Greetings, poetry people! I got behind and lost my mind because that shit happens, but now I'm back to share prompts with you and wax philosophical on this poetical day.
I created a two-verse Senryu using the following prompts.
The first Twofer Tuesday for this year's April PAD Challenge invites poets to create a sad poem and/or a happy poem. My poem was a bit of both because it honors a friend who is no longer of this world, but he still visits me in dreams. Believe that or don't. Any comments written with the intent of stirring the shit will be ignored.
The April PAD Challenge prompt integrated nice like stir fry and rice with the NaPoWriMo prompt, which asks poets to write a platonic love poem. I love my phantom pal very much, and it's always been a platonic kind of love. I'm his kid sister from another mother. When you learn that I'm 59 and he would be 77 if he were still here, that may sound kind of funny. I say there are some people who can make you feel young no matter how old you are, and if you have one of those people on your team, they're an MVP.
And now, on to Day 3.
Cactus Clem
Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors
"Hey Grover, I'm startin' a black metal band!"
Ghost Town Grover
Free use image from Clker Free Vector Images
"That's swell, Clem! What's it called?"
To understand more about why I think this is funny, read this.
This bit of humor isn't entirely original on my part. Someone once posted a photo of a pile of wood on Facebook stating it was going to be their new black metal band's name.
Now, how in the world did I get started down this path?
The first thing I saw when I got there was this image.
Image by Aimee Pong
The image rather reminded me of a black metal band logo. Combine that with the April PAD Challenge prompt, which asks participants to include a musical artist in their poem title, and my bad brain started working overtime.
It's serendipity, I suppose, that I'd recently gone down a black metal rabbit hole while doing a bit of research to try and get back into writing the stuff I really love rather than spending most of my creation time trying to generate the elusive social currency.
I'm not sure I managed to nail the surreal part. I decided to roll with a Haibun. It was speculative but not necessarily surreal. I dedicated it to this dude who used the stage name Dead during his brief life. He has been inspiring my work for a couple of decades now and still does.
Per Ohlin
16 January 1969 - 8 April 1991
He was a talented and creative person, although deeply troubled. I prefer sharing this photo over those in which he's wearing his stage attire. Too much has been made of his image. There is, unfortunately, a notorious photo of the aftermath of his suicide that is still in circulation today. I will repeat what his bandmates from Morbid had to say about that.
No thanks to the distributors and buyers of the post-mortem pic. Fuck you.
I will add this.
Show some damn respect.
Ornery Owl Has Spoken in a Grim and Frostbitten Voice
Hello Poetry People! The second night of the sleep study went much more smoothly than the first. I didn't sleep as peacefully as this cat and I certainly didn't look as cute, but I was able to get a decent six hours of sleep interrupted only by my usual 4 AM foray to the bathroom and morning medication routine.
I have some suggestions in case any of you ever have the joy of doing a sleep study like the one I did.
The first night I was wearing a tank top and the monitor belt started cutting into my armpits. Last night I wore a light t-shirt and avoided that problem.
Be very careful with the cord leading from the monitor to the pulse oximeter. I accidentally knelt on the first one while getting into bed and it was a pain in the ass to reattach. I was very mindful of the cord to the pulse oximeter last night.
Unlike the heart monitor and the pulse oximeter, the cannula contains no specific electronics. There were two cannulas. The one I wore on the first night was extremely uncomfortable. The one I used last night was much less obtrusive. Had I known of the cannulas having the possibility of fitting differently, I would have tried both of them and used the one that fit comfortably on both nights.
Enough about the sleep study. Let's get to today's poetry prompts.
write a poem in which you describe something with a hard-boiled simile.
The poem begins with the line "As lonely as a lost world buried by time and dust." I stole the "buried by time and dust" bit from the song of the same name released by the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem. The lyrics were written by the late Per Yngve Ohlin, the Swedish vocalist who was Mayhem's frontman from 1988 to 1991. He committed suicide in 1991. His lyrics focused on depressive and occult subject matter.
The song appears on the band's Live in Leipzig album with Ohlin on vocals. It was recorded in November 1990 but not released until 1993. The song also appears on Mayhem's 1994 album De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas with Hungarian vocalist Atilla Csihar.
That's going to do it for now. I've got a lot to work to do today. As I always say, no rest for the wicked. I'm not ashamed to admit that I'll be glad when this year's April PAD Challenge/NaPoWriMo wraps.
Greetings Poetic types and welcome to the sixth day of the April PAD Challenge/NaPoWriMo for 2022. I've provided today's poetry soundtrack, including a link in case you can't see the embedded player.
