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Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781742199498 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Spinifex Press |
Publication date: | 01/01/2016 |
Edition description: | None |
Pages: | 67 |
Sales rank: | 956,005 |
Product dimensions: | 5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.40(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Mad Poet's Tea Party
By Sandy Jeffs
Spinifex Press Pty Ltd
Copyright © 2015 Sandy JeffsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74219-950-4
CHAPTER 1
The Madwoman in this Poem
(After Bronwen Wallace)
For Gudrun
Yet how stupendous a psychosis
in which God is heard ...
Gudrun Hinze
The madwoman in this poem
lives on the twenty-second floor
of a block of flats
her husband and children gone
each day she waits for a letter
that never comes
her wrists carry a flurry of scars
her arms are dotted with cigarette burns
every day she contemplates jumping.
The madwoman in this poem
walks the streets
reciting Shakespeare and Milton
she shelters in bus stops and doorways
scrounges through rubbish bins
drinks from discarded beer bottles
begs for money to buy cigarettes
and a moment's respite.
The madwoman in this poem
slumps into a ramshackle chair
hiding herself
her large torpid body founders
her heavy breasts gush
drug-induced lactation
her body grows
with each anti-crazy pill
she reluctantly swallows.
The madwoman in this poem
transfixes in front of the TV
absorbing its many messages
Ally McBeal is her daughter
Eddie McGuire can read her mind
Ridge and Brooke are talking to her
are going to come in a helicopter
take her to Venice to meet Brad Pitt.
The madwoman in this poem
lives in a holy grotto
awaiting the Pilgrims
she carries the burden of Eve
smells God in the toilet
sees the Virgin above the lintel
has given birth to the New Messiah
carries the secret of the Holy Grail in her heart
was raped by the Devil
sees maggots wriggling in her stigmata.
The madwoman in this poem
is sure Beethoven stole the
nine symphonies from her
cannot walk on the cracks of the pavement
can feel spiders eating her brain
fears her head is about to explode
is going to the firing squad next morning
is a character in a Bruegel painting
is an oracle of the dead.
The madwoman in this poem
is everywoman
is any woman
is a mother, daughter
sister, lover, friend —
the madwoman in this poem —
is me.
Sensing Madness
Fateful days beckon
she loses herself to
the loosening of her senses
taste is tinged with poison
hideous sounds sear her ears
eyes are filled with the Madonna
and the mirror is home to a hag.
This is a time of dark and inglorious days
as the world looks away while
her senses sense insane nonsense.
Congratulations
Dedicated to every loopy, loony, schizy out there in la-la land
This breakdown of the parts,
neurotransmitters and synapses,
recognises my physicality,
though I am a mental being.
Gudrun Hinze
Congratulations!
Now that you are not quite right upstairs
and a candidate for Bedlam
your brain will be malformed
awash with chemical imbalances
the basal ganglia, frontal lobe
limbic system, auditory system
occipital lobe, hippocampus and
neurotransmitters are faulty
there will be structural abnormalities
neurological abnormalities
neuropsychological abnormalities
electrophysiological abnormalities
cerebral metabolic abnormalities
and your brain is almost certain to be
smaller than a healthy one.
Face it you've got a dud brain.
Congratulations!
You have inherited a schizophrenic gene
infectious agents are working away in your body
it could be that your cat caused your lunacy
perhaps a naughty virus has invaded you
your cholinergic system could be in trouble
or you are in need of mega doses of vitamin B3.
Congratulations!
You are having an outburst of homosexual libido
there are repressed sexual complexes
you have an abnormal psychosexual constitution
and we can't dismiss your psychic regression
your loss of ego boundaries
the gross impairment of your reality testing
or your regression to an earlier infantile
phase of psychosexual development.
Congratulations!
You have a disorder of self-experience
involving hyperreflexivity and diminished self-affection
and hypersensitivity to human contact
you are the victim of the
foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father and
therefore inhabited and possessed by language
don't discount modernity either because
your madness is the product of industrial capitalism
one can't rule out your family driving you mad
especially your mother (don't take it personally)
and the traumas you experienced in childhood
it could be the marijuana you smoked
you may simply be having a sane response to an insane
world.
Look, you really are in a bad way
I suggest you have a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down
while this psychotic episode passes.
