Tag: Mental Health

True Words – prose

an experience judged as abnormal when as a poet friend reflected to me it may not be so unusual at all . . .

the ruins

it is no Supernova
the fission of a soul
Ground Zero’s ruin
mourning over all

dreaming of a fusion
to re-pack this fall
not so self deceiving
as to believe it will

just a hope that humans
may learn better how to build

A. H 18th October 2021

Poem included ‘We are the Change-Makers’ anthology

Another of my poems has been published. It’s called ‘They Think’. It’s published in We are the Change-Makers: Poems Supporting Drop the Disorder edited by Jo Watson in PCCS books, an anthology.
. . . read on here . . .

medded

the wave thinks of becoming itself in the swell
but looks at the moon, big as a pill, forgets

a piano pupil sits at the keys, statuesque
instants pass to settle, just moments ago, fluent

everything seems settled,
smother of self into a pillow of chemicals

AKH (10th April 2020) & edit 11/4/20

ii (2020)

humbled in soul break
pray, pray now
as i should anyway
first in thanks for life
any wordless poetry
granted there, anon.
moments’ blessings
living well
in harmony
an orchard to tend,
faithful,
apples come
when seasons bring them

A. H / K. H-H (6th March 2020)

read the whole post for some introduction

observations ii(a)

one day i folded myself into a form – trimmed my edges, or everything they didn’t want – flavoured myself to an unreal specification

then posted this and found they wanted more

which is how i was trapped year after year – commuting myself into a box – trimmed and partial of all they might abhor – unboundaried thinking and being, the poet, oh and the trans bit as well, vital fuel for this engine

of course medicine made all this worse

i knew i was doing it too, had too, and the balance tipped, harder and harder to remedy it

in part it was clear as i was – and so got totally lost, not least as it hid how so many others were doing the same, a bit, some remedying it better, finding others

all my best bits, a whole problematic, thrived elsewhere, i knew, why i fed them, though lean and hungry at home – i even bored everyone, speaking of a person they just could not see, and they might have thought it my bad faith

here’s funny – they noticed and laughed, petted my head, some poked me to see what would happen and could not understand how my mad partiality protected a heart breathing true, almost alone, with its books and a pen, unwanted, folded and crying it knew

A. H / K. H-H (15th January 2020)

lightning strike sanities from the stratosphere

storm broken mission Prometheus
out of touch
alien alienated alien prey
world seller fallen to earth
strike lit conductor

“trans is a punishment” Pedro Almodovar
“how old are you now anyway” Jack White
“do not choose a coward’s explanation” Leonard Cohen
“I listen to Sarah Vaughan” Bob Dylan

struck such to tunes reliable
whilst science denies its poles have switched
horizons fallen weather broken

there is more
truth hurts
it cannot be

‘suck the air from its bubble’

‘re-spin the threads
from as high as we reach
into the roots of the sky’

A. H / K. H-H (13/14th January 2020)

deception – self deception

because you accept their claim of seniority,
a fact in the gold grab, they’ll say they know
you do not know, you can’t, they do

because they insist
despite how clearly rude it is
whilst taking what you find, twisting it to fit

because communion is rare
this age empowers ignorance
you may be deceived

A. H/ K. H-H (4th January 2020)

medicine dance ii

though maybe as they whirl
world mad, dizzy,
partner to themselves
outcast of the shindig

they get a sense that’s true
alone with alone
a spot that steadies them in turn
invisible to the world

A. H / K. H-H (3rd January 2020)

a medicine dance

one way to provoke a superficial mad mimesis
– tell a person their deepest sense is nonsense
that despite degree and school they must be taught
how to think

send them on this unpleasant cruise
medicine blurring self, a smudge,
advise against spiritual succour
what priests misunderstand
watch them, lost, burst to return

so frantic, violent to their own
insides to break back out,
forget

in rare light glimpses
all past practise,
their very sense, of dance

A. H/ K. H-H (3rd January 2020)

The Treatment

you said you didn’t want it
so they had to give you The Treatment
and you reacted just a bit
which meant they had to give you more

