Best Neuroses Poems
Written: January 04, 2025 For Contest Sponsored by: Unseeking Seeker
Line of inquiry:
“free from conditioned belief
no agenda on our shelf
vibrant as the light of Self
life flows on all by itself”
________________________________
Our peaceful place is a serene stillness,
Freed of a firm grasp of the familiar isthmus.
No steered ambit, no behests to satiate,
No truncated quest, or toils for tribal vitiate.
Sepia slate chutzpah, the soul's shining spark,
Diaphanous slivers and mullions pinpoint its stark.
Life lingers as leaping strides send quads convulsions,
A ceaseless cascade, a haunting mix of red, casts visions.
In the serene sanctuary, spirits shall plane,
Freed from the fetters of borrowed strain.
A stream surges, unscathed by dim schemes,
Radiating tinsel, reflecting radiant gleams.
Bathed in moonbeams, velvet drapes create a pearly gleam,
Amid enticing melody, toads hatched a fantastic dream.
This tale, a paper-thin silken gown of a gliding string,
A seed root segment fixed to the probe, splendidly cling.
Like leaves rowdy from autumn's fickle breath,
We shed imposed beliefs, escape false death.
Roots reach deep where truth alone can mend,
Untouched by fears that others' wills may send.
No nagging neuroses of self-control and vanity,
Gleefully fair breathing, obnoxious bully of inanity.
Liberated from loads, major culprits in building tension,
Unbridled, freed seaworthiness of untested dissension.
A quiet loot, winning gentleness upon a serene face,
Liberty lolls, luster trails hemmed in balsam firs and grace.
No view marred, no stance clutched, just paideia and piety,
Simply splendid, no spiders in their webs or anxiety.
Hello Friends... I suffer from Severe Bi-Polar Disorder and this submission was inspired by
actual events that occured during one of my especially critical manic episodes. Be sure and
read Part 2 to complete the poem and leave your comments on the Part 2 submission. Thank
you for allowing me to share my pain for pain shared is pain diminished
Me, Myself, and I...
“There are things that concern us,”
Consensed my “Selves” in earnest
““We” fear that “I” have succumbed to delusion”
“And after careful deliberation
It is with much hesitation
That we choose to delineate upon this confusion”
“Fact is your intuition
Is riddled with superstition
And your judgment leaves much to be desired”
“So you leave us no recourse
Don’t push us to use force”
It is then that the “I” was summarily fired
I exclaimed “By whose authority?” Response, “Rule of majority”
“The “Myself” and the “Me,” (forthwith the “We”), are experts in our field”
“And with much technique and time
And some forays into the sublime
The nature of your malady will be revealed”
“So to keep yourself from having a fit
Step back and just calm down a bit”
“We,” they said, “certainly have this under control”
“We swear this won’t hurt at all”
Then I felt my inhibitions fall
Still I said a prayer to God that He keep my soul
You know, fact is I do feel off axis
As evidenced by such parapraxis
As this prose that I, (or is it “Us”), seek to pen
And with my mind feeling numb
I finally chose to succumb
And allow the “Me” and the “Myself” to begin
And then came questions in a flurry
Answer, answer and please do hurry
Not one moment of respite did they give
They pushed and they prodded
With every “T” crossed and “I” dotted
My mind felt like it had gone through a sieve
And all this psycho-analysis
Is causing my mind paralysis
The questions, can you stop with the questions please
“Yes, oh yes indeed
I do believe we have what we need
To make an attempt to identify your unknown neuroses”
In Nursing School
In nursing school they have us learn all the proper medical words,
Because in Greek and Latin we defecate, but we never make turds,
And what's worse than learning about all these dreadful diseases
Is forgetting my English to replace it with obfuscating medicaleses,
Lest we forget that great chemical known as adenosine triphosphate
Which is the powerhouse of the cells, or did she say an exudate?
And though I've been to India and seen the river Ganges,
I never knew my fingers were really called phalanges,
And we must learn about colitis, encephalitis and diverticulitis,
But I hope these germs don't decide to get up and bite us.
You can't find out a lot about someone by palpating the patella,
Not even if the patient is female, or if he is a fella.
And we must distinguish anemia, diarrhea and gonorrhea
From the almost identical condition known as leukemia.
Sex is one thing, I think, not one of us has time for,
For after school it's off to work until you're blind or
Wishing you had never heard of cellular necrosis,
Not to mention the hundred kinds of psychoses and neuroses.
And then there's that other major hurdle called getting adequate funding,
And if you can't get a loan or a grant they'll have you do the plumbing.
It seems the clinical locations are never really near ya,
In fact most of them are deep inside Siberia,
And if out in the Sun recall that your skin can get tumorous,
For the study of medicine is serous – very, and hardly ever humerus.
