By: Matthew Corsi
These organics return for the night shift
Breath smoke laced, skin dead dry, eyes glazed with carbon monoxide.
Stragglers of a different sort, sources
Materializing from a nook and cranny the doctors cannot detect.
Not for a lack of effort, God knows they have sifted through this brain
And said it may all be inside my head ----
No shit.
Olanzapine gave it a go once and a miraculous moment of silence occurred.
The workers forgot to clock in, forgot to show up, became truant.
A few full moons later, a new voice emerged
This one was Rome screaming it was being surrounded by fatty armies
Clogs trying to disrupt the antique beep within me.
Shook hands with the devil, and allowed the voices back in ----
I being an understanding parent, forgiving the sins
Of something I have no control over.
Matthew Corsi is a recent graduate of Southern New Hampshire University. His confessional poetry usually focuses on mental illness. He wishes to dissolve the stigma associated with conditions of the mind. He plans to attend an MFA program in the future. He lives inside Seattle, Washington.
"This poem was written inside the psych ward at Overlake Medical Center in Bellevue, WA. The ward helped me in many ways I never thought imaginable. Before admittance for my mental illness, I always imagined the psych ward as some scary, desolate place meant for the insane. On the contrary, the ward was a place for healing and for inner reflection. A day full of group therapies, with amazing teachers, which helped me come to terms with myself.
I got on medication in the ward, which I thought would be a downfall for my creativity, but the opposite happened. I started to blossom and consume the world with words, medication allowed me to ignore the voices inside my head and to become myself; To write without the constant nagging of disapproving voices."