Mrs O'Day's Dinning Room (A Poem On Mental Disturbances) & "Days of Tears & Tarnish"

Mrs. O'Day's Dinning Room

She's no beginner

In her effexor sequels

To do herself harm

Suicide or spite

She could fool the best

With her hidden sickness

(passive dependence,

Manic edge, borderline

Schizophrenic -eyes cocked)

Now bobbing back and forth

In an Love Boat (full of medicine)

Locking the auto ins quotes behind her

In fear of shadows and the weird.

When she's all there

She's always the new woman;

She used to be, pretty

As pretty can be,

Now fat and aging

Carefully she hammered

Herself out like that...

Slowly, slowly, so men would

Avoid her, leave her be;

She knew she was breakable

Too brittle to live among the

Malice and mad, the crooks

And the deceivers, I say-

Too brittle, as old ceramic.

She now talks shallow

Over the phone, like a mouse

Slowly opening up it jaws

Listening, staring face-

Wondering if she'll be devoured

Before she speaks, or

Dragged under the carpet...

And needing weeks and weeks

To rebound and recuperate?

She most always feels alone.

She even ambushes herself to

Hide inside her apartment

Fending off her fiends and ghosts!

When they're gone, she

joins the world again, in

the patients' dinning room.

#2356 4-20-2008 (Dedicated to dedicated to MS). It is a sad that so many folks who have to deal with mental disorders, but in America anyhow, there are places to go, and medication to take to make it through a life somewhat normal. Alas, for the third world, where I spend much of my time, and have visited asylums, and do not have all these leverages.

Days of Tears and Tarnish

(A poem on grieving, death and renewal)

Days of tears and tarnish

Often hidden

Behind one's days of youth and charm

They came to you, you know

Like two water drops

Made into law school loan consolidation so long ago,

then one dies

And the other looks out the

Windowsill...

No glory descends

As the world turns

(and turns and turns)

We just go back to

Living our life (after grieving):

Waiting for the mailman,

Paying taxes and bills

Feeding the fire to keep warm

(in the cold Minnesota chill);

Poised as a hushed rose

Remembering

All those years...

And the first water drops

From your eyes

That turned into one!

#2357/4-20-2008 (This poem is dedicated to an old neighborhood friend, Dave Meyers, died March 23, 2008, at the age of 64, from cancer-a quite sort of man, married to my high school friend Nancy, for 44-years).

See Dennis' web site: http://dennissiluk.tripod.comhttp://dennissiluk.tripod.com