"I am a Loony": Poem

Here is the poem I mentioned in my previous post “Depression and Dreams”. I hope it stands alone but If read in conjunction with that posting it needs no further introduction.

It is called: -

In Good Company.

I am a loony from the bin
Society puts its rejects in.
You’ve read about me in the Sun or Mail,
Where the headline without fail,
Will warn you that you might be stabbed,
Or even have your children grabbed,
By me, or others of my kind,
Whom you will inevitably find,
Asleep in doorways, scrounging money,
To spend on booze or dogs with runny
Eyes, that we appear to keep,
Rendering our poverty obsolete,
They’d rather us you did not see,
My other loony friends and me
Claiming the life we live we choose
Our smelly clothes, our worn out shoes
Our confused speech, our confused minds
Fuelled by drugs we somehow find
Regardless of our lack of dosh
We’d clearly rather “trip” than nosh.

Winston Churchill, Lady Di
Hans Christian Andersen, and Charles Ives
Spencer Tracy, Kurt Cobain
Michelangelo and Mark Twain,
John Lennon, Vincent Van Gogh
Gustav Holst, Rachmaninoff,
Tennessee Williams, Graham Greene,
All people you might not have seen
If judged on their illness alone
By the editor of some tabloid tome.

I am a funny from the farm
I promise I wont do you harm
Some of us might, that is true
But statistically so might more of you
I’ve never robbed, I’ve never killed
Believe me, I am much too ill
Like many from the funny farm
It’s me, not you, who I might harm
And during times when I am well
You would not know, you could not tell
I’ve raised my children, stayed in work
Social responsibility I’ve not shirked
I work hard to avoid that bin
Society puts its rejects in
But this illness descends without warning
Fine at bedtime, nuts in the morning
If we frighten you, then you should see
Just how scared we are, my friends and me
And if at times we slur our speech
It’s drugs from the medics, not drugs from the streets.

Mary Shelley and John Keats
Virginia Woolf, Louis MacNiece
Ernest Hemmingway, Henrik Ibsen
Marilyn Monroe, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Charlie Parker, Anton Bruckner,
Sylvia Plath and Edward Elgar
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James,
All these and many other names,
Might not be known to you and me
If their madness alone the world did see.

I am a nut without a case
You’d never know it from my face
I’ve trained my countenance to hide
The torment that sometimes rages inside
If I seem ignorant when you ask
Please realise that the simplest task
Can seem immense at times like these
I’m standing, but I’m on my knees
It’s not your pity that I seek
Just understanding that this week
I might not be the man you know
I’ve lost me too, and now I’m so
Confused, bewildered, “off my head”
Contemplating being dead
The internal argument ensues
Could the loss of me be the making of you
While all that I ever achieved
Crumbles to nothing at times like these
And deep inside I’m forced to face
The truth. - I’m a nut without a case.

Charles Dickens, John Bunyan and George Fredrick Handel
Audrey Hepburn, Judy Garland and Gerard de Nerval,
Rossini, Tchaikovsky, Edgar Alan Poe,
Spike Milligan, Cole Porter and Victor Hugo
T.S Eliot, Brian Wilson, and Alfred Lord Tennyson
Charlie Mingus, Lord Byron and Emily Dickinson
Noel Coward, Samuel Johnson, and Monticelli
All shared the illness with people like me,
This world would be a less cultured place
If they’d hounded these humans out of the race.

I’m round the bend, I’m up the creek
Without a paddle in a boat that leaks.
A political pawn who lives with social rejection
Until the next general election
When headlines scream that folks like me
Are never safe, should not be free,
And if you weaken, are not sure
They’ll ask if you want us living next door
They’ll jumble several diagnosis
To arrive at a Jekyll and Hyde prognosis
To fuel the fear in folks like you
That you can never tell what we might do
You’ll have to search very hard to find
That Schizophrenia just means “confused mind”
That those with the fictional “split personality”
Are folks with depression, people like me
But the “split” in us is not “good” or “bad”
It is loss of control of what’s happy or sad
It means loss of our jobs, children, husbands and wives
It means loss of the love that we once had for life.

I am a loony from the bin
that society puts its rejects in.
Like many from the funny farm
It’s me, not you, who I might harm,
It’s not your pity that I seek,
Just understanding that this week
I might not be the man you know. . . . . . . but I’m in good company.

© Bri 2005 (with “names” from www.mixednuts.net).