Medicated
Roll up, roll up
join me on the medication trolley
I've been on it for years
I was Largactiled with bitter syrup
I was Pimozided and Melleriled and numbed
I was so Stelazined I was like a cat on a hot tin roof
I've been Modecated into a shuffle
and Clozapined into a stupor
I was Seranaced to drowsiness
and Abilifyed to sleeplessness
when I was Risperidoned I lactated like a cow
they Cogentined me to stop the look ups but I kept looking
up
I was Lithiumed and Epilimed to even my pendulum
I've been Imipramined, Prothiadened, Lexaproed
Effexored and Zolofted to happiness
I was Valiumed and Ativaned into tranquillity
at bedtime I was Mogadoned, Stilnoxed and
Temazapamed to slumber-land
now I'm Zyprexaed and ravenous and fuzzled
I'm Lamotrigined and balanced
and Seroquelled
yes indeedy, I'm medicated and dedicated to
the medication trolley
here's looking at you pill bottles.
Cold Chemical Comfort
(After Wislawa Szymborska)
I'm an antipsychotic
I mend broken minds
let me turn your paranoia into trust
your confusion into clarity
I'll expel those voices and
tame your wild delusions
I'll numb your pain and deaden your anxiety
I know how to lighten your load
in the absence of family and friends.
But I have a dark side
I'll make your head feel like it's
stuffed with cotton wool
your ideas will evaporate in a fog
I'll make you crave McDonalds and sugar
have you eating food
like a deranged hog
I'll watch you grow into obesity
with each morsel of me
I'll do away with your desires and urges
your mouth will feel like a sandpit
your hands will tremble
and you'll wobble
you won't shit for days at a time
my kindness will eventually kill you.
But I am your chemical lifeline
give me your madness and
I'll soften it with sedation
just swallow me with water
let my cold chemicals comfort you.
Marinade
My brain is marinating
in a blend of antipsychotics
sanity tastes bitter.
Unquiet Mind
It must be that the mind is elsewhere,
somewhere or nowhere.
Gudrun Hinze
Furled wings
un-furl-ing
(flap & flail)
furious
drafts
whip
the uneven air
calm--turns--to--unease
she is
t-r-e-m-u-l-o-u-s
& un-steady
drowning in
(fume & chaos)
rousing to the
command
of an
unwelcome presence
overcome by the
!!assault!!
of braying persecution
reason is
b-l-e-e-d-i-n-g
stillness hemorrhages
a crack is
o-p-e-n-i-n-g
& no light gets in.
Of Shifting Images and Auras
She is a polyphonic song of moving moods
of shifting images and auras of dreams
her panorama of imagined selves is a
mythical poly-perception in a transforming world
she is the force for creation and
the impulse to self-annihilation
she is untouching and untouchable
the subject and object of her own madness
a towering Babel of psychotic dissonance
the one who drove Dionysus to madness
who herself is driven mad by him
she is his delusion and fantasy and
her own delusional polymorphous thought
she is a flawed work of art in an illuminated
wonderland of rhythms and Humours
she is a self who is never alone
but she walks alone in the world.
Acrostic #1
For Heidi
The S Factor
Sometimes
craziness creates a
heightened
illumination of the
zeitgeist
originality its
privilege
humour its
revenge
every outsider
nonconformist work of art is an
ingenious
act of lunacy.
Seeing the Insane
The mad purify us
with their sacrifice
Elizabeth Campbell
They stand at eternity's gate
gifted by the gods with a divine madness —
Crazy Jane, Crazy Ann, Mad Kate
a rake in a madhouse
lunatics dancing at a ball
Charcot's madwomen of Salpêtrière
fools on a ship
Tom O'Bedlam
a knight errant attacking windmills
Tasso imagining Gerusalemme Conquistata
Lear fantastically dressed in wild flowers
drowned Ophelia
Mad Naomi of Kaddish
Dürer's Melancholia
the madwoman in the attic
the March Hare and Mad Hatter
Mad Meg at the Gates of Hell
a bewildered face in Goya's Madhouse
an inmate in the men's ward at Arles.
They are the fascination of Art
a curiosity of history
a gift to the world
a mirror to our sanity.
Waging War
A mind is a theatre of war
tanks rumble across the synapses
the light horse brigade charges through the frontal lobes
mustard gas poisons serotonin and dopamine
artillery barrages neurotransmitters.
The armies of reason and insanity face off
dispatches from the psych wards report fierce fighting
the casualties are mounting
no prisoners taken.
What will the war memorials say?
They gave their sanity
we honour them.
This is not the war to end all wars.
A mind wages perpetual war —
against itself.
Alice in Larundel Land
Alice
fell
down
a
rabbit hole
& landed in
topsy-turvy Larundel Land
locked up
captive to lunacy
& a passing parade of
Mad Hatters & March Hares
eccentrics &
musos & artists & a poet or two
& ordinary folk
with the
d
e
e
p
e
s
t
sorrows
& in-con-ceiv-able lunacy
sharing delusions
like needles
voices babbling in the background
ECT before breakfast
stelazine for lunch
prothiaden for dinner
melleril at
suppertime
& to bed with a hallucination & a
moggi
— a place full of hunger —
hunger for
— kindness,
— friendship,
— love
a curious, (secluded) world
its dark side
kept well hidden
shadow-haunted inmates longing for peace
with themselves
no one knowing the wars that raged within
or the deep pain wedged between
(spirit & flesh)
destroying lives —
friends & family picking up the pieces.
