Welcome to the Bipolar Poetry Reading!

Cathi's Stuff

Poems I wrote...some old, some new...

		Beating my hand against cold rock
		begging for blood enough to feel and grip
		cursing my god, myself, rough slippery stone,
		I panic as my hold begins to loosen.
			And then I fall
			with feeling 
			come too late.
			Panic gives way to peace;
			   I sink resignedly away
			     into the nothingness
			         and a sea of red.

				(c) C.Roach 1986



	Bury me here.
	Place my body high above the sea
	in walls of warm grey stone,
	within the smell of its saltiness.
	Let my dead deaf ears hear the crash
	the thunder of the sea's majesty.
	Let my cold stiff limbs be cushioned 
	by the soft grass of the clifftop.
	Let my still numb mind dream faintly
	of the wind's howling freedom
	and the soft kiss of the rain.
	Bury me here.
				(c) C.Roach 1986


	What a humblety bumblety lot of us,
	tramping up and down up and down
		"Over hill over dale
		 we will hit the dusty trail
		 as those casons go rolling along"
	mile after mile along the coast
	exploring the spongee spongee grass
	staring down the sheer cold cliffs
		until we were sick of the view
		and dizzy besides.
	We'd never seen the likes of it before,
	prickling gorse and frothing sea
	and the seals popping and bobbing.

	As we wound our way home
	dog weary and soup bone tired
	we vowed we'd bring the others, yes
		all those unfortunate souls
		who hadn't come along

	But secretly we knew, it would never be the same
	The splendour and the spoils had been ours -
	we were only bringing them to see the ruins.
		
				(c) C.Roach 1986


			
Skinny Dipping

			Silky liquid moves
			sliding slickly over
			every inch of skin
			as my lover does.

				(c) C.R.Russell 1995



	Today I am a ginger grater,
	unwashed, sharpedged,
	with a biting bitterness that
	is what I am and is in me.

	Today I am a balloon,
	silvered, bouncy,
	with enough euphoria to
	resist your efforts to bat me down.

	Today I am an empty can,
	hollow, worthless,
	edges jagged from what you used to use me.

	Today I am a razor blade,
	rusty, pitted,
	but still sharp enough to deeply wound or even kill.

	Today I am myself,
	all of these, more,
	and I learn to live like this, learn to endure, learn to cry,
	until I finally learn to have power, healing, strong, and solid.
				(c) C.R.Russell 1995

Just browsed through your page of poetry by bipolars. (I've just been diagnosed after a nasty manic episode.) Feel free to use the following poem on your page, if you like.

Sincerely,
Kevin

COMPULSION

If it is really true, that misery loves
Company, then tell me why haven't I convinced
You yet? that it's my way and the highway,
Your cake that I'm having, as I eat it too.

To seduce you, I need no particular skill
Or vision, only regret and the ability to match
Patience with your impatience, indifference with your
Desire, greener grass to your other side of my fence.

In this club it's Members Only, and, Oh boy!
Won't it feel good as I slide on into you, and you
have your shake and your fries and your Ronald
McDonald Wonderbra, siliconed easy access.

As you beg for the password, remember that I
Told you so: Freedom is a state of mind, and
You're "the man," so who really gives
A shit whether Luck is a lady, or not.

(Copyright 1995 K. A. Kearney)

Becky's poem from a possible bipolar II.

Futility

How long have I been here?
I've lost track of time.
Each day just like those before:
Roll that boulder up the hill
Only to see it come crashing back down.
A perpetual cycle of ups and downs,
my eternal punishment.

One day,
I'll just let it roll
all the way down.
While I stay up here,
never to complete
the futile cycle again. 

Barry's poem for Laura

Sometimes words from another's experience
strike common chords in me,
resonating in the hollow reaches of my soul
as they gather form and understanding
from the commonality of all wretched suffering.

I never know quite what to say,
knowing words to be so poor a balm
for soothing pain not born of words,
or those of that more common fair
of LIfe's routine disappointments.

For no clever words or heartfelt reassurances
can put to rest these dark demons of the soul,
which move like shadows, eclipsing light,
absent logic of cause or nobility of purpose.
Just stupid, pointless abject suffering,
from which words offer little succor.

But still you write.
And yet I answer.
In a strange dance,
undertaken with uncertain purpose,
and moving toward an undefined aim.
You speak,
I listen.
To meet what need?
To find what answer?
I'm not sure that I know.

