Hello all! I am a non-fiction/autobiographical writer and sometimes a poet, diagnosed bipolar...trade you a poem?

Hello!

 

I just joined She Writes and reading this group's description, it seemed like a good fit for me and my most creative writing: poetry.  You may be interested in checking out my writing on my website, Practice of Madness [street sociology, survivor stories, a madwoman versus society].

 

I suppose I'll introduce myself here by sharing my favourite poem, and the only one I've ever given at a public reading, "Fear of Flying" - I would love to hear some of yours in return!:

 

One flew apart over another ocean yesterday.

Rio to France.  “An American holding dual citizenship but traveling using his ‘non-American passport’ – no more comments can be made at this time,” says a director of Foreign Affairs.

Flash, flash, go the cameras.  Apparently the Russians are still coming – how many months until the right to dual citizenship iserased?

I must avoid crossing that border at all costs.

Violated by men with beeping magic wands because I wouldn’t take off my belt.  You can see my scars now, are you happy?  Flash grins to the other men; apparently so.  Damaged Goods

but I can still make it hard.

Three, two, one.

Tried to sleep in the next terminal – International Arrivals.  Could understand a black-haired language so I couldn’t rest my head, but I realized I got an ‘A’,

No matter what my papers say.

Flowers and laughter, this side of the water.

Think about work and my hands feel like they could emit light; can’t even look at the screen or I will be sick all over your clean, crisp uniform

on the first hot day of summer.  Thirty-one degrees and it smells like teen spirit.

“We’re still waiting on some paperwork,” says the Speaker,

“We’ll take off soon.”

A drunk or a rapist is led off the plane by a woman smaller than me –

“I didn’t do nothin’ wrong!”

Can’t help but laugh out loud,

Sitting alone here, pouring my guts out, hope returns, way to go,

Sister,

No paperwork after all.

The great Rockies fade away, but I will be back next week.

Next week, Oh God.

Never been this all alone, or this happy before, and my hand can keep up with my pen.

Don’t know if He will make it today, so one last letter, today.

love you; I want a great many things; I need nothing.

Call my daddy, say,

I’m going to be a little late, today.

Over the ocean, then the mountains, if it all goes well and this box does not turn black.

You can see the islands from up here.  Final Word –

Nothing.

Such a soothing sound as it rolls off the lips, in my brain, hot-wired, hot-wired to feel only this.

Snow-capped and lovely, my dear.

Is this how I ground half of my front teeth away?

These new ones aren’t real, so they’re safe.

Half-away, sitting here, all alone.

Weave words like wool, you don’t need steady hands for this, in fact, best if they’re not, So don’t hold it.

Never liked that, holding hands.  Feels like I’m three years old and daddy is dragging me

Away –

I pretended that I did and tried so hard not to feel that my hands grew blue and numb and frozen, just like Hers’, and I couldn’t even pick the cherries.

That is why my hands glow in the dark now, so strange, waking up, all alone.

Bleed back to me, Cherry Red.

I couldn’t make him taste my flavour.

Back to Life, is this pain?  Knots in my back like a tree trunk and light escaping from its branches.

Don’t bother trying to cut her down –

no Axe, no Saw, no Chains

could move her - leaves

blowing in your wind.  Put it down.

My freedom is not yours.

Promises made are promises broken but I always believe them anyway.

“There you go, dear.”  She touches my hand, but not to hold it, instead She gives me my Change and some candy.

The sky turns red like the cherries and suddenly it doesn’t matter if we make it there –

Or if we fly, apart.

A Cherry Red Lady that glows in the dark.

Now she glows in the sun

as

well.

Love, too, is only

a

word.

 

Cheers, all!

Jen (a.k.a. scarsarestories)

 

 

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Replies
  • So I'm already in love with your distinctions and proclamations on your "about" page.  Reminds me of this essay I wrote when I was rather...mad.  The Panic of Peace.  Please check it out if you would. I've never, ever come to a site about madness and the whole shabang and had such an empowering feeling!!
  • Jen, ok wow after checking out your website I had to jump back here and tell you some things.  I, too, have Bipolar Disorder, and I have PTSD from long-term sexual/physical abuse by a parent.  I've been in the bin....enough times.  I write about it at several different places.  My PTSD blog is here if you're interested; my Bipolar blog is here (though it lacks all my new poetry, which can be found at my main blog: "Difficult Degrees").  Overwhelming?  Well that's our style isn't it? :)
  • Wow this poem is INCREDIBLE!  I'm so glad you joined our little group, you fit right in!!  I'm very much looking forward to checking out your website.  I blog (poetry and personal essays) about madness, living with bipolar and ptsd.  I LOVED the fever and the sense of falling in that poem.  I'm so glad you shared.  Would love to share poems!!