Buckets sloshed out onto the ground.
I reached with fingers that seemed scraggly.
Snapped my fingers and they almost fell off.
With a “snap” I can taste in mysterious ways.
Gradual eye opening.
Stuff is pouring like clutter.
Whatever, stuff, things, words.
Depression helps me do stuff…
So if I’m slow moving?
I’m already feeling a thumb tack in my foot…
Just got too weary to take it out…
It was just easier to….
Take a slow moving nap.
Dump out stuff, things, blah.
Guess what? With depression, you don’t nap.
You just wake up,
Buckets sloshing onto the ground.
That’s how you get up.
Cradled in a crib
Twine whiskers and spit
A fissure between
every footstep
nails impaled
into wrinkled palms
As I gesture in the
stiffend stance
of “I don’t know”
And ran crucified
like martyred puppets
on invisible string
At a horrifying pace,
shoes sloshing with blood
beneath the lace
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum~
Paul the squirrel beat his acorn drum.
He swung through the pines with a raucous cheer,
rum sloshing wild as he commandeered the pier~
the boldest little buccaneer ever to come.
There you were always racing against time,
a willing mother, a conscientious worker, a wife sublime.
There you were with your wondrous wrinkles, your drooping eyelids and your starched crisp cuffs to waitress pinafore uniform you ironed so much.
There you were at the filthy hospital kitchen sink sloshing the dollops of patients’ left-over dinner bits and your magnificent pride with its iron core, smiling through all that .
There you were standing at the bus stop early purple morning or late black night the back stocking line straight and right and shoes polished waxy and bright.
There you were seemingly solid and confident, but really wobbly and light, smoking too many fags through too many disappointed nights.
I touched your cheeks when I caught you crying alone
The tears ran down leaving marks like dried milk
I touched your cheeks one soft like satin and the other like silk.
surround sound rain;
I’m inside, out -
my feet feel bare,
naked, chilled.
fan forced to quit.
arms of Autumn breeze.
birds in the woods breathing
in the season’s petrichor.
noisy rascal - lamenting or
welcoming rain.
I welcome the swooshy-drops,
abiding chirps, puddling moss.
here it comes, the source
of time - lurking around wet bark,
reminiscents of perfumed family,
sloshing through crispy leaves,
pink coat
and galoshes,
yellow bus.
rain floats on air, infiltrates inside,
wetting my tongue and eyelashes-
perhaps those are tears. at last
too cold - boldness of October Sunday.
Shadow Waters
The water-bearer leans his urn silently,
pours starlight over forsaken streets
where neon lights flash their final confessions
and shattered promises accumulate like rain.
Here in the reverse trickle of time,
where advancement is lost in its own reflection,
the era turns in, searching for explanations
in dregs of what we believed we'd gained.
Electric prophets air hollow gospels
while the crowds scroll through ghost lives,
each contact another strand that entwines us
to this tapestry of lovely despair.
The constellation turns above, unchanging
those very stars that once held out liberty
now witness us tumble into the labyrinth
we built from our own radiant ideals.
In tower suites and lower-level clubs,
the children of the future sell their souls
to algorithms who recognize their secret names
and dole them out in morsels, afterwards.
Yet, still, the water flows, unceasing,
carrying seeds of something not yet born
perhaps redemption sleeps in darkness
of this shattered, brilliant age.
The carrier's face away from us,
sloshing the future drop by drop
while we stand dry in the flood,
suffocating in our own lighted shadows.
It’s natural like a crater.
It’s natural like a speckled bruise.
Depression.
Just wanders around with a temper in its pocket.
Trailing hair.
Growth-like things.
Slugs that are at the end of the swamp.
Depression.
Has anger that is full and sloshing.
A staggering feeling.
Overcoming.
Then not overcoming.
It’s just the most natural, haunting blade of grass…
That slices through anything and we can’t explain how.
Depression.
It is possible.
To have depression.
While saying affirmations.
It appears.
All alone.
Bubbles hit the walls of the dome and pop.
Hurting sounds.
Flinching tree branches.
Feeling bored in here.
As if my car won’t start.
