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WELCOME!!!
Drowning & Other Fragments ;
a site full of Powerful Poetry
: By Louise Mills I
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A word to the unwise:
You enter this place
At your own risk.
We are not responsible
for any psychological damage
You may incur here
So, if you suddenly
Find yourself drooling into
Your milk at your local nut -house
We are not responsible for that!
Disclaimer Two
From the terminally neurotic site owner:
I am not responsible for
All the atrocities that occur
On this planet everyday
I am only responsible for
myself ..
1.
A Poem For Liz
2. Futility
3. Empire's End
4. Daughter
In An Institution
5. Siamese
Mother & Daughter
6. The Mirror
is Not Omniscient
7. A Slow Death
In Three Fragments
In the chilly hours of morning
when you see me
And I'm screaming out. I'm trying
To reconcile myself with you
When the Guards speak out in the
country
The unthinkable, the untouchable
I surrender all my wishes
To the rain
When my feelings well up inside
me
Like a waterfall. They gush on
out.
And you drink it it as it
Laps down over you
When the whole world hammers on
my door
And rushes in, relentlessly
You're watching me. Unable to
Protect me anymore
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List of Poems ***
**********************************
It is the numbness
That descends first
But the anger soon follows
Always unwelcome
A corrosive sensation
And our entire bodies
Scream in unison,
'Why, why, why?'
A howl is ripped from us
And rushes through the night
And flies across the universe
And reaches you
And you are finally aware
Of what you meant to us
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********************************
Once I presided
Over a vast empire
Once I was an Empress
Dressed in silken robes
A crown upon my head
Then there was a famine
And now my people are starving
And now I am a prisoner
Not in a dungeon
Or in the turrets of a castle
But in a hospital bed.
I was once an Empress
Now I am nothing
My castles were burnt
My lands were ravaged
A long time ago
In another age
I would have been heading
for the Guillotine
Instead I head for the E.D.U.
In another age my head
Would have been severed
From my wasted, barren body
Now they are so much more sophisticated
With their magical potions,
they cushion the mind
Denying this former Empress
access to her dreams
***Return to:
List of Poems ***
**************************
Hundreds of miles away this daughter is still trouble
Hundreds of miles apart we psychically connect
Hundreds of miles away you had me committed
Hundreds of miles apart, Mother,
I should be with you
Last term I danced through days
In manic whirls and psychotic twirls
I was happy then. Walking up the hill
From the college to the church
Became a sublime experience.
But the thought of returning to you, Mother
Paralysed my psyche and a certain deadness
Crept into my bones and I got the sleep
I'd missed for so long. I ran from myself
And spent dilapidated days decomposing poems
And swallowing razor blades, bemoaning
The deviousness of the world. You only intervened,
Mother, as I silently, slowly started
to strangle myself.
So you sent the doctors in - those unreal death squads
Who shoot me half dead with tranquillizing darts
As I show them my upturned arms, maps of criss-cross scars
Staring, with eyes like street lamps, illuminating my face
Hold me so I can no longer feel the hot throb of the wounds
On my wrists but instead I am cloaked in cold competence
The danger of death is held at bay by this hospital ward-
One gloomily dark, the other gleaming
and white.
You visited me, Mother, in this sanitized place
You were outwardly sympathetic, inwardly disdainful
The Queen of Cheerfulness, then your mask cracked and melted
As I assumed the arms crossed, shoulders hunched aspect
Of the mental patient. You departed, taking with you
A photograph of me to stick pins in. Leaving me with roses,
Red roses, dead roses, once beautiful. Now wilting
Corpses in a vase. Symbols of a
dilapidated life.
You left me wondering what the doctors would do
If I said that I was determined to kill you
I tell them I've rehearsed your death in my mind-
A thousand times. They decide to sweep my hearth clean
Of the delusions that engulf me. These injections are insults
Trying to kill the illusions that my macabre imagination conjures up
Devastated by catatonia, I scream through these nightmare days
How do I scream without making a
sound?
I defy the sedative with dreams of concentration camps
Stark against the night. Watchtowers with machine guns
Emanate from me amidst my howls. I watch the doctors approach
Detached and supercilious. They think they know so much
White-coats, duped by psychotics in striped pyjamas
I run hearing them, close behind as they pursue me
Through the undergrowth of my psychosis. They capture me
Like battle-field generals they
order psychological execution.
I am forced to my knees to say my prayers to the Doctor
'To you he is God,' the nurses say. No one sees me as a martyr
Lying pale and statuesque on my bed, feeling as though
I am being erased. My mind vacated. The sedatives have done their work
I am now as peaceful as a grazing cow, head filled with popular songs
Psychologically naked as a latter-day Lady Godiva
I have crossed to the other side- to the non-psychotics
My life is a wasteland filled with
other people's debris.
