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Poems From the Madhouse

Spinifex Press

    HERE I SIT

    Here,
    surrounded by the swirling nothingness of chaos,
    with the indignant idiocy of haze and alienation,
    I sit
    where perception becomes a burden
    and where the burden becomes the loss of perception.
    What is this world,
    this world of contradictions,
    this torturous maze of distress
    where confusion reigns and
    clarity remains submerged?

    Here,
    surrounded by the sterile relics of sanity,
    lost in a labyrinth of refracted thought,
    I sit
    where life becomes a burden
    and where the burden becomes the loss of life.
    What is this confusion,
    this confusion of the spheres,
    this unyielding perplexity
    that determinedly withers my countenance
    and renders me helpless?


    PSYCHOTIC EPISODE

    When the chilled, icy wind blew,
    in went I,
    into a world I knew nothing about,
    into a space for which I could
    never have prepared myself even if
    I had been warned of its existence.
    Down, down, down went I,
    tumbling into an abyss filled
    with a myriad spooks and phantoms
    which preyed upon my unsuspecting self.
    There was no room for rationality,
    only chaos upon chaos upon chaos,
    and flowing rivers of turbulent waters flanked
    on each side by Gothic mountains of angst.
    And I was immersed in something
    deeper than a huge black hole,
    from which I did not emerge
    until the haze was blown away
    by all manner of processes that acted
    upon my distraught, disturbed self.
    But as the wind wuthered about my cardboard face,
    a chill had set in and frozen my life force forever.


    MADNESS CREEPS IN

    You slithered into the dark reaches of my mind,
    crawling in through gaping eye sockets,
    through hollowed ears and crushed nose
    under the heavy veil of the hazy night.
    Gashing open an internal wound
    you told to me, in whispers, fantasies and falsities
    unlocking the secrets of my mind's repose.
    Then, planting the seeds of destruction,
    and waiting for their hour of germination,
    you withered all but my worm-holed shell.
    And now I grieve for the loss,
    for the chaos and broken spirit,
    for the niggling, seething disturbances and distortions
    like a woman possessed.
    So I grow weary, the sands cloud my eyes,
    my heart heaves a heavy sigh of sorrow.
    Will you not leave me now
    as you have worked your purpose?
    Let me build upon the gap you have left.


    FRAGMENT

    Two ways diverge in my mind,
    but the choice of ways is not to be mine,
    because I somehow find myself
    on Robert Frost's less travelled road,
    walking steadily on to that Mad people's place
    where a welcoming throng holds out
    its hands and hearts to this kindred spirit.
    Something dark and bitter is driving me,
    and I doubt if I shall ever come back,
    but I do not know, nor want to know the outcome.

    I am completing a journey of some kind,
    which began many years ago —
    before I came into being —
    and which shall never cease
    unless the way becomes as one and clear,
    or until some dark mystery is resolved
    and I can say I know sanity is to be my realm.


    FEAR

    Fear propels my thoughts into lunar orbits,
    and what I fear most is never coming back

    from those far distant inner spaces where one
    is subjected to subterranean forces
    that niggle and needle the vulnerable soul.

    There, the world is seen through the shadows
    of veiled meanings that make no sense,
    and nothing is as it is,
    nothing is as it was,
    and the future looms as an enormous black hole.
    The past, present and future,
    indeed, all dimensions of the universe,
    are overshadowed by the mutations
    of my being's way of being.
    Only the tangled web of voices and visions
    remains as part of the back-breaking load,
    and nothing is certain any more in a
    world where the collusion
    of forces pillage and plunder life.

    I am alone in a quest for freedom
    and long for respite from the harbingers of doom.
    Seeing all this before me I struggle on day by day
    and feel that my life confidence is decimated,

    but life is an art, like everything else.
    I do it exceptionally badly.


    GLASSHOUSE

    There is no need for me to speak
    my mind because I am naked.
    My cranium is a glasshouse
    and all my inner secrets are exposed.
    There is no respite from the
    searching gaze of others who see inside
    and can read my thoughts.
    There is no place to hide my feelings
    because everything is known to those from without.
    And fearfully, most fearfully of all,
    hiding behind my adult facade,
    is the evil child seen in all its infant ways,
    seeking to hide its dominance
    in an act of self-preservation.
    It is the outside world, the strangers,
    the ones I do not know,
    who see me in this pitiful state,
    and as I have no hiding place to
    cover my nakedness, I am at the
    mercy of the forces that threaten me.


    VOICES IN THE DARK

    Hush, listen to the dark.
    The voices tell their sordid tales
    confounding the world out there
    until it no longer exists.
    I listen only to the commands,
    now the laughter,
    now the commands,
    and on and on.
    I do not know why they come and go,
    but the voices reach a deafening crescendo
    and my heart aches like a rotten tooth.
    'You must obey.
    Die! Die! Die!
    You must let go.
    Die! Die! Die!'
    I am desperate to purge this noise,
    but the night encroaches
    and I am lost to the voices in the dark.


