Monday, May 2, 2016

A Positive Detour
Sometimes life can take detours for which you had not planned. Coming out of high school and entering college, I thought I would write poetry and fiction as my career.  That was a goal I was moving towards. In many ways I was wearing blinders, but the only thing I cared about was the written word. I spent hours jotting poetry in a spiral notebook that was not far away from my back pocket. I figured I was not going to be a bestselling writer, but I enjoyed the high that came from a single line that provided temporary inspiration. 
            Suddenly a slap to face knocked the blinders from my eyes. I received a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder. How would this detour affect my writing?  In the beginning stages of recovery, I felt no inspiration to write. It was more than a mental block--I lost my inspiration. My inspiration took the form of delusions that I didn’t want to describe in writing.
            Over a longer period of time, I slowly began to write about my own personal struggles with my illness and other positive ways of dealing with my symptoms.  Somehow I started to write about everyday living with a mental illness. After that I began to realize that I wasn’t the only one. There was a whole community battling the same demons I was battling. With my permission one of my doctors began to share my writings with some of the other patients who had similar diagnoses as I. They told me that my writing was helpful to them, and that gave me more motivation to write for them. 

            Without my diagnosis of mental illness, I’m not sure where my writing would have taken me.  Before I never thought about writing as helping someone.  I don’t carry a notebook anymore, but I have found creativity and insight in the detour that life gave me.  Now, I can’t imagine a life without this detour.  

Monday, April 4, 2016

3/15/16

A carthatic silence
breaks into white noise
in the distance just before the sun set
grayish clouds in line like elephants
to darkness
spring is in our sights
yet head lights of cars
slowly the only light shown

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

2/3/26 Just am

Why I didn't do it
Because it isn't up to me
Because some times I feel
like the whispers are like
clean sheets in between my toes
some faces expect to see me
in between walls
grinning with answers
from my spoken word
I want to see the individual words
building up them
and channeling the rivers
 to other love one's
I am still here
to wonder what is next
like my anxious niece
I don't feel like always
explaining myself
I just am

Friday, January 29, 2016

Back in the Day

Every note has been played
every word has been spoken
the angles have all been viewed
the past is still profitable
because it was all better back in the day
cliques drinking
and smoking
Are we can hope is for
is space in the future
instead of long lines
waiting to see
what we've already seen
illegal will always be more fun
12 steps for your regrets
yet the weight is lifted
with a grin
I think I heard this all before

Saturday, December 5, 2015

free verse

flames on the horizon and let we are rising. above heaven, empty headed full of fog, forgetting the worse crime of all. the voices in whispers for years now. check the evidence, no one is actually there. Still some shadows exhale smoke. medication leave your extremities feeling like there is no bone only a jelly like substance. lullaby voices of a congregation turn out to be monsters. eye lids want to shut, But I have to see what happens next.

Sunday, August 2, 2015

Girl with jailhouse tattoos

dreamed of a girl with jailhouse tattoos
she questioned bearded hipsters
with name brand cigarettes

what holds them together
an artifical spine
there parents pay their rent
they sink together in the scene
I was alone with her until I woke up
without her

I couldn't explain her
or myself

the nights were shorter

some like seeing others fall

Friday, September 5, 2014

Stringed together

Looking through the screen
visions of the sky
a self absorbed orbit
and wet ass fault
memories of an old school boy crush
into sighs and easy breathing
scattered the cloud like thoughts
this world laying flat on the desert
scorpions and cacti
come back into the shadows
in this elite
desert winds are accompanied
with a kiss
from a different set of lips
either or
not transparent movement
ass fault dries by
the dependent sun
that needs us to rise
our eyelids which are stringed together
in a blanketed embrace