Archive for ‘mental illness’

August 4, 2015

enter title here

by jhon baker

morning when the slow malaise creeps in. morning when the pain rings true. morning when the noise turns on. morning when the bitter pill is swallowed. morning when the alarms sound that it is the first Tuesday. morning when air brakes are checked and wind is blown. morning when garbage men/women make their rounds collecting our debris and the cast-offs of a rich life. morning when I pretend to understand you. morning when I don’t understand anything. morning when bombs are dropped, lives are lost and America’s most wanted are captured. The warrant always arrives in the morning. morning when the phone rings and I have to take action. morning when the birds get their breakfast and I eat cheerios with blueberries. stab it in the arm with a number two pencil.

the expression changes.

I’m acclimating to this change of lifestyle rather well and have not gone out to brazenly alter my blood sugars/insulin balance/imbalance.

the interviewer brings up black socks and polish-able shoes twice and I tell him that my socks don’t match. I’ve also already told him that I want his job and that I didn’t think it would be that difficult to obtain. but still the interview goes well and I plan on turning down the position if and when it is offered.

I drink coffee with abandon and no care for the lining of my stomach. the phone rings twice in the morning and I wonder where I’ve gone wrong.

 

July 16, 2015

this morning came around seven and then again around eight-fifteen.

by jhon baker

I woke this morning to medications and everything being left of center by about six inches. As the day progressed it shifted to about eight inches right of center never actually being center. This is the way of it lately – yesterday spent most of the day right of center except my sons room which was three inches left. The day before that was mostly malaise covered and fuzzy. I contemplate that my medications are no longer correct for my diagnosis but wonder if maybe my diagnosis is more severe then we previously thought. Then again the world may actually be left or right as I awake and descend throughout the day but today it ends with my motorcycle no longer being mine and no longer in the garage. now in there are a mass of broken things and unfinished projects that I may or may not be smart enough to complete without assistance.

I don’t write here often because like this post clearly defines – I have very little to say that isn’t about lonely carpet tufts and apples growing on certain trees far away from here. I could write about my squeezing ceiling fan, blue curtains covering the slider in my room but that seems passe right now. And I am drinking coffee from my unbroken other favorite Vincent coffee mug. Sunflowers. Wheat field with crows was my favorite but now it is broken.

I’ve learned that some pain medications can deepen psychosis and as a result I’ve been taken off of them and am left with only two meds to control my pain and those don’t seem to be working as well lately. I’m sleeping a lot during the day to try and control pain. it works to a certain extent and offers me usual nightmares and vivid nighttimedreaming – I am ill from the side affects of something and find my appetite reduces to normalish levels but still sickened in the stomach with no abatement.

every time I turn around there is no-one there – only carpet tufts in some joyful crushed harmony.

June 13, 2015

Beneath this grumpy heart

by jhon baker

I would write more but I have little to say and what I do I say to my wife and child.

although I’ve purchased a new guitar I am not playing it due to the pain from old injuries.

Hot coffee on a hot day needs to be double fisted with iced soda or water.

Listening to Muddy Waters while my wife mows the lawn and whacks the weeds with concentration and aggression.

Happiness is a strange notion.

My neighbor is crazy in a different way than I am crazy – she is a lunatic howling at the moon while I am simply mentally abberated and unstable on the best days.

I am selling my motorcycle and have turned down offers I shouldn’t have and been offered some pretty ridiculous trades or amounts.

“I’ve got a black cat bone,

I’ve got a mojo too.

I’ve got a John the Conqueroo,

I’ve got to mess with you…”

 

These are two separate poems…

 

I love you

and that may be all

shared coffee over old television shows

and newer series watched in minute marathons

 

I have flowers dying on the kitchen table

in yellow hues turning brown

in whites turning yellow

– Hoc Scripsi

 

May 10, 2014

Sunny day, Saturday, the day before Mother’s day

by jhon baker

And I don’t feel like posting but think I should.

Sitting on the back porch and enjoying coffee – or what of it we can (see previous post) – smoking and contemplating the universe at last. Too much brain activity for such a beautiful day.

What looks to be six week old kittens peek their heads out from under the porch so we feed them and wait for them to brave the unknown world that is our backyard. An admittedly scary place – the world, including the backyard.

I think of David Ignatow – “The world is so difficult to give up” – I have maybe a half dozen poems memorized and that is almost another – it’s the second line I have trouble with and sometimes in the middle I remember a different poem and start that one instead. I used to have Poe’s “The Raven” committed to memory but now all I hold onto is the first verse. Shame, really. No-one seems to memorize poetry anymore. I’ve committed none of my own to memory and I ought.

the world is so difficult to give up

tied to it by small things

my eyes noting movement

color and form

I am watching, unable to leave

for something is happening so I stand

in a shower of rain or under a hot sun

worn out

with looking

– David Ignatow

the line breaks are wrong, I know and I cannot remember where they go – but this is a close approximation.The world is difficult to give up, but we must. The party will indeed go on without us and in this we must find comfort.

I smoke again and contemplate something closer – more tangible than the universe – my mind isn’t great enough to realize the many stars and the shear insignificance of our own. Earth, the only planet in our Solar system not named after one God or another, our planet is named after it’s dirt. I contemplate its constant survivor, its hero – the tardigrade.