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My Lunacy Revisited

by Kristine Briese

I can't move.
I may already be dead.
My limbs are weighed
down with lead and my
head is full of concrete.
Speech travels too slowly;
it is an endless moan.
People molasses into
my sight line.
I try to see, but no,
the black has come.
Creeping, sliding, sneaking.
It coats everything
in dark opacity.
I cannot escape, because
I am its source.
It holds me still and dead.

    but then

An itching buzz deep
inside my brain,
a busy whisper,
a voice that may
or may not be mine.
It grows, it blooms
into a half-heard litany
that will never
resolve into sense.
It spins and spins,
any new information that
attempts to gain entrance
is knocked aside by
its counter momentum.
I try to read, the words
dance maddeningly
on the page. Only
Anne Sexton makes sense.
"The place I live in
is a kind of maze,
and I keep seeking
the exit or the home."*
These words slip into
the rhythm and
join the cacophony,
spinning, spinning, spinning.

    but then

something has happened
something has happened
and the people the people
are looking and the people
are looking and RED oh god
RED everywhere glowing
growing coming after me
RED it's coming it will
consume me and I can't
escape it's everywhere
RED oh god RED and
the people and the eyes
and the RED they can
all see me and the
RED IS TOUCHING ME

    but then

A pill. A sigh. Sleep.

I can't move.
I may already be dead.


* From Anne Sexton's "The Children"

04/24/2002

Posted on 04/24/2002
Copyright © 2024 Kristine Briese

Member Comments on this Poem
Posted by Rachelle Howe on 08/15/11 at 07:49 PM

And this is why I will love you for always.

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