depression

MONDAY YEAR BY YEAR

The end of my week has arrived, but I am still battling the Monday blues.
It’s true what they say about loneliness, and how it can follow you, wearing your shoes.
I can’t seem to pick myself up when I’m down, and it’s dark in this tireless mind;
I long for direction, but my amputised purpose seems harder and harder to find.

I’m full with an emptiness and hungry for love but I’m drunk on a silent regret.
I’ve spiked my own drink and I drink to remember but I only forget to forget.
The cure I am missing is suddenly absent and only presents in my dreams;
I walk without frame for my burden is heavy and depression is bursting my seams

I’m sure that I’m noticed by people I pass but not one of them cares to converse.
If only they’d ask why I’m always alone, I would tell them I’m feeling my worst –
but I’d share that I’m patiently seeking intention, distraction, affection, and more,
although I’d not voice that I’m crying too much, and my self-love has gone out the door.

I’m poor in more ways that I care to admit, and bad habits have met me, revived –
my bank account dwindles from playing the slots but they numb me and keep me alive.
The scales are too honest, and I do not appreciate the numbers it flashes so cheaply:
it only declares what I fail to admit, but I continue the ritual weekly.

The fault is my own, and I own my mistakes, but, unwelcomed, they came without leaving.
The past has now gone but my present is filled with the memories I’m constantly grieving.
I did not expect to grow old in this life while still searching myself for more time;
it’s Monday forever for me, it appears, but at least I can say it is mine.

PERMISSION TO RISE

Am I brave enough yet to emerge
to escape the regret
to dismantle
forget
to demolish the surge of this
plundering ache
to curb and to conquer
and famish the quaking
– this suffering silence –
this violent breath taking

Am I whole enough yet
to prohibit the shaking
snaking my flesh with
its mandible gaping –
and I
an invertebrate
sensing
it
raking
its
claws
like it’s tilling a field in my pause.

– I AM –

I am soul enough, rousing to roar
but will this awareness
alone be the door to implore me to forfeit
renounce and withdraw from
this former attachment
to lapse while I stall
while in fragments
I catch myself falling
before
I submit to this whiplash of
“worth less” and war

mauling through self–harm
rejecting my core

Perhaps in my rapture my courage will capture
the thrill of detaching
unlatching
resolving
forgiving myself for my lack of evolving
for dressing tornadoes I’d wade in
– dissolving –
while anchored by nought but
the grief I was holding
by swallowing pain
– almost framing each frame –
as the slower the memories
the faster they came and the longer they’d last
it would tighten their hold
and the closer they’d weave they would blindfold
and frighten
and once I was frozen and broken
– eyes widened –
they’d leave

Perhaps fate will gift me a shift
from my history to bask in my victory
and mask my past injuries
and race to new mysteries
and questions, unanswered
and answers, un–asked
but desperately fancied
as I take on this task to have finally been caste
to have grown from my hate
to have flown past a place
where my purpose was faceless
to race to a moment I have hungered to taste
in a time I had dreamt of
instead of erased –

to a piece of the peace I deserve
and a truth to embrace

Will the aching forsake me at last
and the healing re–take me
its journey as vast
as the path it will trace to re–shape me
I ask
and will it profess to regress to
a time I could heave less
bereaved less
and
survive long enough to emerge
at my boldest and best?

The answer is ‘yes’

VACANCY

i am being crushed
by the weight
of your absence
and if it does not lift
i may never
stand again

SEIZED

I
am at
II
a complete loss
III
to understand the
IV
inner workings of your mind;
V
the cogs that turn to
VI
wind your clock
VII
have seized, and
VIII
the only hands
IX
that pass time now
X
are mine
XI
alone
XII

POSTERIOR SUFFERANCE

This night carries me,
blinded,
in the back pocket
of dirty minds and
shabby dreams where I,
flat, and molded,
press against this folded denim,
warm and splayed with
arms outstretched,
longing,
for another day, but

what if I turn my head
to over-peek the top
of these fraying jeans instead,
grasping threads
to keep me still within its seams
– will the exhilaration
of watching where I’ve
just this moment been
allow me inspiration
– asleep –
– awake –
to boldly look,
clinging to the back end of
these thoughts that write me,
penned in ink:
a pre-determined book?

Perhaps I should just
– winded –
forward face,
ignoring the sour stench
of this unmoving,
walking,
waking race,
stalking through the darkness
in a covered veil
at quiet pace,
destabilising future steps,
accepting this acquired taste,
processing my obsessive needs
and bathing clean my crumpled face
in chafing tears that fear progression,
awash, alone,
in one more nightly session.

Devoid of light,
hear, ye, the theme:
this narrow, stunted, damned depression,
the fabric of a self made bed –
this
bottomless pit without expression
unstitching dreams of fortune
as I swelter, melting hope
again,
apathetic,
white of noise,
inside my broken head.