Mary-Jane?

What became of Mary-Jane?

She took drugs to ease the pain

But it wasn’t the drugs

That damaged her brain

It was life

That drove her insane

BY

Louise M Hart

Coventry Blood, Brummy Heart

Coventry blood, Brummy heart
You have made me
There is no one on earth who can save me
And no State machine will enslave me

The train brought me here
Poetry and beer
Made me freer
Birmingham you are as queer
As the poem I once wrote

About all the girls I have never loved

Before…

When I was a childe
I walked as a childe
(Harold died for Maude
I live to die)
Around the City Centre
The bright lights called me

The shops, the shops, the shops
Enticed me through their doors
Adorning fleshy architecture
I tried not to bore
With my prosaic presence
Brummy women and men
Who were so much prettier
Their conversation far wittier
Than her indoors, aka, Cov(en)tary

Coventry blood, Brummy heart
You have untamed me
But no one can persuade me
That I am amazing

So I amazed me
And read my bloody awful poetry
In pubs and cafes for free
Whilst the audiences shouted for Jasmine Gardosi

Elegy to my Mother

By

Louise M. Hart

Your body betrays you

It is a ghost of its former self

A crumpled hand

Caresses a toiled brow

 

Not long now

Not long now

 

But, you are a warrior

The bearer of two

You have watched men

Come and go

 

Infants and oafs, in skin

Thinner than the curve of your lips

Narrower and shallower lives

Than the hips that bore me well

 

Mother, I love you so

 

I am joyous in your presence

I laugh and cry in equal measures

In bursts of simultaneous ebbs and flows of emotion

That sooth and reveal how I feel about you

 

You fill my days with thoughts

Rich and deep

Invade my dreams

Whilst in the froes of sleep

 

Mother, you made me

So, now, I shall make you

Immortal

In words that rhyme eternal, wondrous and true

 

I’m not Paranoid, I just don’t Trust anyone

By Louise M. Hart

Don’t look at me

Don’t-look-at-me

Does my face threaten your subjectivity

Or put you off your cup of tea?

I took my tablets today

So now I’m symptom free

What do you see…

When you meet my glare?

I pull out my hair

And worry that you can see my scaly skin

Through the tear

In my jeans or smell my underwear

I pretend not to care

But I am crucified inside

Like Jesus Christ mounted on a cross of mind

After forty days and forty nights in the wilderness

Of my turbulent mental flight

Like squabbling lovers my thoughts scream and shout

I try to quieten them

In case you can hear

But you laugh in fear

Don’t look at me

Don’t-look-at-me

I look at you

And suddenly remember that you are only three

For Iain Duncan Smith, Ode to the Death of Another Benefit Scrounger

I read the news, today

Glasgow writer killed

By the hand

That did not feed him

A suicide statistic

Soon to be forgotten

Like the books

He laboured hard to write

Which no one cares to read

 

And sitting outside Wetherspoons

Alongside my companionable

Cigarettes and alcohol

I contemplate

The minister of The State

Who one day

Will withdraw

My disability living allowance

Because I can crawl

More than 2 metres

And write

Bloody awful poetry

 

I am the common word

More Smith

Than Plath

Pretentious enough

To be proud

To be working class

 

And, suddenly, life seems…

…like perpetual misery

And I become the future statistic

I do not want to be

 

Meanwhile…

Occupying his inflaming

Twin towers of ivory

Plated over-privilege

And steely mouthed

Prosthetic political power

The star player

In Cameron’s corrupted cabinet

Of party members

Porn players, all

And secretarial back (side)

Slappers

A stabber

Of the foulest form

Opens his whoring mouth

And laughs

 

Like Lucifer on crack

His Machiavellian throat

Issues sound that even Tony

Bastard bliar, bliar

After dinner speaker tones for hire

Cannot rival

 

Like a converse Jon Snow

Turned to Tory slush

He is the illegitimate

Legitimate product

Of an ideological game

Of thrones

And human slaughter

 

United Kingdom

Lock up your sick and disabled

Sons and daughters

Iain Duncan Smith

Is on the hunt

Pheasant is so last season’s

Prey

New labour’s elected

Sunday lunch

 

Human flesh

Is more appetising

These post-imperialistic

McSalad and fries days

 

With I.D.S. on my mind

I board the bus home

Grateful to still have money

In my pocket

And no student payback loan

 

But when I arrive home

I open the door

And staring back at me

From a crimson mat

Is a letter

Marked

Department of Work and Pensions

 

I take out a blade

And with a frenzied slash

The sullied brown envelop

Bleeds ink

Red as the gash

Adorning my wrist

 

I tear myself to pieces

Then I light a cigarette

Between

Slices

Of my orange peel fingers tips

 

Ode to the death of another

Benefit scrounger

Homage to the demise

Of a seated disco dancer

And an inverted snob

DO PARANOID ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC DICKS?

