My Mental Afflictions

The first one I remember was thinking too much About the same thing

Like an Etch-a-Sketch drawing

Made by ghost hands

Again and again

The same picture

I could not arrest the hands

It became constant

I couldn't work, make coffee, eat, think

The doctor said try these pills

And they worked! The ghost hands

Withdrew, gave me some peace

12 years on, my back went out

I didn't know what to do

I couldn't sit or sleep, couldn't bike

I tried an herbal tincture

A spark flashed and blossomed in my brain

A bad mix with the pills from the doctor

All became an evil Tim Burton film

No whimsy, no fun, only darkness

Body wired, mind unfamiliar

This time, too much serotonin, ironic

Came out of it still shaky

Took an allergy med

Supposed to relax me, it happened again

The evil Tim Burton film, nighttime roller coasters

Careening into fire on a video tape loop

Now I was in the soup

My doctor went back into research

The new guy wouldn't answer calls

12 years on Lexapro

I stopped taking it

Don't ever do this

But what did I know?

Everything was in collapse

It was entropy in my skull

The Etch-a-Sketch ghost hands were back

And would not stop

I couldn't smile or laugh

Feel a happy thought

I became weakness, a broken thing

Maybe this was it, I thought

All those times, teaching kids guitar

Riding bikes over a bridge in Hilton Head

Writing a banjo score

(And I didn't even play banjo)

Sitting in the backyard together

Admiring the bamboo

So green and powerful in Baltimore

Was that all gone?

Weeks in bed listening

To BBC history shows

Everything else too much

Went to a psych ward

Before my 50th birthday

They tried different things

Nothing worked for weeks

Then there was movement

In the fossilized circuitry

I asked the doctor about

A book she was reading

She said that was new

Me asking questions

I watched the NBA playoffs on the hallway TV

With a new friend

(What was his name? A kind person)

Something dead in me was dislodging

Breaking apart, I went home

From Johns Hopkins

(Covered by Medicaid, good timing)

Found I wasn't dissolved by panic on the bus ride

I met up with Mike

We listened to ZZ Top in the 7-Eleven parking lot

We went to a park and played frisbee

I've been getting better ever since

But still have a ways to go

- DH, 12/21

(photo taken in Lincoln Park, Chicago, while emerging out of the illness, 2018)