Poets+on+Prozac

Writers and Creativity "When you are insane, you are busy being insane -- all the time... When I was crazy, that's all I was." -Sylvia Plath

media type="custom" key="11524166" Neurotransmission

My history of drug-taking is long, starting with One-A-Day vitamins and St. Joseph’s aspirin for children; pills for migraine and insomnia; marijuana, tea, wine; and then the Solaces, one by one, a Noah’s ark of creatures too weak to haul away another’s sorrows, though they lent their weight. Now a psychopharmacologist oversee the weather in my brain and I line in its atmospheres, its tides, its own distinctive forms of sentience.



In England, the Formidable Ms X Takes Direction from Some Guy Named Z First it’s liftoff and she’s wearing her historylike a bib. Sleep won’t bend her knee, she’s bent with the lack. So she’s going with the manand the wind blows through. She won’t beat like a wren’s wing, like that wing but she’ll flap and he knows it. Bird on the breeze over the sheep- field. Take these bitters and run to the pub. No.Not what he said he said here is the fence now play outside. He said here is the gate now play outside. He said go outside. Yes. And, yes, has a kink in her hip, her brain’s on hold. She’s a mild case of still alive. (Still has the mother’s eyes, and the father’s eyes. The gun & a bucket for the blood. She climbs their rope ladders. A wind blows through.) She’s eating cold fish. She’s eating cold fish and she’s watching three sheep, three bend at the knee. When she flaps those sheep turn and turn their sheepy eyes. Behind barbed wire the sheep turn. She’s taking direction from some guy named Z. She’s taking that direction: turns left at the bus stop, dustbin, callbox. Turns right at the White Hart, brown dog, stoat. Lorry, biscuit, hedgepig, hare turning.  ** Drawing blood ** ** my illness intensifies itself ** ** a hybrid in the sun ** ** It is when left alone ** ** to surrender in the darkness ** ** its briars ** ** It becomes, blossoming ** ** above the rocks, below ** ** them beyond ** ** the gentlest flower ** ** in my garden ** ||
 * ~ ** Ground Cover **



“Blackbird” (1998) No one is home except me and my father, Who pushes with even strides the lawn mower across the yard once a week. I can hear The motor compete with the cicadas vibrating near My bedroom window. All summer they fly To the maples, protest the inevitable. They lie Overturned: white undersides, wings intricate as leaf veins or the labyrinth I construct when the motor cuts off and I know what comes next. The door opens. I am already well ahead of him, Running through a dim maze, pressing Against panels, triggering escape hatches, Hit whispers diminished by my own footsteps Echoing down a long pale corridor. It helps Afterward if I go outside on the fresh cut Grass and hunt for pieces left Behind: toads whose leap was seconds slow, whose last thoughts were of the man’s shadow, their leathery limbs and golden heads scattered. They didn’t feel a thing. Instead of looking for me when Mother returns from work, she fixes him a glass of iced tea, ignores my solitary games, my macabre fascination with the dead. In a tone of elation, a voice that saddens me still, she thanks him for for the beautiful lawn, for taking care of things. Memory litters an otherwise perfect landscape, and I Realize the cloudless, sulphur-blue sky Promises me nothing, Not a star nor horizon. But something In the moon’s thin shell lets me bury there My life’s distorted picture, where The brain empties the face of a girl, Her red-winged heart flying like a blackbird Through the other side of childhood.

On Not Repeating Myself Once, in Ohio, an infant spoke to me In the Eiffel Tower of King’s Island – The Anti-Christ leered from over his mother’s shoulder. I didn’t hear him and I said Something hip, like, “Come again?” He refused to repeat himself. It was for the best. All this to say: There is this crazy bird, A girl in cartoon prison garb, Perches on my footboard Two, three times a year – I gave her the key To the box With all your letters. "Immigrants" video

Angel of Depression

Why would an angel choose to come here If it weren’t important? Into stuffy rooms Smelling of cabbage? Into the tedium of time, Which weighs like gravity on any messenger Used to more freedom and who has to wear A dingy costume, so as not to scare The humans. Wouldn’t even an angel despair? Oh yes I’m broken but my limp Is the best part of me. And the way I hurt. Don’t say it’s an honour to have fought With depression’s angel. It always wears The face of my loved ones as it tears The breath from my solar plexus, grinds My face in the ever-resilient dirt. Oh yes I’m broken but my limp Is the best part of me. And the way I hurt.



