Sunday Afternoon

When sadness and anxiety
are pushing down on me,
and I am gasping for air
it seems so utterly unfair
because it makes no sense:
it only makes me tense.
I wish that people could know
this is more than feeling low.

This curse
is so much worse
than worry and despair,
a head of unwashed hair,
inertia and grey skies,
cries, sighs and wet eyes.
Because it’s all this and more
and I can’t find a cure

***

It is:

Every mistake I’ve made
remembered and replayed;
every person who disliked me
behind the eyes of all I see;
guilt of the very worst kind
tormenting my tired mind;
everything in the world so bad
invading all my thoughts so sad.

At its best it is vile
making everything futile.
At its worst can make me begin
to want to claw off my own skin
as sheer panic of existence
wears down my resistance,
and terror, shame and sorrow
make me fearful of tomorrow.

I feel defined by angst and fear,
failure and pain so severe
I want to die; instead I cry,
yet when someone asks me why,
‘I’m tired’ I say, ‘just tired today.’
And they shake their heads and walk away,
imagining with some disdain
that I’m just sad about the rain

‘She’s melancholy- what a bore!
She wants to count her blessings more.’
If they only understood
I know I should, I wish I could
make my stupid brain behave.
These thoughts to which it is a slave
being impossible to explain
are forever labelled as ‘insane’

And yet this word
is so absurd:
too interesting, too ‘Jane Eyre’,
too Hollywood to describe despair,
isolation, guilt, and grief
anxiety, my mind’s cruel thief!
mental torture, thought’s recession
this is what they call ‘depression’

Birdsong

As the lights go off
my mind turns on
and the day’s fatigue
is suddenly gone.
My eyes feel sore,
my limbs wilt like flowers,
but I lie wide awake
counting the hours.
Tick Tock. Rustle. Creak
I think thoughts
I’ll never speak
Did I turn my phone off?
What will I eat tomorrow?
Will he return the DVD
That I let him borrow?

My head aches,
the thoughts go round
interrupted, at last, by sound.
Lying helpless in my bed
I realise night is gone
as I hear the noise I dread:
morning’s first birdsong.
Through the curtain I see
an early ray of light
I want to howl as I lament
another sleepless night.