Best Asylum Poems
"When pain, rage and screams buried in the asylum of your heart start to poison your heart slowly and surreptitiously, you become a living ghost." - Anne Winter
Last night I had a dream,
I was a ghost in an asylum,
So many unheard screams,
Intelligence turned into something dumb and numb.
I looked at me,
Her hair frizzy and frazzled,
The ghost looked back at me,
My hair, soft like silk and dazzled.
My eyes, brimming full of life,
Her hollowness of face,
Her eyes dry like a dull knife,
Just like my hollow heart days.
“What did you do”she screamed,
Glass shattered and clattered at my feet,
Her crumpled ghastly face, tears gleamed,
My lips sealed, my heart scared to beat.
Should I tell her it's not her fault,
But my throat is closed and tight,
“It is”said the tears soaked in salt,
My eyes shrilled “Look for the light”.
She was about to throw glass shards at me,
I woke up before she could do it,
I apologise I couldn't set her free,
My room and bones, dimly lit.
Taste of my tears opened my eyes,
Self neglected, broken one always dies,
Fair or unfair,
It was just a nightmare.
I couldn't understand her, I'm not that deep,
Maybe Sylvia could understand the girl in my sleep,
All I could do was weep,
I couldn't fill the gaps so steep.
The ghost left me howling
“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry”,
My heart sinking and drowning,
Her eyes, dull and starry.
"I'm hearing images, I'm seeing songs no poet has ever painted
Voices call out to me, straight to my heart"
Cold, emotionless, and her nature, defiant
Hard to connect with as well as unreliant
A boarding school for outcasts such as Wednesday
Revenge for brother, brings on her sinister way
Dysfunctional families—ivory towers make wagers
Enrolled are lost souls and morbid teenagers
Like Arkham Asylum, a long and brutal history
Medieval mayhem come to life again in her story
Nevermore Island, Romania’s Nevermore Academy
Unconventional practices become their enemy
Designed for students with extreme personalities
Who don’t think their practices convey abnormalities
Is an all American coming-of-age supernatural
Tangled in spider silk or it’s web, which is factual?
And there it is the unscrupulous psycho-therapist
A principal’s shapeshifter and her sorceress rapist
Forcing thoughts back into some semblance of order
Werewolves, vampires, gorgons, and sirens who boarder
Are the architectural texts with applications ubiquitous
And the requisite archaic desperate mass exodus
Dark long tresses, paints it black in gothic dresses
Many who are romantic interests she addresses
Rises to an ovation with a most clever shadow dance
Sanity, reason, balance, rationality, and much arrogance
Behind the smiling facade of normality where lie derelicts
There lurks a psychopathic serial killer, and other convicts
Beyond their control, declined their world of decadence
Insanity, lunacy, madness, the outcasts show no evidence
Highly severe psychological and physical illnesses?
Or real paranormal abominations and alien devises
Guiding her are messages from the beyond with passion
Her lecture combined intellectual lucidity and compassion
In everyday plight
With no sight
of the light
With no sides
that are bright
Deprived of lies
that are white
There would be only one asylum:
Veritas
ad dominandum
walls crawling
inside out
Escher etching
fingernail grout
staring at stares
plaid throughout
plied and played
guts splayed out
wailing away
in bars in stout
I had an argument inside my head
Between the right lobe and the left
It started getting loud in there
They needed a boxing ref
The id and the libido
Were spectators on the side
The heart couldn’t bear to watch
So it ducked behind the lung to hide
The left lobe, controlling my right hand
Decided to punch me in the face
Hoping the right lobe would give up the fight
Feeling totally disgraced
But the right lobe, controlling my left hand
Instead poked me in the eye
Knowing the left lobe was the right lobe
That controls the need to cry
When the right leg started kicking
The left one tried to respond in kind
Which only made me fall to the floor
They had totally lost my mind
My nervous system got nervous
I started twitching all about
My bladder was getting madder
And let all the contents out
Internal organs started taking sides
Not even aware of what started the fight
When I was pounced upon by three big men
Tying me up in a coat of white
The needles they poked into me
Put my whole body in a numbing sleep
Electronic shock shot through both lobes
Hoping to keep them both at peace
It didn't work
Children get seized at the border;
parents are led away in cuffs.
Under Presidential order
ICE morphed into a gang of toughs.
The United States has no shame
they sold their soul to the devil.
Asylum seekers weren't to blame
for Trump sinking to this level.
Kids are a political tool,
kidnapped from fleeing families.
Enforced by Republican rule,
laws mandate these calamities.
Nazis and fascists rally round
Trump, waving confederate flags.
Hate's propaganda is unbound,
their blood chants recruiting scumbags.
A bigot's voted in power,
a nationalist is in charge.
A man defined by Trump-tower
is revered by cultists at large.
Democracy's reached a crossroads,
a lunatic has won the race.
And holding the nuclear codes
he incites his ass-kissing base.