The Treatment proceeds by primitive thought
keeping you where it needs
you’re quite quite caught
whilst knowing and kind to everyone else

to everyone else, just a little bit scared
at all this fuss, moss found on your stone
so who would want to roll
toward The Treatment

The Treatment proceeds by primitive deeds
locking you in to its torts
how might quite feeds
whilst knowing and kind to everyone else

to everyone else, who just did not see
that look over shoulder, invisible, of glee
his calling card as you entered lamb
from Grand Inquisitor, Treatment Land

A position recognised the first time you meet,
he didn’t like that, despite flashing his teeth
right at your parents’ hearth, what cheek,
turning and kind to everyone else

The Treatment proceeds, ah well, its all part,
labelling everything else but not itself
truth labelled libel forgets witches may melt
never quite just what it says, The Treatment

and even when you see this as just, what it is,
your identification with degradation they’ve proved
primitive self you’re chemically kept, lied to, abused
knowing and kind to everyone else

to everyone else you’ve let yourself go,
despite all their help not because
The Treatment proceeds however it wants
unlike yourself, clearly you need, The Treatment

A. H / K. H-H (18th November 2019)

Power’s M.O.

trapped in their conflict
tyranny where it can’t be
reason denied

A. H / K. H-H (17th November 2019)

Inquisition v2

in their countless ways
they’ll try to provoke you
bait your devil’s tongue

A. H / K. H-H (14th & 16th November 2019)

what comes of posting such process – and for once I processed a bit more and imaged up (or would it be down for that third line?)

Inquisition

in their countless ways
they will try to provoke you
get you to respond

K. H-H / A. H (14th November 2019)

revising

I have a line
in an unfinished poem
‘therapy gave me back as someone else’

I lie here tonight
thinking of my puppet days
‘not someone, some-thing else’

‘some-thing somewhere else’
chemhazed dazed more primitive
to prove their unwarranted hypothesis

that got me into this
dare I get out and see this plainly
the ways they’ve had me profane me

K. H-H / A. H (30th October 2019)

Pause

her doors all shored, swan sanctuary sought,
simultaneously shut out
she’s been beating them down to let herself back
in to herself

all because
– all? –
stranger guards
denied her temple’s sanctity

distraught a vision pauses her
all too human task

of so many temple intruders past
wild ones in need of a Holy of Holies
doors broken down broken in
to stand, sit, kneel, lie with it, in it
on it, by it, at it, from it, of it, to have it

how deep even in unknowing
the temple lay, in every way,
all around anyway

so she stops
to behold —
held in it

doors open

A. H/ K.H-H (19th September 2019)

The Divorce of Heaven and Hell

one big mistake
to distance the chambers of the heart
no mutual respect
anatomising with all your talents
the falling of your fight
yet only in inconsideration ill
for all that others put idea into effect
do they hope all is lost
to amputate a soul
whilst your effort is directed
as it ever is
to a dream of fusion
marital bliss

A. H / K. H-H (23rd August 2019)

a treatment of irony

imagine this
something you know that occurred
though you, who were never prone to be too sure,
may be flexible on the detail, some may be wrong

but then you tell someone of this
and they cannot believe it
and you cannot prove it
so?

but imagine they then tell you you must be wrong
that this cannot ever have been
why it is a symptom, delusion

and the irony is,
they, who can only doubt
your lack of proof
may act with certainty in their lack of proof

medicate you away from yourself
from clarity as to your truth
this one of many ironies
over the years

the next comes in how your behaviour
may come to be criticised
as the consequences of being distant from light
show themselves day to day

not to mention how your trust in others
has been challenged
especially in some who claim to help

and all of it
must never be said
anywhere else

and at every opportunity
they encourage doubt
as it is you
that said you were sure

A. H / K. H-H (28th July 2019)

being ill

is just being alive, magnified the way a torturer makes it hurt or the way you wake, peaceful, fever gone, to clean sun light oh how it may go on, chronic, your life through its lens lostness more lost, strangeness stranged familiar, a moment’s reprieve, heavenly, nectar to drink, think on, distil , bid grow…

Read More