I am ready to be returned to you, Mother
My admission is unremembered. I only know
That three months later I am emerging
Having whispered through without an impact,
Unrecognised as a servant of an
unexpressed revolution
At home with you, Mother. I lie prostrate
In my bed of death and hell
Dead or alive
We are enervated by sadness
You in me, me in hell.
***Return to:
List of Poems ***
***************************
'Girl, go get your head read,'
My mother cries
Ripping the redness
From my eyes
Scouring the deadness
From my face
For they were imposed on me
By that place.
My mother searches throughout the night
For an antidote
To the tranquillisers
They gave me there
There is nothing to do
But sleep in her presence
Her hand rests on my cheek
While I doze.
'I want you back the way you were,'
I hear her scream
As I dream
In my wakefulness
'You should be pleased,'
I reply silently
'For I am yours now
As much as I was in the womb.'
I am wrapped in her,
Trapped in her
Weakened by her whims
'Is this not what you wanted
A daughter in disguise
A daughter who's you
With only a few
Needs of her own?'
'No, no,' she replies,
'A twin's what I wanted
A bin full of my sighs
An echo of me
With pupils like sultanas
And limbs of pastry
Something I could eat
But not keep inside' .
'Something I could reject
At any time.
Now here you are
Hanging on
Heavy as a scone
Or maybe a fruitcake
I need you like me
Yet forceful and free'.
Beneath her I collapse,
Like a deflating soufflé
She turns to an authority,
Turns to the doctors she says
Have abandoned me
Fury illuminates her eyes
'My daughter died
Because of you,' she cries.
***Return to:
List of Poems ***
****************************
The room is empty
Only the mirror remains
The world beyond the glass
Is gone. You are alone,
Alone in your miniature universe
You stare at the image
Until your eyes film over
You reach out and touch
But the glass is cold
There is nothing within
But a copy of you
Your malevolent twin
Your caresses turn to blows
And your image is smashed
No longer smug and whole
Your reflection is reduced
To shattered fragments
Strewn across the floor
Shards of glass pierce the skin
A momentary pain
But your world expands
The mirror is nothing when it is broken
The mirror is not the world
The mirror is not omniscient
It never was
***Return to:
List of Poems ***
****************************
A Slow Death in Three
Fragments
(1)
Her sanatorium is situated in a seaside town
Everyday she walks in the morning air
Everyday she dips her toe into the sea
Tentatively avoiding the industrial
debris
It was the wrong kind of day
To visit the sick, to descend upon my dying aunt
It was a sunny day, you see, and
the sea sparkled
We felt strangely elated. Before the visit
We raced across the sand. We felt young again
Our middle age temporarily banished
We attract the curiosity of children
We accompany them as they race
As they leap over the incoming waves
(2)
Reluctantly we leave the sun drenched
day
As we enter the sanatorium
A summer storm descends
Even as we approach your bed
I do not want to see you
Not as you are now
Imprisoned in sweat drenched sheets
I remember what you once said to me
That you would kill yourself if
you had the courage
We fear the dying. My fear is palpable
The dying fear the fear of the living
Something is twisting inside me
The fear of the living
Crowded round your bed is palpable
It is suffocating you
A candle flickers
On your bed-side table
'To light my way to heaven,' you
laugh
'She was like a mother to you,' everyone said
I could not respond having nothing to compare her with
Except the black and white clad
nuns at the orphanage
(When we were kids we used to convulse,
Doubled up, laughing silently at them
As they waddled by like demented
penguins)
My Aunt is disintegrating. She is slowly dying
Bit by bit, cell by cell, Limb by limb
Too slowly, if you ask me, but no
one ever does
But I cannot look at her
I cannot see what she has become
So when we say our Good-byes
I squeeze my eyes shut
'She will die in the night.'
The nurses say
(3)
AFTERMATH
Our minds remain with you
In your high, white hospital bed
A summer storm rages above
And we remember white sheets
Drenched with sweat
We revisit the beach
The rain trickles down our faces
The sun is setting now
She is dying as we speak
We do not know
What she is heading for
She is certainly no angel.
We lie at the edge of the sea
Letting the water lap over our bodies
Letting the salt seep into our skin
We do not run from the waves
We rage at our helplessness
There is nothing we can do
But cling to one another
The aftermath is the sunset
The world grows dim
Sedatives subdue the pain
But some remains
A quiet throb deep inside you
***Return to:
List of Poems ***
***************************
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