When You Were Four and I was Forty-One //for my daughter, Nadine// When you were four and I was forty-one and sunk in my depression deeper than I’d ever been – when all day each day all I could do was sit in a chair and stare and weep at nothing in particular – in the morning you’d come down the stairs still in your pink sleeper and find me there already in my chair or still there from the night before already staring or weeping in that paralysis that was my life then, you’d climb up into the chair and settle yourself, fit yourself, curl yourself, into my lap so I could hold you in my sadness while I wept and never, not ever, not once, did you ask me why I was crying, not did you ever ask me to explain. Now, twenty years later, now that you are twenty-four and I am sixty-one I write this to say to you, Nadine, you were such warmth, such sweet serenity, such peace and comfort to me then. Thank You, Nadine, My Daughter, for the chance to hold you when you were four and I was forty-one. "Three Goals" video Tomorrow" video

Trains //for Edie//

This early in the morning the clouds have cleared and I hear the whistles of train after train rolling across the desert five miles south in the dark. I remember trains, the one that carried you north to the forest in autumn as if no other mode of travel was good enough. But we had our own, didn’t we, the warm tongue of dope, cool teeth of booze the dirty fingers of men whose names we could never remember no matter how hard we tried. What was it about us we hated so much? Sleeping in strangers’ beds was easier than even approaching that age-old question. The ratty motor lodge just south of Newport that summer, its depression-ware dishes in dull primary colors, the muddy spring trickling down to the beach like blood from a cut. No one could ever sweep all the grit off those chipped linoleum tiles. The two brothers who owned the place, what did the older one’s hands feel like on your skin? I met a man just after you left, when we slid away from the bar and headed out to his house he was the nicest guy I’d ever known in my life. But there were Nam-ghosts inside those walls, shadows of his petrified wife and kids, he had to take a shower just after we did it on the living room floor. He laid a blanket down first and quoted Genesis to me. The tracks were just behind his back fence and I could see myself running along those shrieking metal rails nothing but the clothes on my back and a photo of you in my pocket, your scared eyes staring at nothing. I pulled myself up into one of those empty cars heading east or west, it didn’t make any difference. After I caught my breath, I glanced back toward town. Not a single soul was watching.

I Was Once a Drowned Boy On those cold nights when I’d first stopped drinking, when sobriety hung by the most slender of threads, when I’d walk past the Kuwaiti grocery on Sheffield where during my drinking days I’d purchased a half pint and a six pack every night on the way home, on those frozen nights looking for the moon kept me from staring through the frosted window with its ads for tuna fish and laundry detergent toward the coolers in the back of the store filled with Old Style, Budweiser and Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Rather than dwell on that plentitude of beers, I’d look up at the sky, seeking answers in the swerve of yellow light as I walked past Wrigley Field, then the Cubby Bear Lounge at Clark and Addison where I spent many a night in infamy, talking to the large-breasted bartender who hated me and my eyes swollen like sunken moons, the kind the fishes see from under the water.



Song for a Newborn

Oh my Double Thick Pork Chop my Prawn Tequila-kissed, Most Pico of Pico de Gallos: bless your brain. . . your capillaries like the roots of Early Girls, your large intestine like dozens of miniature knackwursts. Bless your liver, its 500 functions. Bless your sternum, your scapula – heck: bless all your 206 bones.

I Can’t Write

about her birth. . . . . . or the number of times I pushed, but I can tell you [about] the voices of children,

of mothers telling them to settle down, how I wished my womb, like theirs, had returned to the size of a fist. And I can tell you

I wished my daughter were older than a half a day. . . both of us smelling not only of yeast but of the acrid, earthiness of colostrums,

of colostrums and vernix and blood.