    THE UNINVITED STRANGER

    for Lynne

    Who is this uninvited stranger
    that speaks at me?
    Uninvited and yet powerful
    enough to intrude upon my
    shallow reason that hovers on the edge.
    For reason is elusive enough,
    without having to contend with visitors
    that have my destruction in mind;
    for reason intercedes with the
    discourse of madness
    to create order amid potential disorder.
    But this stranger crawls into
    the passages and byways of my mind
    and corrupts my thinking until I cannot think;
    until chaos prevails in discursive manoeuvres
    leaving me in the wilderness
    with someone whom I distrust;
    with someone who speaks from my tongue
    and places me at odds with those I love.
    I struggle to be my true self.
    But who is this uninvited stranger?
    It is me!
    It is me!


    WHISPER MY FRIEND

    for Jill

    Whisper, my friend, you are the only reality I have.
    When you beckon I cannot ignore your commands.
    You give me power and a purpose
    in our secure world of shared secrets.
    Whisper, my friend, tell me your stories,
    tell me in your charming, seductive voice.
    You are my creator and my lover,
    you belong to me and no one else
    and I belong to you alone.
    Together we resist the outside world
    and toil to make a harmony of disorder.
    How you move my senses with your power.

    They try to take you away from me
    because of the secrets we share,
    but only we know the truth of us,
    only we can communicate with honesty.
    No one will ever separate our beings
    because we are each other.
    Even though there were times when you betrayed me,
    and told false and deceitful lies,
    I forgave you because you always forgive me.
    Whisper, my friend, I have no choice,
    I am entwined in your briar arms
    that caress my withered soul.


    PARADOX OF THE WHISPER

    The whisper was my song of joy
    my refuge from the world.
    It told me not to be so coy
    but then my wings it furled.


    THE THUNDERING VOICES

    The voices, thundering inside the head,
    are not like the mellow
    sounds of a lulling melody.
    Rather, the melody becomes a cacophony
    that drives the tortured
    to a diminished existence
    of far-fetched notions believed by no one —
    except the touched themselves.

       The noise resounds!
       The hell astounds!
       The devil abounds!

    The voices, thundering inside the head,
    are not like the sounds of daily life.
    They are spruikers in markets of madness,
    selling misery to the crazies
    who seem embroiled in a trade war of the mind.
    They force those on the brink to yield
    to peddlers of unreality who use
    a sales pitch that leaves no option for sanity.

       The noise resounds!
       The hell astounds!
       The devil abounds!

    There is no beauty or virtue in madness.


    BRUTAL MADNESS

    Brutal Madness, come no more to my home.
    Do not cast your shadow over my door,
    lest you steal me away
    taking me into your arms
    to transport me to your far-off prison.

    I do not like your morbid abode.
    I do not like your turgid space.
    I do not want to be with your friends
    who intimidate my reason with lies.

    Your brutality to my repose and dignity
    empties my soul of its calm,
    and leaves me abandoned in a madhouse
    where Sister Sorrow weaves a tapestry
    of woe and suffering that knows no boundary.

    I am no more of this cosmos,
    I am no more of this life
    when you, Brutal Madness,
    divine to plunder all my senses' defences.


    THE CONFESSION

    It is impossible to tell of the
    phantoms that dwell in my mind,
    because they know how to control their impulses.
    They know how to protect themselves
    while at the same time torment me.
    Exposing these insidious devils is
    a betrayal of their powerful commands,
    yet how else can I purge myself of these demons
    if not by bringing them out into the open?

    How frightening it all is,
    for this nightmarish world can sustain me through
    a myriad fire-seared life experiences,
    and yet, destroy me in an instant —
    crush me like an ant underfoot.

    So often I can feel these phantasmagoria
    inveigling themselves into my fragile self,
    harassing my psyche until it succumbs to
    the wishes of these secret bodies,
    and collapses, destitute and homeless.

    They scoff at my wandering psyche
    and plot to sever the cord that
    tentatively unites it with my being.
    Then there is a tremendous struggle
    to retain a unity of soul, but this
    strange world with strange desires prevails —
    a world of word-games, spectres, religion, disharmony,
    confusion, strange commands, pain and shame.
    And in a moment of clarity
    I have sinned with this confession,
    and I wonder what the punishment will be.


    THE REVOLVING DOOR

    She stalks the ward and shudders
    with every jangle of the key in the lock.
    Doors open and close for staff,
    but for her everything is out of reach.
    'A' Ward in the asylum is
    a place full of wanderers with deluded minds,
    slashed wrists and singed arms;
    a place not for the faint at heart
    because here dwell the misfits
    society has cast away.

