How are you?
‘How are you?’ you ask me.
‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Well, a bit down, really.’
You nod, gentle eyed.
I turn away, and shout.
But no-one hears me.
So I shout louder.
‘This is not depression!
This is rubbish, I tell you!
This is cruel and ugly,
mostly ugly.
Sometimes it smells a lot,
it doesn't wash and its roots grow out
and it is selfish,
heavingly, horribly selfish.
It cares nothing for dying children,
it cares only how they make it feel,
as it is everything.
It cloys and rots, and strolls,
clammy handed, into the doctor's waiting room
and whispers they can do nothing for you.
They wish you would go.
They hate you.
If I am depression
don't ask how I am.
I might tell you.’
Unnatural causes
I want to die of natural causes,
an old, old woman in a hospital bed
clutching the hand of a young girl
who knows it will never happen to her,
dreaming of a life she's barely lived.
I don't care what I die of then,
which organ tosses off its function first.
Kidneys, liver, heart, brain
It's all the same to me
It is proof that I made it.
I haven't got there yet, and still
I dream of unnatural causes.
Sometimes they disappear for years,
fly to southern, warmer lands
But they return, always, grasping at my bed post
and stare at me.
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