A quatrain
Rear, I feel the dark shadows that I fear,
Near, is the storm to reverse my gear,
Complexities of clinical depression,
Silently, I walk to my purgatory,
Back in the foliage of sweet local park,
Where we made kind love, your warm heartbeat I hear,
Warm embrace of gentle sin, during the storm,
light brown eyes, radiant in tonight's dark sky
Whispers of crickets as they disappear,
birds snooze quietly in the trees that they choose,
wonders of our love disturb their sweet slumber
innocence lost to the desire of flesh
dripping wet with saliva from young years,
tongues engage from the excitement we have made
goose-bumps on our skins gone to love that got loose
Cradling into the night of this memory.
Don't feel offended
if I come across as flat,
It'll be cause I'll rather
dream than be alive,
I love the fan on full force
as under my sheets,
I have to double wrap
for any comfort,
& its easier to sleep
while freezing.
My dreams to me,
are where,
I need to be.
There's another
universe
I so much desire.
My dreams
without
the nightmares
are constant
reminders.
Flat-ness
of sitting
up for hours
is no life.
May as well sleep
and be
in my circle
of comfort ,
Safety
but hated
in the real world
I had a chance
and he can't
wake
most mornings
either.
His graying
and barely
able walking,
I wish
he could
be born
back
in Eden.
I was feeling anxious, tired and blue,
so ended up seeing an old doctor
to see what he could do…
He diagnosed me with anxiety and
clinical depression, and afterwards
jotted down for me a new prescription…
I looked at it and it read:
This is an old fashioned prescription
and I use it all the time, just try it
yourself and you'll be just fine!
1. Help someone in need.
2. Take a walk in a park.
3. Take a nice, warm, relaxing
bath and then watch some old Jerry Lewis
movies for a good belly laugh!
4. And finally, don't forget to send up a
little prayer, because your Heavenly
Father really does care!
I said to the old doc, "what the heck, this
sounds great because there is probably no
horrible side effects!"
You stole in unbeknownst to me
with soft and silent tread,
You laid your hands upon my heart
and my confusions fled.
They stretched and flexed their crumpled wings
unused to flights of joy,
they tripped and skipped in gratitude
just like a little boy,
and by degrees my troubled soul
took solace from above,
my empty feelings of despair
transfigured by Your Love.
Last Modified: June 09, 2015 at 10:30 am
© bickerstaffe - all rights reserved
Author Notes
...some time ago I spent seven weeks in confinement recovering from a spell of clinical depression. I wrote this piece the day before I was released... a thank you note to God for pulling me through.
Melancholy is hell;
it drains the life and soul.
But I survive to tell
you that I'm in control
of this dreadful disease—
with med's I got it beat!
So can you (if you please):
it's an achievable feat.
--Ngoc M. Nguyen, 29 December 2014
I woke up that morning and began to cry
and cry and cry and cry and cry.
I stayed in my home the entire day
because I couldn't stop crying no how, no way.
I guess everyone cry's occasionally,
but all day, all night continually?
I guess I stopped crying when I fell asleep,
but I think I kept crying even in my dreams,
and the oddest thing about all of this for sure
is that I have absolutely no idea what I was crying for.
I think that this possibly may be a symptom
for what doctors would diagnose as clinical depression.
I have fallen into a very deep well
Where darkness and despair do dwell.
There's slime and mildew on the wall
How I got here...I don't recall.
Somewhere I hear water trickle
The sky above, no bigger than a nickle.
For when you're in a well so deep
All you do is sit and weep.
You wear the darkness like a cloak
Touch the pieces of a life that broke.
You and the darkness become as one
There are no reasons left to run.
Up there people are having fun
Loving and laughing in the sun.
They do not hear my inner plea
Do not see the cold in me.
As the walls pull closer still
Somber memories my heart do fill.
For in this well I cannot win
You see the darkness...is within.
So I curl up very tight
Await the passing of this night.
Maybe in the early dawn
I again will be reborn.
This poem inspired by a book that I read. Clinical depression is a devastating
and often misunderstood disease. HB