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

More Dark Sonnets

I don't feel very verbal but these sonnets leak out of me. I can't judge their worth for two reasons; I'm depressed and I'm the author. Think of them as therapy. No one could do a dark sonnet better than Gerard Manley Hopkins. I'm just toddling in his wake.


V

Put down the knife, Lady, the candle’s done.
You could not see to strike. Where is the blood?
It’s in your mind. Violence is outdone
By guilt’s black bile trickling where you stood.
Queen Melancholy with your steel-blue blade,
Whom did you try to murder but myself?
You’d add another trophy to your shelf.
But I resist. I will not be unmade.
“Depression” sounds as common as a cold.
Its remedies are legion as the dirt.
The soul-killer is worse than we were told;
Its black advance outflanks the deepest hurt.
Still I’d rather swallow pills in hope
Than to change my necktie for a rope.

VI

Hopkins said it best, “No worst there is none.”
But isn’t it hubristic to declare
That one has reached the limit of despair
As in a total eclipse of the sun?
In that event a wild corona glows
Around the edges of the blackened moon,
A fiery nimbus that as yet allows
More than pure darkness in the afternoon.
What if there is a worst? How will you deal
If what despair you’ve reached is christened hell
Before the devil gets in his appeal
To drag you down to regions still more fell?
It’s premature to label something worst
Unless the Lord himself pronounce you cursed.

VII

Ah suicide, your beauty exceeds all,
A blinding gown, a face so lightly veiled
That I can see your black glass eyes enthrall
An unsuspecting mark until inhaled.
Your hands, so fine, as if made for the harp
Cannot be clasped without making an end.
You strum a dirge irreverently sharp
Designed to cut deeper than we can mend,
Sharp as addiction or the death of love,
Hard as affliction, colder than hate’s hold.
The sickest kneel to you as if to move
Your soul to pity and die as they grow bold.
I hold back; beauty is as beauty does.
Why not give in? I only know “because.”

5 Kilorats,

CE