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Best Mental Illness Poems | Poetry

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The Best Mental Illness Poems

Details | Mental Illness Poem |

Sarah's Story - Mental Illness

Sarah’s Story - Mental Illness

Sarah, the “Crazy Lady,” was a familiar sight,
roaming the streets any time of day or night.
Her foul body odor announced her presence,
as she paraded around in her filthy, smelly garments.
Walking barefoot regardless of the weather,
in her state of mind, she couldn’t do better.
Children teased and made fun of Sarah,
reciting ridiculing ditties, adding to the drama.
Behind her a lively entourage would follow,
taunting and calling her names creating a sideshow.
They howled with childish laughter,
as Sarah hurled angry profanities after.
An avid collector of all kinds of trash,
she transformed her abode into a garbage stash.
Sarah’s odd behavior made her fair game,
to unkind people who had no mercy or shame.
While many folks turned a blind eye,
young boys threw rocks and other missile,
at the roof and windows of the shack she occupied.
Behind bushes, they would scamper away to hide,
as Sarah furiously dashed outside,
brandishing a machete, cudgel, or broom,
screaming out curses, damnation, and doom.
Like a cancer, her mental illness had devoured her brain,
and before long, she was officially "certified insane."
Most agreed it was for her own benefit,
and for the good of society to be rid of this "misfit."
But even though she was locked away in an institution,
no psychiatric treatment could cure her mental condition.
When Sarah finally died, she was unloved and alone;
her passing was hardly noticed, and she was mourned by none.

Note: This piece was inspired by a true account. While we have made great strides in the study of mental illness and understanding it, unfortunately negative attitudes and beliefs toward people who have mental health conditions are still common. Thus, as a society, we still have a long way to go to improve our attitudes and to show more caring and compassion for those who suffer from various types of mental illness.

08-06-2015

Contest: Mental Illness
Sponsor: Nathan D.
Placement: 7th

Details | Mental Illness Poem |

Turned Off

In the deepest of sad emotions
My mind as been turned off
Exiting off the highway of life
The turn off of all time
As I rot in  Ward J
Insane and sublime
The bars on the windows speak
The bartender sneaks in a wee piss
My mind flies away in the wind
I wish to to to to tell you my small thoughts
Or comments
Yet here I am
Locked away in hell
The soup is cold
The orderlies so blind

Details | Mental Illness Poem |

AUTISM

I rise at the center of...
Is it a room? This is a face.
There is motion, too fast, too clamorous.
Cryptic and opaque. Shapes shift
into my field of view.
Recognize! The message spoken
ends in an upward curve.
Interpret! It means a question

?                         ?                            ?                          ?    

                                 What to respond, when....
                                 I get nauseous.
                                 My body twitches, my mouth tics
                                 I make no sound
                                 I cannot speak.
                                 I cast my eyes down.

Curl up, arms wrapped around self;
Rock to calm down again;
Count the tiles;
Hum Rachmaninoff.

                               What is this incomprehensible life?

My soothing world is filled with letters and words,
a keyboard, screen, and silent friends
They speak to me in sentences and formulas
of friendship and love...
on my screen..

I am afraid
         I am always so very afraid
                     Once I was somewhere else
                                    Locked up inside
                                                    My head

                                                                Once I was somewhere else
                                 I will not go back there
I want to stay out.

Details | Mental Illness Poem |

Not The Bird

I can see myself
Outside my window
I'm not the bird on the wire
But the pole on which the wire is strung
With a hundred other cables cut and hung
Limp and spent
Outdated and irrelevant

Details | Mental Illness Poem |

Ripping

I rip and chew at my edges
Trying to eradicate 
Placate
Eleviate
My pain
The anxiety 
The part of me that threatens to freeze 
My mental disease
The part I hope no one sees
The inner demons I wish to appease 

The tattoos that your artistry 
Injected
Under my skin
With invisible ink
Yet I feel it there with the words I think
As I claw and bite into my pink

I wish to be smoothed out
Cared about
As the blood appears it calms my shout
Exquisite pleasure wrapped in the pain
With it, some level of relief I attain