Our sanctuary is our togetherness
Where tenderness thrives effortless
We’ve forged ahead never sitting on sidelines
Traveling roads of scattered joys and landmines
Depths of unity a pearl so rare to find
Time lasting beyond the confines of our mind
Fighting uphill battles, life’s rollercoaster ride
Reaching journey’s end with nowhere left to hide
Once the dragons have all been slain
There’s a haven where you will feel no pain
Comes the hour that can no longer be outrun
Fear not the sleep in arms of angels, my loved one
AP: 3rd place 2022
Submitted on August 17, 2020 for contest SANCTUARY sponsored by SILENT ONE - RANKED 2ND
Chipped the factor of maybe days,
Wondering sweet tooth cracked in the night
And the cap spilled parallel, baring the nerves,
Electrical jolts from a tin foil bite.
She hurled back her head and laughed aloud,
So her neck made a finger snap sound,
In massacred leaves and juniper groves
Arched her longbow spine on the cold winter ground.
Strobing snowflakes abandoned in her hair,
Glitter bugs gleamed by a vampire moon,
Hewn blue-rose thighs buried life alive,
In a freezing of flesh, it was over so soon.
A harbour relented, cheaply complacent,
Moonstruck asylum, the member shrank small,
And tucking her womanhood moistly home,
I died for to her it meant nothing at all.
It's not about who has it most bad,
The fact is, here, we are all mad.
What we’re doing as a country is wrong, it’s inhuman and it is cruel
I refer everyone to their religious texts…look up the Golden Rule…
It’s not a matter of can we help…it hasn’t been…from the start
It is a matter of how we help…it’s a matter of the heart:
They come seeking asylum to a country not their own
They come seeking asylum…sometimes they come alone
Sometimes their parents bring them…fleeing conflict, war and and strife
Sometimes they send their children ahead…hoping for a better life.
They come seeking asylum…but our country is divided
Some of us think we should help…others think we are misguided.
So we stop them at our border…accusing them of sins
and we tell them to their faces…we’re afraid to let you in.
And sometimes we take their children from them…and sometimes their children cry
And six times since we’ve started this…six times…children die.
They come seeking humanity…they’d love a place to live
They come seeking humanity…is that too much to give?
They come seeking compassion…once our border they have crossed
But they are looking for a feeling…I fear America has lost.
They come seeking asylum…but our country is divided
It certainly makes you wonder…which side is misguided.
In vacuums
You don't assume
a sonic boom
You stay quiet.
My cranium
echoes a hum
that leaves me numb
to your edit.
4~12~2014
Maurice Yvonne
Sponsor: nette onclaud
Contest Name: DESIDERATA (Number 1)
1…” Remember what peace there may be in silence.”
Admit one tonight
So he may howl and dream
Full Moon approaches
©david byrne june ‘12
Humanity is punctured with many breaks.
Different eyes through different holes
grasp its identity through different visions.
Openness, honesty and love to a few;
power, greed and domination to others
and to some, faith, faith, faith and just faith.
Love comes first before anything else
but while propagating others, it is fatally shot.
The so-called trail-blazers of democracy
makes it crazy in the domain of others;
feeding a Tiger until it is dangerously grown
then joining other hunters to bring it down.
Beliefs without tolerance and peace are poisons.
One is honoured with the privilege to be part of a society
so human friendly and development growing
but forgets his transition from a migrant to a citizen.
So much noise he begins to create
to turn such blessed lands to the one he escaped from;
threatening the beauty of these Nations’ civilization;
giving Australia such bile, the UK such thorn
and Russia such a devastating pill.
If life was suppose to be so,
the Emirate Kingdom wouldn’t be maintaining its identity
as it is heterogeneously mixed eleven to one portions
in favour of the accessory ingredients.
Scaling humanity through colours
is as bad as doing so through tribes.
Unity and networking never creates losers
but marginalization and oppression breed deadly tensions.
Names, ascents, appearances and gestures
are unfortunately yardsticks for interactions and mingling
then Justice becomes wounded for bias to prevail.
All these make poverty freely govern
even in an Ocean of abundance.
It is simple to keep life smiling
but impossible when love is homeless
while selfishness is rendered the most services
but under the disguise of other honourable clients.
When kindness is removed from the equation,
a habitat once peaceful becomes the hub of predators.
Chants o' thy escapin' requiem,
Chairs on t'se broken doors dust kiss'th,
Paint on t'se walls, incomplete rest'th,
Nails o' mine, thou out pull'th,
Stabs throat, the silence o' tis,
Red hot metal in my genitals,
Frozen blood smells serene,
Push'th th'm limits beyond, thou,
Bleedin' nostrils, when t'at acid crawls inside my eyes, tearin' my eyelids...
Serene art o' thee, where shalt thou hang'th? My love?
Pins h've o' the ground lie,
Pick th'm up, batter on my temple, try...
Doll o' thee, beauty o' tis, who its lips kiss'th? My love?
Stopped heart o' mine,
Who pull'th? My love?
Body o' mine, dust an' tear piled,
Who love make'th? My love?
Wet gasoline in my mouth, flame between thy thighs, who light'th? My love?
Melancholic story o' ours, who read'th? My love?
Impeccable words o' th's scene, who make'th? My love?
With a wheelbarrow full of manure
For my strawberry patch,
Pushing past an asylum
I heard the gate latch,
An inmate emerged and said
What you got there?
I said it's to put on my strawberries
So they're not so bare.
He said, gee whizz mate,
You should come inside,
When they serve our strawberries
They put cream on the side.