The Mirror She was the best friend I ever had, becasue she didn't leave when things were bad. Thoughout my life, she'd periodic...
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Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Friday, December 23, 2011
Poetry : The Road to Discovery
The Road to Discovery Take baby steps Moving one at a time First step Take your medicines Medicines are antidotes Second step Gain c...
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Poetry : The Crystal Palace (Revisited)
The Crystal Palace (Revisited) I sit alone, on hold, in a narrow hospital room. An interminable wait, during which my panic mounts incr...
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Poetry : The Primal Scream
The Primal Scream ...sometimes it is good to let the baby sparrow die so a new day can hatch laughter died when it was too afraid to l...
Friday, July 29, 2011
Poetry : Untitled
Untitled Light in all it forms, Universes of harmony, The simple mind that was before Evaporates in mystery. Am I that or something m...
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Poetry : Ward Stories
Ward Stories By Cindy Sostchen I wasn't brought in kicking and screaming, nor strapped to a gurney or shackled to a cop there wa...
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Poetry : Reconciliation
Reconciliation Through countless hospitalizations You've always remained by my side. Lost to the world and to you was I -- But you...
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Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Poetry : The Mirror
The Mirror
She was the best friend I ever had,
becasue she didn't leave when things were bad.
Thoughout my life, she'd periodically appear
Whenever I was afraid, she took away the fear.
Together we laughed, told jokes, and even occasionally cried,
Whenever I went on an emotional rollercoaster, she too took the ride.
Sometimes I couldn't believe in her, when life's ways began to get rough.
But she'd always say together we'll stand, together we are still tough enough.
I owe her my life becasue without her I wouldn't be
She is the reflection in the mirror, THE REFLECTION IS ME...
She was the best friend I ever had,
becasue she didn't leave when things were bad.
Thoughout my life, she'd periodically appear
Whenever I was afraid, she took away the fear.
Together we laughed, told jokes, and even occasionally cried,
Whenever I went on an emotional rollercoaster, she too took the ride.
Sometimes I couldn't believe in her, when life's ways began to get rough.
But she'd always say together we'll stand, together we are still tough enough.
I owe her my life becasue without her I wouldn't be
She is the reflection in the mirror, THE REFLECTION IS ME...
Friday, December 23, 2011
Poetry : The Road to Discovery
The Road to Discovery
Take baby steps
Moving one at a time
First step
Take your medicines
Medicines are antidotes
Second step
Gain control of your feelings
Become one again
Regain family and friends
Somehow, somewhere down the road
Third step
Trust again
Not an easy step
But vitally important
Fourth step
Keep faith in god
Do what you can
Motivate yourself to do more
Push, push, push
Until all the steps come together
THE ROAD TO DISCOVERY
But, the opposite, is even worse
It's lonely, clumsy, and irritable
Not like anything you've ever
Experienced or want to experience
In your life.
Take baby steps
Moving one at a time
First step
Take your medicines
Medicines are antidotes
Second step
Gain control of your feelings
Become one again
Regain family and friends
Somehow, somewhere down the road
Third step
Trust again
Not an easy step
But vitally important
Fourth step
Keep faith in god
Do what you can
Motivate yourself to do more
Push, push, push
Until all the steps come together
THE ROAD TO DISCOVERY
But, the opposite, is even worse
It's lonely, clumsy, and irritable
Not like anything you've ever
Experienced or want to experience
In your life.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Poetry : The Crystal Palace (Revisited)
The Crystal Palace (Revisited)
I sit alone, on hold, in a narrow hospital room.
An interminable wait, during which my panic mounts incrementally, until a tall, young psychiatrist enters, all arms and legs, bent over, attacking the floor as he strides-bulls toward me, chart in hand, scowling ferociously. He does not speak to me. He scans my chart. He lifts his pen from his pocket to take my history. The man does not know my history has already been taken this night.
For an instant, I am back inside the curtained picture-taking booth at Grand Central, hunched forward. The machine whirs as over an infinitesimally small number of seconds it fixes me. Afterward, extracting the strip, startled-puzzled-exultant, I look upon three different me's. Each begging for a history. As, veritably the time-traveling man, I happen every minute, second, millisecond.
"Is it Spring 1977, or Spring 1976?" I ask now, timidly, my voice breaking. At some level I know it is Spring 1978 and that I lost her. That it ended badly for all of us, most of all for me, but I am hearing as well echoes of that earlier spring, the real connectedness, however tentative, and I am overwhelmed with the pain and loss. And with terror.
For this man does not answer me. He continues to scowl. I want to run from him. I begin to sing, loudly, angrily, to the tune of "Red River Valley." But a different set of lyrics that tell of betrayal.