I tell myself 
I can't
I won't 
do it again
Yet with chewing
I feel my inner turmoil wane
The weaker bits
The inner head stitches
It helps me scratch, those indiscernible itches
Stopping the soul twitches

In shame I hide my hands
Fingers and things 
The evidence my body sings
Strategicly placed
My problems kind of erased
In fabric bandages encased
Still desperation has a taste
Inner turmoil only temporarily chased

Was I designed for this
Some kind of inner sickness
Expressed in a serpent's kiss
As I'm hypnotized by it's hiss
I wonder
Is there a way 
to fix this
I wish to be 
a fully healed 
Calmer witness
Perhaps this is my litmus
Another test I fail
For I'm a blind  man
Who can't read braille  

I'm bound by ropes
That help me cope
Evidence I can't wash away with soap
I wanted your yes 
But always got your nope
Became an inner pauper
Surrounded by hope
Still deep down I feel like a dope

I know I have much to be thankful for
Greatly blessed I can't ask for more
Still I fear what might be waiting for me
An imaginary enemy
Hidden behind the next door
Threatening my hope for a peaceful shore
Still I know this inner tension is a gift
It's a wave on which, I've been given a lift
It helps me travel far and swift
As within life's currents I hear the music shift.
There is a tune I wish to sing
Above the maddening ring
A new place from which I wish to begin
Beyond tattoos
And cracked and bleeding skin.
Peaceful rivers
Flowing from within.


Please read Njeri Unjeri's poem Tattoo's, after reading her
poem I got to thinking of the tattoos that all of us wear.

For Nathan's Mental Illness contest.

Details | Mental Illness Poem |

Cardboard Boxes

Discarded in yesterdays trash
Cardboard boxes never last
New things arrive in them
Old things stored in them
Rotting boxes on a voyage
Leftovers to those with out any coinage

Tom O’Seary had come down on his luck
Just couldn’t seem to make a buck
An elder at church who snuck a shot in a lurch
Now he sleeps in the rain
Cardboard box umbrellas
His home and his pain

One cold winter day
Poor old tom was dead where he lay
Inside his cardboard box
Was his last writings and will and the lot

I, Tom O’Seary of no determined address
I write these words, for they are my last will I confess
I regret all the pompous ways I was an ***
I missed the meaning of the messages, thus I was crass

Now you will lay me below the green grass
I thought I’d be looking down from heavens gates of glass
I was wrong about that too, so wrong
I am just rotting here in the green green grass

My purpose in life may not have been clear
The irony of death is now I know what’s so dear
Live this life with kindness and love
Or else on your grave will be the droppings of white doves

Details | Mental Illness Poem |

Cornered

They're all here, the disjointed pointers,
to peer, to leer, to jeer. They'll dig her out.

Oh yes she hears: voices with vices, snake-slimy
accusations hissing in her ears. Her lover ceasing to love her

and now in the arms of another. And that - that other:
shame swelling like her belly, stabbing, jabbing

his fevered finger-frisk and sweaty clutch of bedroom words
panted, panted and pushed inside her panties, slimy with seed...

the scarlet slow-bleed, as her body flailed and failed,
gave way, betrayed and blooded the spirit-seed.

She entreats the ear-echoes to retreat
and hugs herself into a ball of safe

but there is no sacred space, no private place, no kindly face
or gracious spirit-hand extending gold-glimmer grace

as she crouches and cowers from tongues like whips,
the crashing crescendo of clashing voices

that become the bugling cries of a hunt;
fear flutterings of her frail-fox heart,

his ***** still sliming her ****,
maw-slobber on ****, the hell-horn blown

as the pack closes in -
she's cornered.




24/3/2017
'In The Corner' contest

Details | Mental Illness Poem |

A Talking Door - Mental Hospital 1

I sit with the wall against my back. The wall refuses to move despite endless requests.

The door opens and closes its mouth, it wishes to say something, but nothing comes of it, only its letterbox chatters ceaselessly and without any deep meaning to it, drops hints every now and then.