Do Paranoid Androids Dream of Electric Dicks?

By

Louise M. Hart

A week ago…

 

I don’t know what I do

Or don’t think

My thoughts are peasants

Revolting

In a hollow pit of consciousness

Guarded

By agents of truth

 

My eyes burn like cigarettes

Concealing my tears

Like smokescreens

Before ideas

Ripped

From indiscrete tongues

 

My pain is as bespoken

As my heart

Bleeding shamefully

Into a world of words

That should remain

Unspoken

And hidden

Like the existence

Of alternate universes

 

My big mouth

Strikes

Again

And like Morrissey

On an amphetamine trip

To writer’s hell

Reading reviews of his latest book

I am swallowed by solid earth

And realise that I am still ill

 

The hospital is no longer

A movie trailer

Blade Runner is terminated

Like reels of my celestial self

Today the Sound of Melancholia

And music

Is screened throughout

My self-projected realm

 

One day, “I’ll be back”

In my delusory spacecraft

Gathering crazy diamonds

Of insight

Beneath my silly poet’s hat

 

But for now…

Whiskers on kittens

Scratch

Until I hurt

So much

I laugh

 

Never fear pain. Claim it and then, let go. Write a poem, paint a picture. Creativity sooths the soul and changes the world.

 

And the Words Go On

And the Words Go On

By

Louise M. Hart

Welcome to my relapse

It takes the form of a serpent

Vomiting vowels and consonants

From a mouth it does not trust

Which sizzle in its throat

Like acid from a burning gut

Words that should be cast out

Like Eve’s rotten apple

To vanish into trampled earth

Like vile obstructive dust

 

I cough up narratives like phlegm

My toxic tongue vibrates with boredom

Licking gasping cracks

Where hearts should lie

A rimming echo of the mind

That cannot control it

Servant to thought’s self-destructive thrusts

 

Why does my mind beckon torment?

When all around there are none

Torment is my only friend

Constant companion in all weathers

For whilst fairer faces look away

Afraid that perceiving might lead to wrinkles

Subjectivity must always have its say

 

Thus, I shall never again rent my soul

It is better to exist alone

Than be every woman to no one every day

 

There is a Light that will never come on

By

Louise M. Hart

 

The lights are on

But there’s no one home

He stares into deep mid air

And nobody would guess

That his mind contains

More colour and depth

Than the pint of beer

His tight lips slowly sip

In honour of the woman

He did not know

 

He cannot even remember

When he was diagnosed

Or how many times

He has been hospitalised

His eyes conceal the vibrancy

Of his near death urgency

And are blank with certainty

That life on earth

Is bloody hell

 

Emotional emptiness

Is his real disease

Not paranoid schizophrenia

He is the shadow

Of the former selves

He wishes that he had never been

 

If you should see him

Buried in the darkness

Of a Glasgow bar

Please say, “Hello”

He needs a friend

For he let this one go

 

Taking back the Power

I am every colour of the rainbow and many shades in between. I own no label, no label owns me. A diagnostic homo Sapien, my bipolar is not me. I am not disabled, though my condition can be disabling. The rollercoaster is a metaphor I narrate in the blank verse of my behaviour, the discourse of my thought’s disorder and my textual laughs and screams. Bipolar is a creative sickness. Psychiatry is a symptom of an intellectual disease

Moods

If my psychosis was a colour
It would be purple.

Screaming violet dreams of pain and pleasure
Obscene
Streams of consciousness
That never
Surface beyond my mind.
How I treasure
My own emotional extremes.

Until I am brought down by
Brown and green
Moods of the lower order
Servants of disordered
Rationality and boredom.

Joy and misery define life
But purple defines me.