Your medical books will have you believe you've every disease known
From autophobia to an ecchymosis to cerumen on the bone.
But at least there are no bullies insisting we are all big wimps,
For studying things like urine, saliva, bile, blood and lymph;
And if there's one more part with the outlandish name of buccinator,
I think I'll lose it all and become a hallucinator.
So, I'm told I have 100 billion neurons
(by someone ignorant of youth's indiscretions)
each with about a thousand synapses,
to connect its own specific grandeur or fear
to a grand of other neurons and their neuroses
and all of these cadre's and feeling tentacles
are always moving - reaching - searching,
for input and an interested listener
for minute sparks of insights they may have,
maybe a few a second, and over the course of time
they begin to add up - these datum of days
Significant amounts of minutia and marvels
in my minute-to-day-to-decade-to-lifetime
collection of me, in my own Icloud of inputs
what more could a sentient mind want but
a spoonful of sugar, and some free radicals
to really open up the ol' data pipes
BIG data, is what life's all about
these days, of statistical medians and means,
trying always to crunch our cramponed boots
to the top of the standard deviation curve
and look out at all the rest of
experience below us, our own vista of life
Racks of digitals softly hum to us in our society
and like us, this evolution (perhaps) of life
abhors to throw anything back to the world
without gleaning profit or meaning from it,
no digital potato peels or binary bones tossed
without a specific mission statement satisfied
So, it's not so different today, in "modern" times
as it was back then, when chain-mailed or toga'd
or animal skinned, or just buck-naked, we took
in everything that we could as individuals,
and stored its meaning, its grief, its joy,
part of our memories stock-in-trade for
the core analytical questions of "what?" and "why?"
© Goode Guy 2012-11-16
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data
(Going Batty - original title)
Yes…
It’s me squeaking.
I know that bats only squeak when they are excited,
But Man!
You are a pretty exciting occurrence!
I do understand…
Most bats can’t hear you, you know,
But
I
TRACHOPS CIRRHOSUS
Have no such neuroses.
You really take pictures,
Write a book?
I’ll pose for you
Eating a frog.
Oh!
Oh!
I’m not ‘your little Microchiroptera’
And I’m NOT going back to the lab with you.
Men!
They’re all the same!
And I thought that one
Was a different species altogether…
Example posted for "Enter your own competition".
1) I have thought about entering my own previous create a character competition, so I made the competition title my poem title.
2) The required form was dramatic monologue, so I attempted to use that.
3) The quality I was striving for was humor.
(Did I succeed? The reader can perhaps judge better than I can.)
The lamps malignant overhead transpire
steel to stars, and I
floating over silver highway, am
transpiring dreams
to cars, expectations
passing fast into the horizon.
Tell me, do these dreams die?
Does that which seems so living,
fold over settling
into smoke,
or become a supernova,
a host
of a new neuroses-
the black mouth of poems.
A psychiatrist said to his patient,
“Your neuroses are still only latent.
But what’s becoming acute,
And makes that point moot,
Are your psychoses, which are all very flagrant.”
When she meets you for the first time she should hand you a card,
Laminated, that tells you her name and what she does...
Not a business card you understand, but a warning and an apology
Kind of like an I’m Sorry Hallmark card, but with darker undertones
And a tragically funny kind of sub-text
This card would tell you all you needed to know,
And hopefully you would take one glance, look at her,
Swallow a lump of nerves and hurriedly back track
I don’t know what the exact wording on that card would be,
But somewhere on it there should be a concise and detailed list
A rundown of all her mental illnesses, all the neuroses
And psychoses and general deformities of character she possesses
Oh and of course they should include the inherent alcoholism too
And the fact that she may in fact, at some point,
Need an exorcism
She seems to have Satan squatting inside her skull you see
Anyway...after you’ve read the card, if you don’t run away,
But instead find yourself glancing nervously into her haunting eyes –
The colour of the sea on a sunny day – and if you find yourself off-balance
And falling head-first into those cerulean pits,
Find the word Love bobbing around in your misguided heart like a cork,
And if you decide you want her despite what the little card said –
Despite the translucent triple six on her forehead,
Then at least when it all comes crashing down, and she turns monstrous
And devours you for breakfast like a petite but ravening harpy,
Then don’t burst into petulant tears and say “It’s so unfair...”
Because you were warned right from the start,
With that amusing little card and it’s damning words in bold black ink
It was your own stupid fault if you ignored that foreboding label –
Certified Psychopath - just because she had a pair of pretty eyes
And she was willing to spend all afternoon kissing you into a stupor
And smoking opiate dreams from a psychedelic pipe
After all, you were only too ready to rush into her ravishment
And you can’t blame the black widow for devouring the fly
That wriggling fool that blundered right into her silken threads
Especially not when she gave you that card...