The wall is annoyed with the door, but I am fed up with the noise. I stand to try and look out the window, but...
This place hushed in shadow.  If only I can remember where I went this night, they did throw me in, away from light.

I roll up the walls like a Persian rug, smother the clatter of the metallic letterbox that tries to say goodbye in a thousand words.  I hear its muffled apologies.  I see a hundred neatly white, folded paper sheets fall at my feet, covered in coloured sentences.

I throw shadows at the wall, words at the door, colours at the ceiling; demons increase my estrangement in the small room, then the walls suddenly turn soft and white, my arms are bound behind my back.

Fog dissolves in faithful whispers. Demons grow faces and white clothes. Mouths with broad smiles talk in tongues (heard, understood), carry syringes and multi-coloured pills. 


And day begins.

***

May 1, 2017 
Copyright © Darren White

Details | Mental Illness Poem |

I SIT SOBBING

I’m staring at the reflection in the mirror -
who is the lady with the grey hair?

Today a strange man came to visit me
I do not recognise him …
He says he is my son

I try hard to remember as we talk about the past
He shows me photographs of his childhood years
Memories come back to me; I sob bleeding tears
Dementia is robbing me, my recall is fading fast

That man has now gone
Saying he will visit soon 
Tears flow from my eyes
Trapped in my own little world
I sit sobbing silently

Kimo and Tanka checked with how many syllables 

Challenge  one write Contest Sponsored by Broken Wings
08~31~16

Details | Mental Illness Poem |

Seed of destruction

Father of all bombs when dropped 
five times greater than the mother 
Where a fallen angel's dance begins 
fornicating with matter darkening subjects 
through and through dimensions opening a porthole 
Acting a tough guy with your orange face 
shows little wit as one peace maker 
gives a bloody nose to politics to say the least 
To this sinful act of heresy that's displayed under lies 
in provoking war with the show of strength and power
Blind becomes your weakness 
Takes more than courage to grow a backbone 
to be humble aggression is by deeds done 
under one sign of weakness shows where the insecurity dwells 

co written by Liam and Bobby McDaid
our joint opinion on a certain matter our world has become filled with evil slave masters rising to power under mass human sacrifice

Details | Mental Illness Poem |

Minuanetta-Black Hole Beauty

 Black Hole Beauty

Stay calm my beating heart for you will enter the vastness of the void
Consumed by a blackened bestial bliss that the demons have deployed
She comes amidst the narcissistic night devouring love like a humanoid
A conqueror of time and space the light before her shall be destroyed
All hale the Queen of darkness a Shiva diva the adumbrative android

In context to the stars mitotic moons hearts of gold in dungeons dwell
Pandemic planets pray to avoid clutches of her sadomasochistic spell
Asteroids display her black heart of doom unleashed from dormant hell
With tentacles wide dominating she breaks through her shattered shell

Her bowing beauty entraps the universe and spews out a nebulous dust
The eclipse of my soul an obsession of obscurity in her crushing of crust
Into the dimness of twilight the shadows like serpents dance in disgust

Once a benevolent beauty now a sanctified seductress seducing surreal
Roaming in dimensional drifts in preparation for her next indulging meal

In her amorant annihilation death is a savior of her effulgent extinction

A terminator of trust all effervescent emotions have been employed
Rambunctious radiation the ringing of her electromagnetic bell
For within a supernova stellar mass lacking in leisured lust
You comply and conform with a begging kneel
Ruler of hearts with infinite infliction.



'...this poem is in reference to people who have had or have and suffer from a  narcissistic personality disorder...quite the experience...I wish them all well...'



March.21.2018
Minuanetta
Sponsored by: Gregory R Barden

Details | Mental Illness Poem |

eggshells

From a mouthful of this morning’s eggs,
I pull bits of char from yesterday’s breakfast.
‘I had no chance to scrub the pan’, I plea with myself-
But I still smash it over my skull
like a cartoon.

Every morning I wake up 
feeling last night’s feelings,
thinking last night’s thoughts,
about what’s happening 10 years ago, 
and what happened tomorrow.