No one believes that my car won’t start.
Or that the dome is getting warped.
I’m like a failed science fiction story.
I wish I could turn into a stone and get flicked away.
I wish I could shrink so that I won’t need to eat much.
Feeling bored still.
Bored and trying to be whimsical.
By playing in the swampy old puddles.
In this place where it never rains but has endless, sloshing puddles.
I think everyone else is happy.
Rusty water hits my face again.
Rain, I adore, I impatiently wait for,
Like a wife awaits her husband from war.
Sloshing, splashing scintillating drops,
Soothing my skin with hopes
along with my smudged heart,
Rain, my first love, my sweetheart.
Laying on the gullible grass,
Staring at the sublime sky,
Thinking of life's dreams made of glass,
As the drops fall, lifting me to fly.
After the sky is clear,
Leaving the earthy smell
That to my heart is so dear.
Freesias, nasturtiums and bluebells.
The sun, masquerading behind creamy clouds,
Willows are not weeping, rain swept away their doubts.
Wisterias are waltzing with the wind,
Gardenias and Geraniums grinned.
What a joy it is to be a mortal!
Life, a mix of smiles, beauty and chortles.
Piggies Pinky, Poinky, and Puck
were sloshing in the summery farmyard's murky muck.
It was the day before slaughter,
and they were enjoying the lukewarm water,
and the chorus of the cackly goose and the quaky duck.
How much caffeine is in my drink?
I bet it’s more than I think…
Frothy milk sloshing around.
I set my cup on the ground.
Sitting on a park bench, I pull out a snack.
Hoping a squirrel doesn’t attack.
How much caffeine is in my drink?
I wonder as I hear a coin clink.
Someone dropped a quarter on the ground.
I look around.
Everything is moving too fast.
I can hear a flag pole start to rust.
How much caffeine is in my drink?
To give me momentum as if I’m on a skating rink.
How much caffeine was in my drink?
I think…
I might need to rest in the grass.
After throwing my cup in the trash.
How much caffeine was in my drink?
Enough for me to be twitchy, I think.
How many blades of grass are on the ground.
1,002 is the number I found!
Rubbing my palms together.
Too much heat, pills rolling on the counter.
Rolling and toiling.
The pills look bigger than usual.
A glass of water, sloshing, and splattering.
Medication is…
When it’s late and you want to go to bed.
Medication is,
White, green, blue.
Trying to grasp them.
They seem different today.
So do I, maybe that’s good.
It’s been three weeks.
And horrible things haven’t been happening so much.
Like rolling around on the hardwood floor, and holding my head.
Medication is…
White, green, blue, and cold.
Until they are in my burning, shaking hands.
Medication is…
Whatever happens next.
Which is usually sleeping, but still shaking a bit.
Medication is…
Alive as any person can be.
So am I.
From the moment you held me
I knew you as deviant
Unsafe, unpredictable
Slithering around
Up, and down, sloshing
Yet...cool, refreshing
Bringing joy and sorrow
To my small frame
Come little one
Let's play a game
I will protect
I will keep you safe
From movement that takes
Yet...gives, laughter
Bellowing above reason
Taking soul for a ride
Gone, I can't find her
Where did she run
Away from uncontrolled
Unknown, unpleasant
Unified undercurrent
Yet...unrevealed
Mysteries to be uncovered
In a time where I can not exist
Written by Trudy Schrader
The days when I played in them
Not listening to any words from mom.
Cherishing each drop falling on me
Feeling as though a sparrow is free
Sloshing, sploshing, and splashing
Amidst lightning flashing
Puzzling over the bubbles
Formed over the puddles
The tentative rainbows on them
Shining like the Kohinoor gem
Counting them as though stars
Or scattered pearls of Mars
Trying to collect them gladly
Seeing them break, sadly
Going on, thus, till the drops
Each last one, finally stops.
I nostalgically think of those days.
My heart beams with romantic rays.
Will they come back anymore?
This question quakes my heart's core...
shower shoes sloshing, soapy, slippery,
and teeming with colossal cleanliness,
toweled,
culpable
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