Perhaps it is just the simple human yearning
to give sorrow words,
and to have those words acknowledged.
Merely to know,
that in that dark and private world
of personal despair,
that someone else on the outside,
is aware,
and even if suffering is unrelieved,
it has, at least, not gone unnoticed.
As futile perhaps, as the reaching grasp
of arms stretched through consertina wire,
clinging to that contact of human flesh on the other side,
some solace taken from the knowledge,
that our situation is understood,
and that we are not forgotten.

This one is by our own BiPolar Bear.

People Who Don't

If you experience fright, strange visions, or voices,
if you see funny things, or hear weird noises,
if you have mood swings, and you don't know what to do,
you're in good company, 'cause you're a 'People Who'.
 
Now 'People Who' are different; (thank god we aren't the same)
as the so-called 'normal' people, who ought to share the blame
for nasty social stigmas, and saying we're unstable.
They don't treat us as equals, they sweep us under the table.

If they'd treat us like we're people, they'd make a good impression.
Instead, they say "snap out of it" when we're in a depression.
They say they'll fix our health care, but I bet you they won't.
If we are 'People Who', then they are 'People Who Don't'.

People who don't get it.
  People who don't try.
    People who don't understand.
      People who don't cry.

Not for us they don't, at least. To them our pain's not real.
Hey, my brain's a little broken, but I still know how to feel!! 
They might find out we're capable, and don't need too much tending,
if they wouldn't judge and pity us, and be so condescending.

This verse is for you normal folks, you People Who Don't,
'cause things will be much happier, if you just won't:
observe our depression, and then tell us that we're lazy,
or notice that we're manic, and inform us that we're crazy.

Don't ask me if I took my meds, or if I know the dose,
and DON'T TAKE PSYCH 101, THEN TRY TO DIAGNOSE!
Accept us as we are, or stay the hell away.
I believe that is all that I intended to say.

(C) Copyright, April, 1995 L. Scott Milliken

bob piasecki
"at lisa (cukie)'s request, here is my first poem:"

I.  every day i make my fool's journey.
always i believe that i will enter into
the luscious garden which my desires defend.
i look past the shattered souls who lie
on either side of the walkway.
for i, of all people, surely deserve that which i seek.
i have journeyed so far, sacrificed so much.
II.  my desires call to me with beautiful voices
i run to them, oblivious to the daggers they hold.
they need not move. i impale myself.
as i stumble backward, i ask why they stabbed me.
they say, "you attacked yourself. we just stood here."
again and again i thrust forward. again and again i am pierced.
finally, defeated, i crawl away, sobbing.          

Ed Arnold. Also visit Ed's home page.
"A poem I wrote with Johanna in mind, several years back:"

Eyes of God/To Johanna

With Thanks to Sean

Your mute voice
speaks to me through anoxia,
soul not extinguished,
just hidden
in shattered brain,
in curling, clutching arms
and twitching legs.

I cry and you respond
in small child's pout.
I laugh and you laugh,
the laugh of one wise
beyond her years,
beyond bitterness of
unrightable wrongs,
a laugh of simplicity.

Through the trail
of 10,000 tears
have I been your brain,
your hands,
your fingers,
your legs,
your feet.
To try without hope
but never yield
to hopelessness.

I have seen God
in your smile,
your laugh, your eyes.

Beautiful eyes
sparkle in pleasure
of great achievement
small only to those
who cannot see
your whispering eyes,
rekindle excitement
I had forgotten.
Eyes speaking to me
of hands that
will never write,
of arms that cannot hug,
of lips that cannot kiss,
of the lover that
cannot be.
Eyes speaking of wisdom
to accept what is,
what will be.

The eyes of God,
unspeakable and true,
beyond tyranny of mortal religion.
In them I see a thunderous love
that is all I need,
for they speak to me
of the need of others.

jason

mummy's watch

when have i seen oil curled
on white packed marbles, under marble worlds
whipering each day's chance for rain each
hour in public? green knots vested to hold
an hourglass's guts, how much has blown
through you since last night's armageddon? let me
be the statue root in a dune grazing away
from kelp washed new by indifferent
waves to be discovered by a chisel - god, bury me
in salt to be uncovered like a fetus; i feel so old
when oil rots in open sight of heat

An haiku by Sister Leslie