I had a bout of stronger than usual depression yesterday. Today's poem, Pain in the Soul, discusses my tendency towards spring depression, something that very few people seem to understand even though statistically April is the cruelest month. More people commit suicide in April than during the winter holidays. Two days from now will be the thirty-first anniversary of the suicide of a very troubled and quite unforgettable person.
Write a variation of an acrostic poem. Rather than spelling out a word with the first letters of each line, write a poem that reproduces a phrase with the first words of each line.
I used my own Haiku, Spring Awakens, as the basis for the acrostic.
The results of the November PAD Chapbook Challenge are in. I didn't win and didn't expect to. I don't think my poetry is quite the host's cup of tea, but I'll keep creating chapbooks anyway, which I will later self-publish because I'm an asshole like that.
Days like this I wish I had someone I could pour out the grim and frostbitten contents of my cold black heart to, but I don't and I won't so there's fuck-all use of getting my hopes up for something that isn't going to happen. I know better these days.
I was previously unaware that Jane Reichhold (1937 - 2016) had committed suicide because the pain of her fibromyalgia had become unbearable. Please click the Fishy banner to find out more about Jane's story.
We will never learn how to reduce the rate of suicide if it is a stigmatized, taboo subject. If people are afraid or ashamed to discuss suicide ideation, then their struggles will remain internalized. The ways that suicide ideation and attempted suicide are currently handled are ineffective and the unthinking and unfeeling diatribe that the surviving family members of a person who committed suicide are subject to are simply shameful.
Any time a celebrity commits suicide, there's always someone sanctimoniously spouting about how "selfish" this person was, and I want to take them aside and shake them and shout: "Hello, you insensitive twit! Did it never occur to you in your moment of self-righteousness to realize that anyone listening to you could have a loved one who took their own life? How dare you be so thoughtless!"
When I was in high school, I had a friend whose brother had committed suicide when she was eight years old. She said that people would come up to her on the playground and tell her that her brother was in hell for what he'd done. I say there ought to be a special spit in hell reserved for mealy-mouthed marshmallows who make such unkind assertions.
I leave you now with this banner that I use as my Facebook avatar anytime a celebrity takes their own life because I just know that the ignorant spoutings are going to elevate at such times.
I'm not much for the whole "content warnings on everything" culture, but to avoid that blasted criticism, I will tell you that what I'm writing here is not going to be pretty, so if you feel like you might be upset by discussions of topics such as suicide and suicide ideation, you can give this post a miss.
I have an online friend whose name is Richard. Richard has autism. At one point, he wrote a post which said he hears people say all the time that they support people with autism and would never bully or hurt anyone who is autistic. He followed this up with the statement that a lot of these people are probably unaware of the times when they have been interacting with someone who was autistic and decided that it was okay to bully or belittle that person because that person was "just weird."
I cannot write a first-hand account of what it means to be misjudged and treated poorly as a person with autism, because I don't have autism. My son does. However, members of my extended family like to tell me that he doesn't, because he's high-functioning. He doesn't show signs of being overstimulated when he's in public. In their words, he's "just shy," he "just needs to come out of his shell," he "just needs to put himself out there." "He's intelligent, it's about damn time he went back to school/found a job." "You baby him too much."
If I don't listen to what my son is saying and ignore the fact that he's becoming overstimulated, he shuts down on me and it's hard for me to open communication with him again.
My son went to a school where people were taught to be understanding and accepting of one another's differences. My friend Richard wasn't so lucky. A lot of people are not.
A whole lot of years ago, I learned about a very unusual fellow by the name of Per Ohlin. If he were still alive, he would be 50 years old now. However, he died from a self-inflicted shotgun blast to the head when he was 22 years old.
There is a lot of misinformation about this unfortunate soul floating around. After reading a fair bit about him from people who actually knew him, such as his brother and the few real friends he had, I believe that he may have been autistic. Per's brother said that Per would become hyper-focused on whatever task he was working on and get very upset at being interrupted from what he was doing. Although highly intelligent, he performed very poorly in school.
Per's classmates in his early years accepted his idiosyncratic behaviors. However, when he was twelve, his parents divorced and he ended up going to a new school. His new classmates not only bullied him mercilessly, but they also ganged up on him and beat him so badly that he ended up being declared clinically dead. There was evidence after this beating of brain damage. None of the individuals involved were ever punished.
Per experienced high degrees of suicide ideation and engaged in self-harm. In his case, the suicide ideation ended up being completed. I am not sure that anything could have been done to save this tragic soul.