If you add up every 
simultaneous
suffocating
moment 
I fight through- 
just to say:

‘i love you’

It would stretch for longer than I’ve known you,
which is longer than I’ve been alive.

There was no ‘today’ in my broken egg. 
No difference between coming or going,
to an automaton in purgatory 
who saw life through the pinhole eyes 
of a cardboard mask won at a birthday party 
I never asked for.
The sky looked like the ceiling of a small, dark closet.
and flowers looked like plastic bargain bin decor 
coated in lead paint, the kind left on roadside graves.
I used to count those as a child,
on the way to destinations 
I still dread my arrival to.

If I were brave enough to show you my awe and my terror
of loving the one who revealed 
the world as something real, all this time-

I would sink face down in dirty bathwater 
choking on wet, laughing sobs
until my fingerprints wrinkled away
and tear at my clammy skin 
until my soft nails bent backward
and paint red bruises all over my trembling body
that would spell out a primitive language 
neither of us had the chance to learn. 

This is my best guess:

‘i am just a bad thing that happened
a book of false memories and blind feelings. 
You are a very fast reader,
You’ll soon reach the end of me.’

I remember drawing a map in crayon 
of every ditch I saw myself lying in
strange, unnatural positions.
Like I'd been struck by a car,
and someone shoved my body away
so I wouldn’t mess up the next one.

Details | Mental Illness Poem |

Fever Dream

Night rain on the window pane is the night sweat of my fevered life dream. Time bloats like the reflection I try to avoid. Tears on the bedroom floor for however many minutes or hours. I crawled in here, felled like a sick elm, sickly scooped out, hunger hollowed, word emptied. Hands...hands that feel like they don't belong to me any more. Something moves within them, puppets them: a tingle like lightning.

icicle fingers
too cold to hold a teacup -
wrists are winter twigs

Fingernails mauve-mottled, heart struggling to pump, circulation slow-crawling. Hands are too blue-numb to grip, and I'm watching the teacup slip...

white pottery shards
mosaic of tannin stars -
the carpet is stained

I found an anthology of short stories I first read years ago, before dream winced into nightmare. Opening the book, a slip of paper floats out, white-dazzly as a snowflake. My hospital admission letter, its sudden white shock bookmarking a favourite story.

Bedtime stories. Sweating between the sheets with Ray Bradbury, electric singing sentences pressed to my skin. The push and pull of his prose singing my body electric, giving me a word-thrust I won't forget.

Ray Bradbury's everywhere, he's in the air, his words arranging themselves into kaleidoscope patterns; strange lexicon of snowflakes, of stars. But voices are reassuring me it's just a little fever dream.

Strange how the memory sea floods me as the mind becomes ever more disconnected; the past's wisps floating like feathers through the fog. Fever flicker of faces: Sarah's, silver-shimmery through tears, her blonde hair haloed in teardrop light.

Tonight, anorexia's voice is the knife strike in a slasher movie; a killing, shrilling eardrum drilling. It's the chainsaw buzz scything corn, the shadow knife behind the Psycho curtain.

My immune system is failing, body breaking down.

waves of nausea
crashing on my body's shore -
gastroparesis

slow fast slow fast slow
stop start stutter slow stop start -
arrhythmical heart

Sibilant strobe of whispers, voices; the past's echoes, floating through fever fog...we don't think you're looking after yourself...you're a risk to yourself...I'm sectioning you under Section 2 of the Mental Health Act...

The mind-trap minefield narrows to a single word: how?

How has it all come to this?

8/30/2017

Details | Mental Illness Poem |

Never Surrender

I'm a grit teeth beginner breaking out the cage,
growing strong and fitter with wit coming of age,
squeezing letters out of lemons got me in a rage,
but this bitter will get better and steal the stage.

I'm out to lay a new way suitable to a renegade,
angrily squashing this yellow fruit into lemonade,
using the skin to pave a golden route in the trade,
writes rooted in the age of this transitional upgrade.