Martha Silano's blog

A kiss has nothing to do with sex, <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">she thinks. Not really. That engulfing, that trying to take <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">all of another in for nourishment, to become one with her, to become <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">part of her cells. The way she musthave had everything she wanted <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">in the womb, without asking. Without <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">words, <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">kisses have barely the slurp-sound of <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">a man entering a woman <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">or sliding back out – neither <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">movement with even the warning of <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">a bark. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">The Greek word "buli," animal hunger. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">Petting, those kisses are called, or <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">sometimes necking. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">She read this advice in a sex manual once: "Take the man’s penis, <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">slowly at first, like you are licking a melting ice cream <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">from the rim of a cone." But the gagging, the choke – <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">a hot gulp of tea, a small chicken bone, a wad of gum grown too big. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">That wasn’t mentioned. It’s about what happens in her mouth <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">past her teeth, where there is no more control, like a waterfall – <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">or its being too late when the whole wedding cake is gone:
 * //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Bulimia // **

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">She orders one from a different bakery this time, so no one <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">will remember her past visits and catch on. She’s eating <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">slowly at first, tonguing icing from the plastic groom’s feet, the hem <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">of the bride’s gown, and those toothpick-points that kept them <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">rooted in pastry. She cuts the top tier into squares, <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">reception-like. (The thrill she knew of a wedding this past June, <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">stealing the white dessert into her purse, sucking <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">the sugary blue gel from a napkin one piece was wrapped in. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">She was swallowing paper on her lone car ride home, <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">through a red light, on her way to another nap <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">from which she hoped a prince’s kiss would wake her.)

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">The second tier in her hands, by fistfuls, desperate <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">as the Third World child she saw on tv last week, taking in gruel. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">Her head, light like her stomach is pumped up with air. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">She can’t stop. She puckers up to the sticky crumbs under her nails. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">Then there are the engraved Valentine candies: <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">CRAZY, DREAM GIRL, ACT NOW, YOU’RE HOT. She rips open the bag, <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">devouring as many messages as she can at once. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">They all taste like chalk. She rocks back and forth.

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">She has to loosen the string on her sweat pants, part of her trousseau. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">The bag of candy is emptied. The paper doily <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">under the cake’s third layer, smooth as a vacuumed ice-skating rink. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">What has she done? In the bathroom, like what happened <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">to the mistakenly flushed-away bracelet, a gift <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">from her first boyfriend – the gold clasp silently unhooking <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">as she wiped herself, then, moments too late, noticing <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">her naked wrist under the running water of the rest room <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">sink’s faucet…She’s learned it’s best to wait ten minutes <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">to make herself throw up. Digestion begins at this point, <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">but the food hasn’t gotten very far. As ingenious as the first <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">few times she would consciously masturbate, making note of where <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">her fingers felt best, she devises a way to vomit <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">that only hurts for a second.

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">She takes off her sweatshirt and drapes it over a towel rack. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">Then she pokes a Q-Tip on her soft palate. Keeping in mind <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">the diagram in her voice class, the cross section <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">of the mouth showing each part’s different function, <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">the palate – hidden and secret as a clitoris. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">The teacher’s mentioning of its vulnerability, split-second <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">and nonchalant like a doctor and his tongue depressor. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">It’s a fast prayer – she kneels in front of the toilet. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">Her back jerks and arches the way it might <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">if she were moving her body to meet a man’s during intercourse. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">She wipes what has sprayed back to her chest, <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">her throat as raw as a rape that’s happened to someone else. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">She cleans the seat of the bowl with a rag, and cleans <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">her teeth with a second toothbrush she keeps for this purpose. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">Her sweatshirt back on, she gets to the kitchen <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">to crush the cake box into a plastic garbage bag. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">And leaves to dispose of it, not in the trashcan downstairs, <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">but in a dumpster way on the other side of town.

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">Berlin, R.M. (Ed.). (2008). //Poets on Prozac: Mental Illness, Treatment and the Creative Process//. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;"> University Press. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">Rothenberg, A. & Hausmann, C. R. (Eds.). (1988). //The Creativity Question//. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">Runco, M.A. (2007). //Creativity: Theories and Themes: Research, Development, and Practice//. Amserdam: Academic Press.
 * <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">References: **