Dark Sonnets XVI and XVII; 6 Kilorats

I saw my psychiatrist today, who increased my antipsychotic medications.  He wants to be aggressive with my illness.  I read today that bipolar depressions usually last at least six months.  I'm almost up to four months with this one, but I don't want to repeat my two-year horror again.  My only hope is in medications; now that ECT failed me, I know of nothing else to treat this damnable condition.

It's nothing I did or didn't do.  I was born with the DNA coding for bipolar illness.  It first expressed itself when I was 13.   I did not know what it was then, I simply withdrew from everything around me, including friends, going from class president to recluse.

Two more dark sonnets below.  Not my best but I do follow the form.


XVI


There’s not much left to what I haven’t said.
Depression is a monster, simply put,
A harpy sent to thieve your daily bread
And leave you groveling in an endless rut.
A rut is but a grave with ends kicked out.
Oh you can belly on and squirm and twitch
Yet come no nearer to another route
Because you cannot see above the ditch.
Prayer and meditation prove no better
Than drinking beer and lying on the couch
When you are being judged by every letter
Of the law, transforming you to grouch
Who sees all contact as a threat to being
So any outstretched palm results in fleeing.


XVII


I’d rather have my skin scraped bloody and raw
By a barbecue-grill cleaning brush
Than to suffer depression. I stand in awe
At how the weight of it endeavors to crush
Whatever good lives in me, which is all
A grand mirage of who I used to be
Before the odious, odiferous pall
Of self-despite became reality.
Have you a spark of goodness left to share?
Don’t waste it on this carcass, I am past
Receiving anything, I do not care
For anything my illness will outlast.
It’s cyclical, you know, it will come back
And paint all my cathedral windows black.


Six Kilorats,

CE