Still the psychiatrist continues to scowl, and now, backing away, he scrawls in the chart. Whereupon, having never spoken a word, he turns and leaves. Whereupon, they come for me, stick me with the needle and lock me in the room for the night.
In the morning, duly mortified, my cheeks puffed, hanging--the Haldol faceover--I sign myself out.
I sit alone, on hold, in a narrow hospital room.
An interminable wait, during which my panic mounts incrementally, until a tall, young psychiatrist enters, all arms and legs, bent over, attacking the floor as he strides-bulls toward me, chart in hand, scowling ferociously. He does not speak to me. He scans my chart. He lifts his pen from his pocket to take my history. The man does not know my history has already been taken this night.
For an instant, I am back inside the curtained picture-taking booth at Grand Central, hunched forward. The machine whirs as over an infinitesimally small number of seconds it fixes me. Afterward, extracting the strip, startled-puzzled-exultant, I look upon three different me's. Each begging for a history. As, veritably the time-traveling man, I happen every minute, second, millisecond.
"Is it Spring 1977, or Spring 1976?" I ask now, timidly, my voice breaking. At some level I know it is Spring 1978 and that I lost her. That it ended badly for all of us, most of all for me, but I am hearing as well echoes of that earlier spring, the real connectedness, however tentative, and I am overwhelmed with the pain and loss. And with terror.
For this man does not answer me. He continues to scowl. I want to run from him. I begin to sing, loudly, angrily, to the tune of "Red River Valley." But a different set of lyrics that tell of betrayal.
Still the psychiatrist continues to scowl, and now, backing away, he scrawls in the chart. Whereupon, having never spoken a word, he turns and leaves. Whereupon, they come for me, stick me with the needle and lock me in the room for the night.
In the morning, duly mortified, my cheeks puffed, hanging--the Haldol faceover--I sign myself out.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Poetry : The Primal Scream
The Primal Scream
...sometimes it is good
to let the baby sparrow die
so a new day can hatch
laughter died when it was too afraid to live
but even when fear took it
to the edge of a cliff
it clung to a broken cloud
by threads of itself
when the quagmire of troubled youth
combined with Einstein logic
it formed a feeble waif,
jumbled, kaleidoscoped, hardened and trapped
between carousels, pony tails,
and the grown-up on the other side
when the median line grew crooked and thick
curtains turned to walls
and walls into graves
but the "I" still breathed and clawed with passion
when I held the verdict of "yes" versus "no"
in my etherized hands
I knew
that born-again laughter was only as far away
as the "I" will push it.
...sometimes it is good
to let the baby sparrow die
so a new day can hatch
laughter died when it was too afraid to live
but even when fear took it
to the edge of a cliff
it clung to a broken cloud
by threads of itself
when the quagmire of troubled youth
combined with Einstein logic
it formed a feeble waif,
jumbled, kaleidoscoped, hardened and trapped
between carousels, pony tails,
and the grown-up on the other side
when the median line grew crooked and thick
curtains turned to walls
and walls into graves
but the "I" still breathed and clawed with passion
when I held the verdict of "yes" versus "no"
in my etherized hands
I knew
that born-again laughter was only as far away
as the "I" will push it.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Poetry : Untitled
Untitled
Light in all it forms,
Universes of harmony,
The simple mind that was before
Evaporates in mystery.
Am I that or something more?
I know that I am me.
Will I be lost in chaos
As my world comes clear to me?
All that is, is found within
All that will ever be.
Will I be lost in Chaos
As my worlds come clear to me?
Yet out of Chaos I did spring,
The me I am today,
Still drawn back into that world
In which I found my way.
But is it "real?" I question still
Even as I know.
Life is the mystery to me,
Unraveled as I grow.
Light in all it forms,
Universes of harmony,
The simple mind that was before
Evaporates in mystery.
Am I that or something more?
I know that I am me.
Will I be lost in chaos
As my world comes clear to me?
All that is, is found within
All that will ever be.
Will I be lost in Chaos
As my worlds come clear to me?
Yet out of Chaos I did spring,
The me I am today,
Still drawn back into that world
In which I found my way.
But is it "real?" I question still
Even as I know.
Life is the mystery to me,
Unraveled as I grow.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Poetry : Ward Stories
Ward Stories
By Cindy Sostchen
I wasn't brought in kicking and screaming, nor strapped to a gurney or shackled to a cop
there was nothing illegal stashed in any orifice when some cold hands frisked me at the barbed wire gate
I defied the laws of triage -- no drugs were found in my urine or my veins
I didn't jesus-ramble or tell them I was Napoleon or Courtney Love
In the first hour I was checked for life-threatening illness or communicable diseases, undressed, weighted, probed and fed, assigned a number
The doctors gave me mortar and pestel pills and held their collective breaths
were they waiting for me to twitch, blow a fuse, wail at the window, or dance a hora for them?