Laminated and all, with its intriguing list...
A neat little warning; what a shame it ended up in the bin...
for years, your hungry maw had fed
on salty tears and blood I'd bled
you suckled without thought or rest
on milk of kindness from my breast
you chewed upon my weaknesses
and slurped them up for sustenance
clasped tightly like a foul remora
you sucked me dry and howled for more
and yet, in knowing all of this
I held you tightly as aegis
the better to distract me from
the ugly beast I had become
the cloak of your unceasing needs,
diversion from my own foul deeds
from true compassion to contempt
til finally love's beyond exempt
precious, precious, symbiosis
sadness, sickness, sweet neuroses
stilted, stunted, siamese
dearest, deadliest disease
As the moonlight reflected on a lake
Whomever you choose to be or make,
Your mind and heart can have a choice,
Add my consent if fair according voice.
Ether happiness is just a state of mind
Like joyful clouds gather or go with wind,
All states of mind, may also reproduce
Themselves in physical forms or use.
Unknown station, future may belong to hoards
Ready to gather up and sharpen the swords.
Fear may becomes panic. Its rhymes get witness
As exhausted love may become possessiveness.
If we could only have a little a bit more time,
More money, more love, maybe a better rhyme
More known or unknown thing he did not have,
We’d be truly happy. All these make us behave.
Any sequoia will watch us from higher places.
Each repressed emotion in childhood lets traces.
Cycle of life: tangled branches of every wood.
Angry may bring kind of rebel like Robin-hood
Grief may become chronic deep depression,
Envy may become jealousy, even obsession.
Sorrow looks like a robin, but what else may be?
Or sing another song, or choose another tree!
Sweet and soothing, the night is settling by now.
Shadows loaded with sleep, dull, soft and slow,
Clouds over the earth like water ready to give up.
Playing : softly, slowly, joy of love grow up:
Feelings, like the steam carried over a precipice,
So, wishful thinking carried over prejudice,
Sneaking through the trees, moon runs to here.
White lights turn off, descend and may disappear.
The overtaken, discolored, pale moon`s childhood
A hidden rhythm presides and resolves this mood
Of tonalities loaded with the hope that does not fear
New dreams crawl to the heights to fresh air.
You need a measure, if want too much without be able
Rebound for men like the expensive wine on the table.
Serotonin beyond each ill that would corruption bring,
Over dose brings neuroses, or subjective suffering.
If the feelings` denominator can flood the cognitive,
Try keep smiling: in good transfer as dough can live
Resilient like the seasons`colors and scent of the leaves
Enjoy the joy of the others under the unknown eaves.
You wore your neuroses
Like badges of Honor:
A Non-Apology creature,
- Like certain Candidates I know -
Never a trip to the Vet's;
I valued the flesh of my arms too much -
Never outside;
Except to eat grass
Throw up inside,
Despite it all,
A life stubbornly lived
Into profound old age;
Most spent asleep.
- This is your legacy; of which I'm sure you were perversely proud.
Thus, one day
After 17 years of pure existence
You passed on while climbing the stairs.
Maybe one day I'll follow,
Slipping away between
My lower and upper worlds;
Halted midway between Past and Present.
Maybe we'll meet one day in the middle,
Old friend;
Never think no one grieves for Thee.
We do not speak of love.
Philosophies entwine, bridge and bind
The careful space between us.
We do not speak of love.
A fingertip might sometimes touch;
If it lingers, who can count the time?
We do not speak. Our eyes
Ignite the atmosphere!
We seize, we hold, we lie together
Kind to kind, fear to fear;
We rise, pull some words around us
Of physio-chemical attraction,
Neuroses interacting
We do not speak of love.
A Baby Cries,
Demanding, Emphatic,
Forming, Growing,
Having Intelligence, Joy, Kindness, Love.
Mounting Neuroses, Outrageous Propaganda,
Quickly Remove Simple Truth,
Unleashing Violence- Wanton, Xenophobic.
Youthquake Zeitgeist!
***
December 11, 2019
F F I series 33 a to z
Brian Strand, sponsor
Inspiration has fled me
Hard toil has bled me
Desperation has led me
to my current snafu…
Frustration has fed me
Neuroses have shred me
No one has read me
no one save you…
Here’s what I’m hoping
That we’ll be eloping
Else there’s no coping
~ my life will be through
Neuroses become elated
that high cannot be deflated;
Lusty infatuation
without distraction;
Coffee’s running around naked.