33. DIRT - Ode to a therapist

I feel confined sitting in your office

sitting in your world confines me like a cage

I want to pace back and forth

the lion roaring its rage and hurt

the bats on the window are a hallucination The Bitches put in my mind

they are trying to frighten me into acting insane

so I try to keep as calm as I can

even when the big one sits on my head and tries to claw off the top of my head

to get at my brain

I cannot sit still as I write this on paper

as I jiggle my feet like CF

squirming inside like a worm

it eats at me and I have to put out what’s inside

because it’s stuck inside and can’t get out

the true Madness is not inside me here

but outside me here in this outside world

I want to get away from it

to things more real alive awake

full full full of energy and voice rawness we all hold back from

I know that The Bitches have done this

this is the hold I talk about they have on us

never in my life have I had such a single purpose

but it is at odds with the rest of the world

I know the big bat is trying to steal what shrivelled tissue I have

and leave only an emptiness inside me

but I am not cold crazy yet

I will go out to the darker soul

I know you don’t know how to help us - me

because you don’t say anything

I know you can’t see

and I can’t let you see everything that is there

for fear you will surely grab us and put us away

the bats come back again and again

blocking out the sun

screaming and clawing at the window to get in

but I will ignore them and pretend they are not there

for if no one else can see them

then I must not see them either and make them gone

my head is dirt filled with black black earth dirt that I wish to throw at you

but already I see the look of revulsion on your face and your fear of my badness

I am bad locked in the closet badness and you should lock me in there

take away the key

let me sit in the dark and pay for my deeds of dirt

if my skin is blue then yours is black from handling my dirt

you must wash your hands after every session with me

like Dougie did when he touched Ariel there

you should have the same smug look on your face too

that you saw my dirt

you left me exposed

in your hands

your power

not mine

all night I saw the Bat Queen sitting in your chair

in her black cloak

big cloak

spread wide all around her

her face her skin is blue

with the blue of electric blood blue

and wrinkled pulled in on itself till her eyes squeeze shut

her hair white and sticking out

a smile on her face

pleased with my agony

she has taken you away from me

made you disappear and gone

I know you trade places with the Bat Queen

I know you smugly work with her

and you purposefully mix me up and taunt me and tease me to no end

you constantly manipulate me and watch me squirm under the guise of your help

I know who you are yet cannot name the thing that you are

you are just like all the other adults yet you would deny given half a chance

you caused me to fragment like this

you threw your hand inside and the glass ball splintered

sending shards of glass every which way

thank god you ended up having some of the pieces embedded in your skin making you bleed

the rest travelling throughout my body making me bleed

inward

then seeping out through all of my pores

I know who you are yet cannot name the thing that you are

you think I am already crazy

but your quandary hides the fact

hides the fear that you see slowly deteriorating is mine

I am possessed by a mania

possessed by a maniac

possessed by something not mine

yet spun off from my own veins

our superficial cutting has gone deeper now

to an insidious jackhammer drilling up holes inside me

insidious inside us

you want to integrate my split off parts

full well knowing that everyone including me will disappear then

for I am only a black hole sucking in everything to a vacuum and nothingness

you want the others to go into that black hole that is me so they too will disappear

my friends bandy about the label of schizophrenia

even though I have told them I am disordered and disarrayed

not crazy

but they who have known me truly

think I am going crazy

and I’m beginning to believe it

I can see down the road to visions and beliefs that are not of this world

I know I climb deeper and deeper inside where you can’t reach me

because you will put your hand inside me anyway and take whatever you want

you will feed on me like a bird of prey

heron that you are

of precise movement and cautious and slow but exacting

when it comes to catching the fish that I am

in swimming the river away from you

but I am not cold crazy yet

I see you need to take control because I am losing it

you have to stop these forces in me that have incubated for 38 years now

I already do as much as I can

now you must be able to take control of me

for I am holding onto the reins as much as I can

but these wild horses are just too wild for me

I don’t understand this therapy business with you

to talk to you for two hours a week

to tell you what this mind is making

and then we try to fix it?

I don’t understand who I am to you

who you are to me.

so you work with the Bat Queen and The Bitches and Lucifer himself

to pry into my head

I’m supposed to have a choice

but this choice business is full of more illusions than I could ever produce

you work with them – I know

but you don’t

you don’t see the pawn you are in their game

you don’t even realize that the Bat Queen removes you from your chair

from time to time

no one notices when they are swept off their feet

so Tir’s Madness has a hold on me

Razor Man moves to direct me

The Bitches and Lucifer will their power over me

to control my thinking and direct it their way

they all have the reins on me

lassoed me into thinking

and now I am a wild horse tied down

a misfit

according to the rules of this physical world

I must take a name and number

I must play the game

And the rules are so hard and fast that I am labelled –

“ill”

“disordered”

“crazy”

you are trying to fit me back into the harness

I always know what I don’t want

but the possibilities of what I do want are endless

I always know what I don’t want

but I never know what I do want

I saw a huge black bird on the street yesterday

the size of a small dog

but when I looked again it was only a sign

I walked into my bedroom and saw a child

curled up on the ground

I looked again and it was only a pile of stuff on the floor

I see shadows behind me as I walk

shadows following my shadow

but I turn around and no one is there

I am only a silhouette beneath the shadows of their feet

when my name is spoken

when I hear it in my head

I don’t know who it is

it does not conjure up anything but emptiness

I can’t stop thinking now how untouchable you are

which reminds me of how little I was touched by my mother

how often I was by my father

you always reserve any emotions you have about me

keeping a safe distance

I can’t assume anything with you

yet that’s all I have to go on

you keep your safe clinical neutral objective distance

but who are you keeping safe?

you’re so Freudian

I am waiting to see you make a Freudian slip

but I am not cold crazy yet