No scourge can submerge the courage I preserve under the surface, 
that purrs with an urge to hand carve words with power and purpose,
this marvellous occurrence undoubtedly surges to resurface, 
and repeatedly emerges delivering perfectly superb verses.

Attempts to pull curtains on my spirit,
only teach knowledge that I inherit,
I react and catch before impact to my merit
and you can't collapse the soul of this poet.

Everyone falls but my core's impenetrable,
and my mental resilience is unbreakable,
they can't remove something unshakeable,
trying is a mistake that'll make you miserable.

I've learnt to benefit from attempted attacks 
aimed to prevent the way that I vent and act,
catching the weaponry and adding to my stack,
I've a determination that I'll never let crack. 

I'll elevate as I stimulate with flow
and levitate the audience to show,
I'm able to continuously demonstrate
that my work is something to celebrate,
even though my opinion will make them hate.

Coming back is what I do,
don't make me come back for you!

Details | Mental Illness Poem |

A Plate of Disorder

A Plate of Disorder

Are you ready to Disorder Sir?
What can I tempt you for a starter,
May I recommend the Turmoil Soup?
Garnished with Havoc Green Tartar.

For the main, perhaps our house speciality,
Goujons of Chaos and Sweet Bedlam.
With a Medley of Confusion and Mess,
Served on a bed of Smoked Mayhem.

On the Dessert Trolley tonight,
We have a Disarray of Cheese Cake,
A delicious Rhubarb Anarchy,
Or Sticky Turbulent Plum Bake.

Please enjoy your hearty and Riotous feast,
May it temper and fulfil the agitated beast.

Details | Mental Illness Poem |

PAS MUET

PAS MUET

I am a puppy here
The smallest
The skinniest
The silentest (is that even a word)
Stotteraar
Bègue

I wheel my wheels among them
The alpha dogs
The loud ones
I am silent
Bègue

My eyes are open wide
I watch them
Follow their every move
My mouth clammed shut
Bègue

My hands write nervously
On my notepad
With my pencil
My words arranged in neat sentences
Bègue

He understands though
He smiles with fun, no pity there
We go way back
He is my psychiatrist.
Bègue

In silence I contemplate
But silent I am not
My words are multi coloured
I like them
Niet stom
Not mute

Pas muet.
Pas muet.

***

December 30, 2016

Details | Mental Illness Poem |

I Jumped

I am the ghost of my past life.
I feel hollow, empty, incomplete,
No one can hear me speak.
	
I jumped
From a rooftop in budding May,
A beautiful time of year.
I jumped,
Then I changed my mind.

Nothing hurts as much
As seeing the lives
I could have been a part of
Playing out before my eyes.

I jumped
From a glass tower
Shimmering in the summer’s sun.
I jumped
And then I changed my mind.

---
If you're feeling down and need some to talk to, message me, know that I care about you, I don't know know you but your life is precious to me, you are loved. You are important. <3

Details | Mental Illness Poem |

Don't give up the fight

Don't give up the fight

Vs 1
I know that you have suffered in the silence,
(but) I never knew that you would go this far...
I thought I understood your pain...
now memories...are all that remain...
now I look to the stars

Vs 2
I see in others eyes- they too feel the pain
I pray for them, that it won't be too late
I pray for them, that the day will come
when suffering in silence-comes undone
and no-one is to blame

Chorus
Oh, I know well, all that you're feeling
I can validate, the emptiness you feel inside
I'm the proof that life's worth living
so please, don't give up the fight
no, no, don't give up the fight

Vs 3
I know for you, it's hard to see your beauty
all the love that dwells inside of you
Maybe, I can be a friend,
someone you can trust and can depend
to tell you the truth

Vs 4
You should know, that it takes time to get free
to conquer all the conflict in your mind
The tangled web of tragedy,
need not be your final destiny....
happiness you'll find.

Chorus
Oh, I know well, all that you're feeling
I can validate, the emptiness you feel inside
I'm the proof that life's worth living
so please, don't give up the fight
no, no, don't give up the fight


I know that you have suffered...
in the silence,
(but)
I never knew, 
that  
you 
would 
go 
this 
far...