However, people can prevent the likelihood of further such occurrences by educating themselves about neurological and psychological differences and by attempting to be a bit kinder to those who present with unusual personalities.
I do not have autism. I am not normal neurologically, which expresses itself in problems with balance as well as varying degrees of difficulty walking. I had a small stroke in early 2017, which is likely the culprit in this case.
What I do have is something I refer to as a trifecta of fuckery or a hot trifecta of mess. This is the Universe's Asshat Trick and it involves rapid-cycling type 2 bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Even though there are all too many people who love to use the term "bipolar" to mean "moody," and I do call people out when they do that and advise them to educate their ignorant selves and not use people's health conditions as insults, I'm going to talk about borderline personality disorder, because it is even more misunderstood than bipolar disorder.
I do not write anything that is normal because I am not normal. I use a lot of metaphors, and my characters are extremely fucked up. I am getting to the point with this, so bear with me. It's a bit difficult to put it out there.
The risky behavior has been toned down for many years. I can't drink alcohol and I don't do illegal drugs. I don't even like the way most drugs make me feel. I don't have any kind of sex, let alone unsafe sex, and I don't want to. Most of the time I am able to resist inflicting self-injury, but not always. I tend to keep my behaviors in check, but there are still things that bleed to the surface.
Having been treated poorly by people who claimed they loved me is something that has led to a strong inability to trust. I generally only form very superficial relationships with people because I don't want to get attached to them, even on a platonic level. I do not have strong bonds even with most of my family members. This is not because I am incapable of feeling. It is because I am capable of feeling too deeply.
When I have written about the consuming love/obsession I have felt in the past, there have been people who have expounded that this is the only way to love, and I am rather horrified. I honestly don't think that obsessive love is healthy. I have scars on my arms that will never go away because of an obsessive love for awful men who treated me like a used condom. I'm glad if you liked the poem, but, yanno, it wasn't meant to be a "how-to" guide. It was really more of a warning.
I had a person comment on a character in one of my stories, asking if the character was a "teenager," and, to be honest, I was a bit insulted by that insinuation. The character was an adult in his mid-twenties. Being insecure is not only the hallmark of teenagers. There are some teenagers who are quite self-assured (I can assure you that I was not one of them) and some adults who are extremely insecure. These feelings of insecurity are magnified many times over in a person who has a condition such as borderline personality disorder.
I personally don't "do" romance because I don't like having my every thought consumed by the fear that I am going to be abandoned, which is what happens when I do romance. I sure as hell don't do casual sex, because I don't like it. Since I really don't like sex much in the first place and would only engage in such an activity with someone I trusted, why the hell would I want to do it casually?
I am far from being a teenager, but borderline personality disorder ensures that I will be one of the most insecure and least trusting people I know until the day I die. It also means that I have a high degree of self-loathing.
Writing is two things to me. First of all, it's catharsis. Second, I really don't know how to do anything else.
I'm not sure if I'm a "good" writer, a "bad" writer, or something in between. I write a bunch of shit. If you like it, great. If you don't like it, whatever. I'm probably not going to stop doing it, even if the occasional bad review makes me hate myself for a few days and I might end up with some cuts or bruises.
A lot of writing critics are looking for formulaic writing, for a type of "normal." I learned this while applying for ghostwriting jobs. I don't do formulaic writing, and I'm not normal. My brain doesn't work normally.
I often compare the way my brain works to the famous images of webs created by spiders on various types of drugs.
I say that my thoughts work a lot like the spiderwebs in the top row. They look normal at first glance, but on closer look, they are not. I can "pass for normal" enough that people who meet me in public don't notice anything particularly unusual about me. But I am actually quite fragile in spite of being rather a hulking figure physically.
So, I write the shit that I write and in the end, it will all amount to nothing. I will very likely die destitute and unwell. When I was young, I had myself fooled that I had something to offer the world. I no longer believe this is true. At this point, I'm just doing the shit that I do, and you can come along for the ride or not. It doesn't really matter that much to me one way or the other.
~Cie~
The ultimate borderline personality disorder anthem
Suicidal Tendencies - Nobody Hears
Lyrics
I talk through my eyes, the words pourin' down
Nobody hears
You ask me what's wrong, but what can I say
Nobody hears
I try to tell you
I try to show you
How else can I tell you?
How else can I show you?
I'm screaming inside, why can't you hear?
Nobody hears
You're looking right though me like I'm not here
Nobody hears
When the last tear falls down
Nothing gets washed away
Another plea put to rest
As nobody hears, nobody hears
So what did I do to you
That makes you run from me?
