Faking Bad
In anticipation of my
Evaluation to be declared
Non Compos Mentos
I slept under a bridge
For three days
"Getting into character,"
But on the morning of
My intake interview
My hair fell perfectly,
I mean I looked like
A fucking rock star.
College girls on the bus
Were giving me their
Numbers and my skin,
Which I'd purposely sunburnt
And caked in the finest filth,
Glowed like an Australian
Chippendale dancer named Weegie
And even the female Assisstant D.A.
Who had busted me for vagrancy
Waved her panties from
The third story building
Of the Courthouse.
No matter how much I
Tried to speak gibberish
Poetry and philosophical
Tracts spewed from my mouth.
Shuffling past the park
I beat eight
Grand Masters
At chess on move 1
Inadvertently I solved
The Phi Epsilom Theorem
By kicking stones
Into an algorythym.
When I arrived they didn't
Make me wait at all.
My caseworker giggled like
A schoolgirl while I told her
Each day was like an endless shift
In a Chinese fish- gutting
Sweatshop and every one of my fellow
Employees was motivationalist
Richard Simmons.
She ungirdled her enormous
Tits and as they spilled
Like fishguts onto the desk
She began to howl
"Fuck me, fuck me, oh fuck
Me right here in
Front of the open window
On State Street as everyone
Watches me fucking the strongest,
Healthiest, smartest, most popular,
Well-adjusted man in the world.
The rest of the examination was
Also a success.
But as I left the Mental HealthCenter
feeling marvelous
I accidentally bumped
An old woman with the door:
"Watch out you manic-depressive
Schizoid with Socially Avoidant
Features klutz."
-Thomas L. Vaultonburg
I got help. Help that was always available but for some reason was incredibly hard to ask for. Part of me still wanted to maintain what I thought was my freedom and independence and ride around in that bus all day with no where to go and not much hope for the future. An entire lifetime of society's and my own stigmas against mental illness were drilled into my head. Nutjob. Weirdo. Psycho. All the words we use to refer to the mentally ill went around and around in my head. They had as much power as hunger and homelessness. And that's way too much power to give a stigma.
After open heart surgery two years ago it started to become more and more apparent to me I want to use the thing I care about most, poetry, for something other than just writing about my own thoughts. I'd like to have a forum so other people with mental illness and other disabilities can express themselves and their struggles, or just write about whatever they wanted. That's what I want to do here at Outsider Poetry.
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