John Derek Hamilton
October 24,2018

Details | Mental Illness Poem |

Not another day


Impulsive or compulsive

Either way it's not conducive

Living with this disorder

Can't be good for my liver

Obsessions, when do they stop?

Compulsions, when do I stop?

Let me illustrate and reiterate

My demons make me infuriated

To the point, man, I really want to escape this

Live everyday like your last?

These hours go by fast

Trying to obliterate every ounce of the past

Always with the imagery and self coping insanity

That broke me and continues to break me.

Another day, no not another day

I just got out, please let me stay away.

Details | Mental Illness Poem |

Me a poem about my illness

 Me   a poem about my Illness

I always needed someone’s help…
My mom was the one who I confided in and knew I could trust.
I never could do the ‘solo’ thang but that is changing.
I desire so much to become Independent in areas other than mind and thought; to be self-suffiicient by age 35.
Ah but cruel reality and the twists of Fate.
I have Schizophrenia a mental illness that affects my life it has to do with my brain.
I may become a so-called poet, I mean I am already a semi-finalist in a Poetry Contest right?
I am Creative but I sometimes wonder how successful will actually become at my goals and aspirations?
I credit where I am right now to the Lord, perseverance, my mom, loved ones, NAMI and my effort(tries).

Details | Mental Illness Poem |

The New World Order

Do not be in the dark. Open your eyes. This will sound shocking to most of you but I challenge you to look into this.There is a secret agenda. They put fluoride in our water to slowly, kill us and dumb us down. You know the Nazis used this method on their unsuspecting prisoners. They control almost all major corporations including the pharmaceutical companies that make our medications. They poison our foods with Genetically Modified Organisms. What GMO's are, is a genetically altered crop that can withstand tremendous amounts of pesticide exposure. When eating these contaminated fruits or vegetables with laced lethal pesticides, they will eventually shut down your organs. They also kill us through soft drinks. Aspartame is made from the feces of genetically modified ecoli bacteria. It is in diet soft drinks. It causes brain cancer among many, many ailments. Do not buy diet soft drinks. Fructose sugar in soda is made from corn. The majority of corn is a GMO product. There is also a high level of mercury found in your corn. They also put 68 grams of sugar in soft drinks Other poisons are soy, canola oil. Almost every food group has one of these ingredients. MSG causes different types of cancer. They put it in our foods under different names. Your hair dyes, some shampoos, some soaps, are laced with toxins. Some of your sofa and chair cushions have fire retardant chemicals sprayed on them causing serious illness. Chem trails which are sprayed over our crops carry aluminum nano particles that by ingesting causes free radicals in your brain, alzheimers and mental illness. We have 7 billion people on earth. They want it down to five hundred million.They also want to take our guns away. creating,( not all) but a lot of the shootings through a process called, MK Ultra mind control. There is much more to write but I will give you some sources to substantiate all this madness. This sounds crazy but I challenge who ever doubts this, to please prove it wrong.. Please do the research. Dr Oz on Juices and cyanide. Mott brand. Georgia Guide stones. Go to You tube type in illuminati. New World Order. GMO, Food Inc documentary . Loose Change documentary. Monsanto, Economic melt down created by them.The video Misery. This info will keep you busy ... This is no conspiracy theory but God honest truth. Also check out Dr Russel Baylock on fluoride. Protect your love ones.

Best Mental Illness Poems | Poetry

The Best Mental Illness Poems

Counting Seconds-The Rewrite

Insanity Music

Silence Felled

You Cry Alone

Sarah's Story - Mental Illness

Turned Off

AUTISM

Not The Bird

Ripping

Cardboard Boxes

Cornered

A Talking Door - Mental Hospital 1

I SIT SOBBING

Seed of destruction

Minuanetta-Black Hole Beauty

eggshells

Fever Dream

Never Surrender

A Plate of Disorder

PAS MUET

I Jumped

Don't give up the fight

Not another day

Me a poem about my illness

The New World Order