Now I'm sitting here screaming inside myself
Don't understand why nobody hears
You figured it and shaped it to your perfection
Nobody hears
Subtracted my feelings from this equation
Nobody hears
Is it all in my mind?
All in my mind
Then it would be easy to find
Easy to find
When the last tear falls down
Nothing gets washed away
Another plea put to rest
As nobody hears, nobody hears
So what did I do to you
That makes you run from me?
Now I'm sitting here screaming inside myself
Don't understand why nobody hears
So if it's all
If it's all in my mind
Then wouldn't it, wouldn't it
Wouldn't it be so easy to find?
When the last tear falls down
Nothing gets washed away
Another plea put to rest
As nobody hears, nobody hears
So what do I have to do
To make you comfort me?
Now I'm sitting here screaming inside myself
Don't understand why nobody hears
So I'm sitting here screaming inside myself
Well I'm sitting here crying inside myself
So I'm sitting here screaming to nobody else
Don't understand why nobody hears
And nobody nears, nobody hears, nobody hears, nobody hears
The Hokku (Haiku) stanza of this Tan Renga was written by Akutagawa Ryunosuke a.k.a. Gaki (1 March 1892 – 24 July 1927, death by overdose of Veronal.) The Ageku or closing stanza was written by me.
One of the things I treasure about this type of poetry is the way it makes a mundane item or creature such as a sardine beautiful and precious. Some people mock minimalist forms such as Haiku/Senryu or Tanka/Tan Renga, but I find that they have a meditative quality.
My monkey mind is far too chatty and jumpy for me to meditate very well using traditional meditation methods. Either my mind wanders off track and I get bored and antsy, or if I do manage to relax, I fall asleep.
This type of poetry allows me to meditate. I find that engaging in the Tan Renga challenge has made me calmer overall and given me an eye of the storm to escape to although my life is very chaotic. I am extremely grateful for this gift.
Seldom have I encountered a more troubled soul than Per Ohlin. As my lovely friend, the late Walt Cessna would have said, he was fukt 2 start wit.
(This was the title of Walt's autobiography. He said that I inspired him to actually sit down and write it. I have always treasured this knowledge. Walt died from complications of AIDS.)
I sometimes become overwhelmed and try to bury my empathic nature. It doesn't stay buried for long. Maybe a minute, maybe an hour, rarely more than a day, and then, as Per once wrote, up from the tomb it comes. I can't ignore the soul calls for long.
I wish I had known about the phenomenon of soul calls when I was younger. It could have saved me a lot of grief, but it's too late now. Anyone who is of a metaphysical mind is welcome to read about this issue here. For anyone who is not of a metaphysical mind, do us both a favor and don't bother. This isn't the high school debate team, I'm tired, and I have no desire to bend anyone to my own particular set of beliefs.
I am utilizing the Poems in April prompts again, but I am not joining up with the Linky in order to prevent another barney from brewing. Instead, I will comment on a few poems from people who have been kind and supportive along the way. Bit of a shame as I was getting a kick out of having so many visitors, but I find confrontation stressful, so best to keep that gate shut, I think.
I am aware that the go-to when one believes that someone is suicidal is to tell them to go to the emergency room or tell them to call the suicide line.
Please don't tell me to do either of those things.
I have lived with suicide ideation for as long as I can remember.
If I went to the emergency room every time I felt suicidal, I'd have to live there.
If I may be so bold, fuck that shit.
I'm afraid that in my experience, suicide hotlines are, well, not that helpful, if I'm to be blunt. I had one asshole who laughed at my distress. I had one kind but not at all helpful fellow who wished me luck. So, that has been my experience with suicide hotlines.
Suicide ideation is in a different class than someone threatening suicide, particularly if they have the means and a specific plan to complete the act.
A person may have a high degree of suicide ideation but a low level of planning, which tends to be my case when my suicide ideation flares up.
A person like me is not likely to telegraph it if they are actually going to commit suicide. If I were to commit suicide, no-one would know until after the fact. Thus, telling someone like me to go to the emergency room if I say I wish I was dead isn't going to accomplish anything except for wasting my time. With someone like me, it works much better to ask what's going on to make me feel that way. I might say that I'm on a downswing, or it might be something more concrete. But asking why I'm feeling as I am will make me feel as if you care rather than causing me to make a mental note to myself that here is yet one more person I can't tell anything because they just don't fucking get it.