    She stalks the ward
    and wonders if she will ever get out,
    if her mind will ever function
    in a manner acceptable to her family,
    to her doctors and bemused friends.
    Only she knows the ins and outs
    of the bizarre nature of the
    ghosts and visions which creep
    into her stargazing mind.
    If only she could concentrate,
    if only the voices would vanish
    and leave her with some peace
    and a will to emerge from the experience —
    patched up with psychotherapy and pills —
    to sally forth and brave the world
    with all its prejudices and obstacles.

    But it takes time for the mist to rise
    and for the mind to clear the polluted air.
    It takes time for her to live again
    in an alien world which threatens the delicate senses.
    Her eyes have seen the mind's fantasies,
    her ears have heard the mind's gibberish thoughts,
    her mouth has uttered the mind's ramblings.
    It will be hard when she goes
    out to the hostile world.
    It will be hard to survive dead-end boarding houses
    or the half-way communities of suffering sufferers.

    When the haunting delusions return,
    and the way becomes unclear,
    sadly it is back to the asylum with
    the jangle of the keys and the closing of the doors.


    AS SHE GENTLY BRUSHED MY LONG HAIR

    As the solid door closed behind me
    and the brusque nurses led me to the locked ward,
    I felt the world abandon me.
    I felt myself abandon the world.

    Before me were the forgotten people
    who shuffled and gazed mysteriously into space,
    and I was no one, just another nutter,
    just someone caught in a cosmic game
    where sanity and madness are engaged in a bitter battle.

    But something wonderful transpired
    and through my barriers came the unexpected.
    She spoke no English;
    she spoke a universal language
    that broke through all my sorrow and madness.
    And sitting in the day room weeping,
    I was suddenly transported to a kingdom of love,
    and a calm ensued
    as she gently brushed my long hair.

ON BEING CERTIFIED INSANE

Doctor: Who's the Prime Minister of Australia?

Me: Me!

Doctor: Count backwards from 100 in sevens.

Me: 96 ... 85 ... 60 ... 51 ... Doctor: I'll give you a number and a street name and I want you to repeat them to me later. Number 75, Jones Street. Meanwhile, what does this mean, 'A stitch in time saves nine'?

Me: God needs a needle to stop the devil.

Doctor: Do you know where you are?

Me: Hell!

Doctor: What was the street name and number I gave you ?

Me: I've lost contact with the owners.

Doctor: What is your name?

Me: The Virgin Mary.

Doctor: Why did you try to commit suicide?

Me: Bob Hawke told me I was contaminating society. ... and on and on into obscurity ...

Doctor: Clearly the woman's deranged!

Me: The humiliation does not cease as they lead you to the locked ward; a lunatic, a fruit cake, certified insane. And the soul is a fragile blossom nearing its end. All dignity is lost and the term of residence in the loony-bin begins with the auspicious title — Section 42!

    THE VISITATION

    O glorious woman
    who comes to me through the night
    claiming my senses in the blueness of your mantle,
    I watch my open window
    and wait for your presence to illuminate
    all before me in colours I have never seen.
    Hail, holy woman,
    blessed are you amongst all women.
    I know you as intimately as a long-time lover.
    I know your persuasive powers
    and your ineffable beauty too.
    I have seen you in all your glory
    and long to touch your gown and flesh,
    to infuse myself with your magic.
    Bless me, your repository on earth.
    Bless me, the one to whom you manifest yourself
    in vision after vision, moment after moment.


    THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN

    Sometimes when I look, I see you there,
    Queen of Heaven, Star of the Sea.
    I embrace you with all my desperate love
    and proclaim the mystery of our communion.
    It is you whom I want to mother me
    because you know my needs more than I.
    We have an eternal flame burning within
    and consecrate our union with joyous tears.

    But wait!
    Was it not you dear Queen,
    who one day told the tale of my evil?
    Vile woman! Despot of Heaven!
    We could have sung songs together forever
    had you not seen so deeply
    and exposed all my evil to the world.
    One gaze from your searing eyes
    and I am a diminished soul.

    But dear Star, dear Heavenly Queen,
    do not forsake me, like the father did your son,
    as I have come to depend on our meetings
    and cannot bear the ice of the void which
    separates me from your shimmering presence.
    Use your power and expel the evil, exorcize the devils,
    and let us sing again,
    let us sing hymns to our togetherness.
    My Queen of Heaven, Star of the Sea.

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Excerpted from Poems From the Madhouse by Sandy Jeffs. Copyright © 2000 Sandy Jeffs,. Excerpted by permission of Spinifex Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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