relationships invested in fall by the wayside
In confusion and tears.
I question if the only safe place is the hospital.

Insomnia creeps through my backdoor.
Hiding in my bed
Making sleep impossible.
My bedroom no longer a friend,
More like a distant relative.
Meds cease to work as brain chemistry adjusts and tolerances build to the
Very temporary man-made solution
To OUR organic constitution.
And you wonder why I sometimes feel cheated.

Everything within my view becomes a project I must attack and complete
My essence is slipping through and ticking by,
no time to waste.
As my mind races,
my eyes scan my surroundings
Taking note of each and every item out of place.
More projects pile up and less seems to get done.
Overwhelming every inch of my mind
And occupying all your waking time.
My mind seeks sanctuary but there isn't any.

The CONCEPT of sleep becomes a LUXURY that the manic mind
CANNOT
Participate in.
Sleeping while in a mania is like drinking a bottle of vodka while in rehabilitation.
It's not allowed. Against the indoctrination.
The guilt you feel when you manage to sneak in a nap
Perpetuates the mania making one feel more like crap.
Then depression pays a visit.
Adding to the feeling of inadequacy that is already drilled into our core
Because of our LITERAL limitations.
Gotta tell ya, I didn't much miss this shit at all.

The mind keeps moving despite the bodies desire for sleep.
Relaxation, what's that?
I haven't known that for weeks.
Forgotten in the quest to move, go, create,
It's existence is now questionable to me.

Friends and family get concerned.
All of them careful, forlorn.
Wanting to help, but not sure how.

The shrinks schedule is full,
That's nothing new.
Two more days without sleep.
Continual rapid thoughts
And sped speech.
Foggy and clumsy, bruised from bumping into walls that have always been there.
And they expect me to drive?
Is this their version of suicide?

Body itching for sleep,
Try to lay down and my mind revolts.
Eyes start to itch from stale air.
Leg starts kicking,
Fingers twitching,
Jaws start clenching,
Heartbeat rapid.
Mind racing…Gotta get up and keep moving.

Eyes dry from being open for days,
Need fake tears to ease the pain.
Get some coffee to help the body keep up with the mind.
Because nothing else is working.
You tell me, what are my other options?
You just try being bipolar.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
I dunno.
I've been up through all of them
So why does it matter?

Tensions build as those who care
Watch you deteriorate,
While the illness is picking up pace
Now even your loved ones can see your mind race.
Spinnning like a toy top on speed.
We know you wonder if we'll make it back.
So do we.
And yes, it does add to the panic.

Waited in line in a rather serene lobby,
While reading up on my hobbies.
Saw the doctor,
Took 5 hours, I hope it's worth it.
New meds, bullshit about quitting smoking and a new.

Yeah right.
Um, in a crisis, take your quitting smoking and ……
Meds will be mailed, no need to stress
and "there's a therapy group where you will be sent"

One day goes by.
Still manic and unable to sleep.
No meds yet, still have to wait.
Wanting to stop but unable too.
Two days go by and I begin to wonder why me?
What did I do to deserve this damn disease.

My meds shoulda been delivered to my front door.
Two days ago .
Instead I am banging my head against the wall.
While my mind and body is engaged in a war.

Anxious and exhausted call the pharmacy.
They didn't mail them, like they were instructed.
Another trip to the hospital while exhausted,
They don't care just part of the process.
If you get in a wreck,
It's not their problem.

And this is the life a bipolar lives.

just another episode. mb

I began to feel pressure building up in my chest
Another great episode, I’m put to the test;
I question my life and why I am here
Consumed with distraction and overwhelmed with this fear;
Will it destroy me, hurt all those I know
This feeling of hatred beginning to grow;
And then a glimpse of happiness comes into my life
For a moment no pain, no suffering, no strife;
I live in the moment in hopes it will last
I act out like a child and soon it has past;
I awake to reality and see all the pain
The destruction I have caused, I will live with this shame;
My mind is so sick I hate who I have become
How could I be so selfish, so careless and dumb;
The guilt is overwhelming, it eats me alive
Just another episode I barely survived....

INSOMNIAC

The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole . . .
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.

Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments—the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.

He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue . . .
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.

His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.

Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.

-Sylvia Plath

that is why.

because your eyes always bends my knees,

because you always remind me to laugh,
because my world adds colors when you're around,
because i feel like a five year old when im with you,
because you smile even when everything is falling apart,
because you treat me like a queen whom just give birth to her first son,
because of our silly inside jokes,
because even though i cant breath when you hug me you would not let me go,
because you leave sweet notes for me in my purse,
because you look like a little puppy when you're sick,
because when i fell asleep you would wake me up with a kiss in my forehead,
because your tears look like crystals,
because when i'm with you i would forget everything else,
because you promised me you'd take me to the moon someday,
because you wouldn't get off the phone until i sleep,
because our late night talks makes me wanna have a future with you,
because you always hold my hands so tight it hurts so good,
because we can dance to the soundtrack of a walk to the remember together,
and because you would always say i love you,
even when im trying to make you loathe me.
That is why i loved you.

-AGS

DARKNESS

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went--and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires--and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings--the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour
They fell and faded--and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash--and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twin'd themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless--they were slain for food
. And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought--and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails--men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress--he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak'd up,
And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects--saw, and shriek'd, and died--
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless--
A lump of death--a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge--
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them--She was the Universe.

- Byron

.

How come everything turns out,
leaving me with more doubts
I feel like I'm upside down,
and I don't wanna be here
I go right, should have gone left
and I say things I should have not said
Look at me in this big mess,
I don't want to be here.
Everything I do
is making me more confused
Oh it used to be easy, all I had to be was me
now I'm mixed up.
Everywhere I go somewhere that I don't know
I hope that I'm dreaming,
cause I'm sick of this feeling
I'm mixed up.
somebody help me.
Tell me how to fix this
I'd trade my world for one wish, to go back to my other life.
Everything I do is making me more confused
it used to be easy all I had to be was me,
now I'm mixed up.
Everywhere I go
is somewhere that I don't know
I hope that I'm dreaming
cause I'm sick of this feeling
I'm mixed up.
Somebody help me.
To hold me, tell me
everything is gonna be okay
cause today it feels like
I wont make it to the top now
don't know how to get outta this
so mixed up.
Somebody help me.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez- "its raining in this poem"

its raining. the afternoon

is a blade of cloud.Raining.
The afternoon is soaked
in your sadness.
At times the wind comes
with its song, at times...
I feel my soul pressed
against your absent voice.

Raining. And im thinking
of you. And dreaming.
No one will come this afternoon
to my grief, shut tight.
No one. only your absence
that pains me hour by hour.
Tomorrow your presence
will return with the rose.

I think-- the rain falls--
of your tender gaze.
Girl like fresh fruit,
joyful like a fiesta,
today your name is twilighting
here in my poem.