It is a fact that people who experience suicide ideation are more likely to complete suicide than people who do not experience suicide ideation. It also is a fact that people who experience suicide ideation over the long term tend to have mood disorders such as major depression or bipolar disorder. A lot of us do not respond well (or at all) to the "magic medications." For people living with a chronic mental illness, it tends to be unhelpful and demeaning to suggest that we "try meds" or "seek counseling." Many of us have had bad experiences with "mental health professionals" and will avoid them like a bad case of athlete's foot.
If I could find a therapist who did cognitive behavioral therapy and whose services were covered by Medicaid, I might consider it. Such beasts, however, are rare as the proverbial hen's teeth. I find artistic pursuits to be a far more soothing balm than spilling my guts to someone who a) probably doesn't give a fuck, and b) will frustrate me by just not fucking getting it. I can find someone who fills those criteria by walking out onto any street corner and yelling "hey, come talk to me!"
Never forget those whose memories have fallen away
Those fallen into the lonely twilight of a mind
Ravaged by devastating disease
Never forget those fallen victim to dementia
Whose souls have fallen away from the world
While their bodies are still living
Never forget that the fallen deserve compassion
That the fallen deserve to be treated with respect
Never forget those who can no longer remember
Never forget the fallen
Don't let them fall away
Just because it is uncomfortable
To talk about the things that caused their fall
~Rose~
Notes:
Team Netherworld does a tribute to Per Ohlin every year on April 8, the date of his suicide. This year marks the 26th anniversary of his passing.
I thought about finding a picture of Per without makeup because one year someone remarked that he looked "creepy". In the end, I decided to use a picture of him in his stage makeup because I feel that people need to learn to look beyond appearances.
Per came into the world with a lot of strikes against him. He was born prematurely and had severe sleep apnea during his early childhood. He was likely on the autism spectrum. His younger brother stated that he had difficulty multitasking and would become upset if anyone bothered him while he was focused on something he was doing.
When Per changed schools after his parents divorced, his new classmates were not accustomed to his unusual behaviors and at one point ganged up on him and beat him so severely that he sustained a serious head injury and nearly died. This injury may have caused him to develop Cotard syndrome, a perception dysfunction in which the sufferer feels that they are in a body which is no longer alive. Per expressed feelings that he was not alive, that the blood was freezing in his veins.
Although Per did not perform well scholastically, he was highly intelligent and had a gift with words. His powerful poetry and song lyrics create a rich atmosphere and a metaphor for the struggles which he endured on a daily basis. The following is one of my favorites.
I hope that in the Afterlife, Per was able to find a peace impossible for him to achieve in life. I feel it is important that we learn compassion for him and others with cognitive and psychiatric differences.
Freezing Moon
Everything Here Is So Cold
Everything Here Is So Dark
I Remember It As From A Dream
In The Corner Of This Time
Diabolic Shapes Float By
Out From The Dark
I Remember It Was Here I Died
By Following The Freezing Moon
It's Night Again, Night You Beautiful
I Please My Hunger, On Living Humans
Night Of Hunger Follow It's Call
Follow The Freezing Moon
Darkness Is Growing, Eternity Opens
The Cemetery Lights Up Again
As In Ancient Times
Fallen Souls Die Behind My Steps
By Following The Freezing Moon
I can't leave flowers
Your grave is too far away
I send thoughts of peace
Cie
In memory of Per Yngve Ohlin
January 16 1969 - April 8 1991
Today's prompt at napowrimo.net is flowers.
The team always commemorates Per on the anniversary of his suicide
It isn't very poetic, but fuck any of y'all fuckers who think it's cool to display the picture of his body following the suicide. Bunch of disrespectful pukes.
Vocalist for Scandinavian metal bands Morbid and Mayhem
January 16, 1969 - April 8, 1991
Suicide
The poetry style I'm going to attempt is called Imagism. I'm not sure I'll get it exactly right, though I will try to find the exact words, as this is what the style seeks! I am writing in honor of the fellow above, who deserves to be remembered with compassion. His black and white stage makeup (corpsepaint) inspired my use of the word achromic, which seems to fit his bleak view of the world.
I also speak as someone who has experienced deep depression first-hand. I never became completely unable to function, nor did I attempt suicide, but I did engage in self-destructive behavior, including self-medication with alcohol and drugs.
Name given to a movement in poetry aimed at clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images. In the early period often written in the French form Imagisme. To use the language of common speech, but to employ the exact word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word.
Example
Autumn by T. E. Hulme
A touch of cold in the Autumn night—
I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded,
And round about were the wistful stars
With white faces like town children.
