I’m on vacation now…
Don’t think I’ll be on here much; want to do some day trips, head off for an overnight or two, and figure there won’t be much to say, other than this: I need this break more than any in a long, long time.
Have fun, y’all. Hit me via e-mail if you must.
I just wanted to say, before I head off on vacation and disappear from here for a bit (not expecting to check in every day, is all I mean by that), is that for me, the worst part of being mentally ill is not so much what it does to me, but what it has done to those I love — whether it be the vagaries of my moods when I’m not in control, or the fear that I have of the motivations behind my actions when I AM under control.
I second guess every motive, every move; I worry myself and those around me with my constant fears.
I am so sorry this happens, over and over again.
I am born sorry.
RAC Rachel McKibbens lowhumcrush blew the socks off the Providence crowd tonight. She got a standing ovation from the crowd.
I confess it — I’m not a huge fan of the Providence scene. Very young and very much a “slamvoice” scene. Fun night though, with Rachel (and Holdie!) and ocvictor and javabill and cheesy_goodness and badgary and androidlustre and, of course, myainsel.
Whew. That’s a lot of tags.
I’m headed to bed now…the meds are doing me in, which is why I didn’t stay for the slam itself.
The new Zero Point Zero column’s set to be up on gotpoetry in the AM — an exploration of the distance between truth and fact in poetry; a reprint of an older column with some notes added.
Just for the record — I’m ok, just busy.
Thanks for your concern. I’m safe, working on staying busy; plan on going to see lowhumcrush tonight if I’m not too tired when I get home.
I disallowed comments on the last post because I didn’t feel like dealing with people’s questions concerning my safety — sorry if it alarmed anyone; I can see how it would, so you have my apologies.
I will be fine, eventually — promise. I will it give it the time needed to work it out.
A phone call this afternoon to my meds manager got me a return to the higher dosages I was on before we started experimenting with them, and an appointment for consultation May 7, with phone check ins before that.
In addition, my therapist and I are back on a safety agreement. (For those of you unfamiliar with the term…yeah, it means what it sounds like it means.)
Dammit.
There’s good news and bad news.
Let’s do the bad news first, so we all have something to look forward to, shall we?
Based on recent events, issues, and medical indications, the consensus is that the new round of medications is probably not working, in that the therapeutic dosage (what stops the bipolar cycling) appears to be too high to allow me to function properly through the resultant side effects, while a reduced dosage is not helping me get over.
This means we’re probably looking at an outright medication change in the near future.
This means, once again, that I’m getting worse. And my therapist refused to say otherwise this morning.
The good news:
I’ve been reading through the livejournals of my friends just now, as a break from a Spreadsheet From Hell, and I have come to the definite conclusion that I am lucky to know you all.
Too much talent/caring/compassion/humor/righteous anger to be adequately described.
Honestly? I am humbled by you all.
Thanks for having been here.
to effectively deal with work Tuesday.
Good thing it’s a light day.
I need to focus more on love, spirituality, and poetry right now.
I’ve been asked by two dear friends to be a part of their wedding at the end of May (barring any tragic and foolish moves by the Mass Governor on same sex marriage, grrr…) and am writing a poem as part of the ceremony…it’s making me think about this stuff in a new light.
More in the AM.
Then again, when has that ever stopped us?
http://www.thestreet.com/markets/meredithderby/10154677.html
I skipped Joe Fusco at the Asylum tonight because I was just not feeling up to it. Feeling very medicated, very sedated.
I hate my absence from things.
I have ideas about what to say about a lot of stuff in my life, but I can’t seem to put words around it. Sad excuse for a poet, eh?
It’s like the whole world seems suffused with a sweet pain these days — a feeling of the last days, so live them well.
More tomorrow, when I’m coherent. Sorry for this.
Three things I am wearing right now
1 – t shirt
2 – shorts
3 – silver earring
Three things on my desk
1 – WWII Navy fighting knife (I was researching its value)
2 – Nunzilla
3 – wireless router
Three things I want to do before I die
1 – Go back to Europe
2 – move to NYC
3 – get off medications (fat chance)
Three ways to describe my personality
1 – scattered
2 – reclusive
3 – arrogant
Three bad things about my personality
1 – easily angered
2 – I keep anger bottled up
3 – don’t deal well with conflict
Three good things about my personality
1 – creative
2 – funny
3 – down deep, caring
Parts of my heritage
1 – Mescalero Apache
2 – Italian
3 – Massachusetts
Three places I want to go to
1 – West Africa
2 – Russia
3 – San Francisco
Three nicknames I had/have
1 – Tony
2 – Orbit
3 – Downtown
Three screen names I had/have
1 – chyslerpoet
2 – chrysler77
3 – penitente
Three people I miss
1 – Julie
2 – Terry
3 – Tara
gotpoetry.com is finally back up, if not entirely without hiccups.
Have a good night, y’all.
imsonshyne mentioned in a recent post the practice of cobbling several poems together into one. “Amalgamated Poetry” — sounds like a multinational concern, eh? But I digress.
We’ve all done this from time to time, but I decided to try something different.
I thought it was an interesting idea to attack my two latest pieces from a fresh angle by simply staggering the stanzas into each other to make a single new “poem”, then editing them into a true new poem with an independent meaning.
I like what I got better than the original versions of either of the other two poems…
Still a draft, but thoughts are welcome.
Braid
The red flat braid
in the pale dust around her head
shakes me whenever
I look at her picture.
She lies on the white road.
She could be asleep, but I know
she isn’t asleep, and I teeter
between the end
of the backward rock of a chair
and the start of the arc of its backward fall
whenever I look
at the picture.
Monday morning
before the light wakes up,
when my sense is bridging the space between
nothing and something – that’s
the only time now I can imagine her smile.
(I know she isn’t asleep. I know I’m
not asleep.) I spin
whenever I look
at the picture where she lies on the
white road, not sleeping,
eyes closed and dusted white, with
the bloodbraids around her head resting
snaky in the dust.
She could have been any young girl anywhere. (But
young girls don’t sleep in the road. ) This is the picture of her
unique, unnamed,
unavoidable, sleeping in the white road’s dust
because
that’s where the mine
bullet bomb RPG caught
her.
It takes a not-inconsiderable patience I do not have
to live in a wholly incomplete way
in this place where we can wake up on a Monday
and have coffee and arguments while
she lies in her bloodbraids there.
I’m spinning around her picture —
the long streaks on my cheeks
writing vapor trails on my skin. I’m safe enough, I guess;
the jets above me
drop nothing on their way into Logan,
and the roads here are black and wet.
Dark Matter 