A hallucination would have been applauded
but I remained colorless and dormant as a doormat
They recorded all my sighs and every sneeze was sacred
when they learned I was a poet they insisted I write like a latter-day Sexton, then stole my poems and combed them for freudian slips, for some manic message in morse code
(defiant and clever I wrote well-balanced poems for their consumption and autographed them with an inverted smile)
I ate just enough to avoid an IV and too little to be listed compulsive
I was too healthy for the Quiet Room and too sick for the sidewalk
(the closet was the perfect venue, I curled up against a broomstick like a cat who is going to die)
The young boys liked me because I was blond and blase
I was a ragdoll in their arms
to myself I was amorphous, to them I had the shape of a siren,
they tried to mount me in the dayroom,
so I joined their schizophrenic orgy, and they chanted at my feet
At night I made a shield with the sheets, bunched up in a blanket
large men, strong as coffee, shined a flashlight in my face by the hour
they didn't care if I wet the bed, picked at my scabs, bloodied my lips or made love to myself
only that I was still there, breathing, not plotting my escape
I never saw any angels at midnight
I slept for months like a groundhog without a shadow
preferring the ridiculous grey of institution walls to the ominous eyes of daylight
A season tossed and turned while they waited for me to crash through the prism, to grow weak from the silence
...............and that's what I did..................
I tell this story to document the holy war I waged
I confess to anyone who will listen
but, especially, for those who recognize my face in their mirror
for them I tell my ward stories
By Cindy Sostchen
I wasn't brought in kicking and screaming, nor strapped to a gurney or shackled to a cop
there was nothing illegal stashed in any orifice when some cold hands frisked me at the barbed wire gate
I defied the laws of triage -- no drugs were found in my urine or my veins
I didn't jesus-ramble or tell them I was Napoleon or Courtney Love
In the first hour I was checked for life-threatening illness or communicable diseases, undressed, weighted, probed and fed, assigned a number
The doctors gave me mortar and pestel pills and held their collective breaths
were they waiting for me to twitch, blow a fuse, wail at the window, or dance a hora for them?
A hallucination would have been applauded
but I remained colorless and dormant as a doormat
They recorded all my sighs and every sneeze was sacred
when they learned I was a poet they insisted I write like a latter-day Sexton, then stole my poems and combed them for freudian slips, for some manic message in morse code
(defiant and clever I wrote well-balanced poems for their consumption and autographed them with an inverted smile)
I ate just enough to avoid an IV and too little to be listed compulsive
I was too healthy for the Quiet Room and too sick for the sidewalk
(the closet was the perfect venue, I curled up against a broomstick like a cat who is going to die)
The young boys liked me because I was blond and blase
I was a ragdoll in their arms
to myself I was amorphous, to them I had the shape of a siren,
they tried to mount me in the dayroom,
so I joined their schizophrenic orgy, and they chanted at my feet
At night I made a shield with the sheets, bunched up in a blanket
large men, strong as coffee, shined a flashlight in my face by the hour
they didn't care if I wet the bed, picked at my scabs, bloodied my lips or made love to myself
only that I was still there, breathing, not plotting my escape
I never saw any angels at midnight
I slept for months like a groundhog without a shadow
preferring the ridiculous grey of institution walls to the ominous eyes of daylight
A season tossed and turned while they waited for me to crash through the prism, to grow weak from the silence
...............and that's what I did..................
I tell this story to document the holy war I waged
I confess to anyone who will listen
but, especially, for those who recognize my face in their mirror
for them I tell my ward stories
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Poetry : Reconciliation
Reconciliation
Through countless hospitalizations
You've always remained by my side.
Lost to the world and to you was I --
But you've always stood by me believing.
The many times I debased you, mocked you and antagonized you,
You've always answered me with sheer love and kindness,
The many times I've cursed you and cruelly deceived you,
You gave me compassion and unmitigated understanding.
I apologize Dear Mom
And thank you forever --
I thank you for the love and the help, and yes the cigarettes too.
Though I pray to God I have never hurt you.
Through countless hospitalizations
You've always remained by my side.
Lost to the world and to you was I --
But you've always stood by me believing.
The many times I debased you, mocked you and antagonized you,
You've always answered me with sheer love and kindness,
The many times I've cursed you and cruelly deceived you,
You gave me compassion and unmitigated understanding.
I apologize Dear Mom
And thank you forever --
I thank you for the love and the help, and yes the cigarettes too.
Though I pray to God I have never hurt you.
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