New website!

3:32 PM 0 Comments

I have a professional looking website now! Same content, but new design and a more professional look.

www.icecreamandhyperbole.com

Olympic Sunday Morning

3:59 PM Poetry 0 Comments

My brain is foggy like an Olympic Sunday morning
The clouds gently hugging the mountainside
A cool breeze tickling my skin
and raising the hair on my arms
A waterfall asserts its strength nearby
filling my ears with the faint hum of running water
When I sit down to write, my hands forget the motions
and all thought leaves my mind
How do I write about the loneliness in my spine?
Or the grief that fills me up like wet concrete
molding itself to fit around me
making every motion a challenge?
Nobody wants to hear how difficult it is just to get out of bed
Or the strength I need to find just to open the front door

My therapist gives me advice on how to be in the moment
Mindfulness - the art of being completely in the present
She teaches me skills to help combat the wolves
She tells me to distract myself
Improve the moment
She doesn't say what to do if the moment is what scares me
She doesn't say what to do if everything I do
reduces my moments to ashes
She doesn't say what to do if every distraction
is worse than the moment
She doesn't say what to do if the darkness lives in my bones
She doesn't say because there is nothing else to say

My doctor tells me to take these pills
To bathe my brain in chemicals
Just to see what happens
This one causes rashes, this one causes diarrhea
This one lowers your sex drive and this one can increase suicidal thoughts
Lithium, Depakote, Klonapin, Xanax, Celexa, Prozac, Zoloft, Abilify
Major Depressive Disorder, Bipolar II, Borderline Personality Disorder, PTSD
No one knows what to call the sadness behind my eyes
They can only target my behaviors
As I search for a way to stay alive
This isn't living
Its survival.

Everything you do in life will be meaningless
a water lilly on the face of a raging river
But what matters is that you do it
Because its all you have to do
Your choices give meaning to your life
And allow you to leap over the gaping chasm of nothingness
in which lies the meaning of life and death
A black hole that will suck you in if you let it
There is a storm coming
There will always be a storm coming
Its up to you to decide if you want to cower inside
Or say "to hell with it" and walk proudly through the rain
and when you do
I will be there with you
tears mixing with the rain
holding out my hand
begging you to walk beside me

Number One - An Internal Monologue

3:29 PM Poetry 0 Comments

It's your only weapon
to combat the wolves in your brain
that leave tally marks across your skin,
upwards until you die
always counting like a child
learning to count for the first time. 
One potato, two potato, three potato four
Take these pill, cut vertically and lie down on the floor
You loved the wording on the side of the bottle
FATAL IF SWALLOWED
So final, so secure in itself
You knew what you wanted and
you knew how to get it.
Manipulation becomes you.
She drove here for you
she bought the toilet bowl cleaner for you
she drove out of state for you
Fire doesn't begin to describe
the searing in your throat
or the fear in hers.
You lie down to get some rest
the thoughts leaving your brain
like a tree on a blissful autumn afternoon.
Do you feel the lethargy?
That is your body beginning to shut down.
You feel the nausea?
That is the internal bleeding from
the hole in your stomach.
Feel the tingle in your limbs
starting with your hands and feet
and slowly crawling to your core?
You are dying.
They will say you lived a good life
that you were so troubled
that you had been depressed.
They will tear your mother apart
like cannon fodder to fuel the macabre game
that is human curiosity.
They will send condolences and have memorials
celebrating a past that never happened
and a future that never will.
They will mourn the idea of you
because that is the thing to do.