Larundel Land's
red brick walls now rubble
windows s-h-a-t-t-e-r-e-d
graffiti telling another story
a playground for vandals & urban explorers
once peaceful gardens
dis-mem-ber-ed
sombre ghosts roam the precinct
calling us to remember them —
we will remember you
sitting in smoky rooms
crying alone
laughing with deranged angels
— muddled & paranoid
— chaotic & manic
— anarchic & confused
prisoners stalking locked wards
keys jangling
medication trollies
r-u-m-b-ling into melancholic rooms
& the humour
the-blacker-than-black-humour
the-cut-through-all-the-crap-&-misery-humour
you will not be forgotten —
we shall erect a monument
to commemorate all who
passed
through Larundel Land
we will remember
the hell-hole & sanctuary
the bottomless pit of despair
unexpected place
of healing
Alice landed on her head
in upside down
Larundel Land
the madhouse that once stood on the
— edge of
town
where time dawdled
& everyone hid in the
shadows.
The Dark Hours
I love the dark hours of my being
My mind deepens into them.
Rilke
come upon me without warning
opening wide the rifts of my mind
their insufferable nights
of reckoning and judgement
endless whimpering self-pity
of a life half lived in regret.
I spend too much time in these hours
my mind darkens into them
a long creep into a deep weeping wound
where I know myself too well
a place of all lost dreams
a place of ever-forming sorrows
a place of a never-ending ache
I see too much
feel too much
labour with my inconsolable self
yield to my sombre mood.
This is a dark hour
in which my soul does not rest in peace
yet a poem is born.
Dangling
The wall between us is very thin.
Why wouldn't a cry from one of us
Break it down?
Rilke
The wall between us God is a fortress
we shall never cry to you again
nor hear your cry to us
but if that wall were dismantled
would we meld with your divinity
stand at the gates to the other side
teetering on the edge of perception?
But that is for another time.
It is the paper thin walls
which crumble, we fear madness
calling from behind, shaking
their sheaths, rattling their partitions
stalking us from within
its uninvited companion is acuity.
We walk in the midst of such sharpness
barely holding ourselves together
knowing there is no completeness
in this flood of sensory wakefulness
because as keenness overwhelms us
and the flimsy walls quiver
we dangle from a thread of sanity
while madness snaps at our heels.
Ceaseless Night
The mind is sick tonight.
Raymond Carver
Ah Night, as your dust settles upon us
you bring rest — even to the wicked
but in my room you set your shades upon me
and wrench me from my slumber.
This bed is a rack
and your torturer slowly turns the screw
until a confession is uttered.
No solace in the darkness
only the noise of silence and
the fitful pounding of the heart
and the throb, throb, throb of one's head
and always their bitter recriminations.
To want for peace
but the soul consumes itself
how hard it is to wrestle with the Angel.
O Night, long, unendurable Night
your claw reaches inward
and one lies in frightful wake —
cunning how the dawdling morning
colludes with you
cruel, ceaseless Night.
The mind is sick tonight
and night after night after night
the mind turns on itself — and bites.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Mad Poet's Tea Party by Sandy Jeffs. Copyright © 2015 Sandy Jeffs. Excerpted by permission of Spinifex Press Pty Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgements,The Madwoman in this Poem,
Sensing Madness,
Congratulations,
Medicated,
Cold Chemical Comfort,
Marinade,
Unquiet Mind,
Of Shifting Images & Auras,
Acrostic #1,
Seeing the Insane,
Waging War,
Alice in Larundel Land,
The Dark Hours,
Dangling,
Ceaseless Night,
The Witching Hour,
The Burrow,
Mental Rape,
Occupy My Mind,
Caring for My Mind,
Therapy: Prices Update,
Passover,
To Melancholia,
Into the Dark Wood,
The Mad Poet's Tea Party,
Acrostic #2,
Seroquelled,
Super Madwoman,
I Peeped,
How?,
Solitude,
Awakening,
Spirals,
McMadness,
I Called You Mad,
There's Something Dead in My House,
When They Came to Get You,
I am Not the Same Person,
Surgery of the Soul,
Threadbare,
Calculating the Cost,
Suicide,
Staying Alive,
To Be or Not To Be,
Beggar,
Housemate,
Downsizing,
The Social Worker,
Where is the Rage?,
The Sanity App,
Done to Death,
A Life,