What you should really fear

Shadows in the back

Something form the past

Stalking you from afar

Knowing where you are

It gets so much nearer

Almost like in a mirror

It grabs your neck

Your friends stand back

Wondering why you just strangled your self

 

Reviews

[James Hanna-Magill]

Dear GDMonster

All I can offer you is my first, completely honest, open-spirited reaction.

I read this poem once and it had an immediate raw, visceral impact, a mark of recognition, an interpretation of it that someone out there perhaps may have the same view of self, of life as I do.

Perhaps it is that reaction we all as writers are seeking from our readers and if so you have hit your target with me, eloquently.

I really do admire this piece. It is honest and not self-complimentary.

Note however short the piece, you have just deeply affected me as a reader with your brevity, even if what follows on my part is anything but brief.

Whether you meant it this way or not, what follows is my personal take.

You can only ever converse with one reader at a time.

Everyone will have their own perspective based on their own experience of life.

I have said it often to myself but have at times admitted to others - the only person who really scares me in my life who has ever really frightened me badly is myself.

That is how your poem has marked me.

The sadness is I have been quite capable of and at times still can be capable of badly frightening others too.

On here, people will often see the excessively erudite, wordy, jaunty self-mockery of my writing or my apparently educational reviews.

But still waters run deep.

And sometimes people can easily drown in them.

I fear my past, the bad things I have done, the nightmares and retribution that have followed and to this day linger. And I fear ewven more the bad things that I may do again,when anything but lucid, in moments of instability and illness.

I see this in your poem!

My past is a difficult one. I have tasted much of life, its highs and its lows, too much of the extremes with little in between.

Somewhere between:

Rich and poor;

Kind and unkind;

Gentle and a monster;

A scholar and arrested under the Mental Health Act, standing in a court, remanded in custody to a mental hospital;

A high flyer in business and complete rejection and isolation by family and friends;

Love and endlessly abusive, soulless sex for its own sake; and

Drinking champagne at business functions and water from a toilet in a police cell.

Whtat have you seen that makes you strangle yourself? I hope for your sake it is something you can still bear.

I did Cambridge University and Director of one of the largest companies on the London stock Exchange.

But I have also done the other end and I assure you, if you think the preceding is heaven, everything else has been pure hell.

These days my life is improving with medication and a little help from my friends.

Should you feel a connection, you might like to read some of my pieces, Understanding, Green or say even my novel Split. Without obligation naturally. I never make read requests though I will accept others.

Split is a plea for understanding not so much for me but for those other poor souls who too are stigmatised by mental health diseases they did not ask for but inherited genetically at birth; the lot they were handed; the deal that's rotten.

Mererly chemical disorders of the brain; not unlike a broken leg, but unlike those, no-one comes to our beds with grapes that smile. All run a mile.

Self-harmers; Schizophrenics; Obsessive compulsives; Bulimics; Anorexics; Manic Depressives, Depressives;

Those whose endless objective in life is to commit suicide; and and and ....

I have met them all and I have cried and still do cry for them and their anguish.

Split is a novel with a moral purpose.

And even if I never make one bean out of it I want to get it out there to the widest audience possible.

Any help you or anyone else reading this can provide would be gratefully received.

Please note and I apologise in advanace I can be either debonair or in your face frighteningly shocking.

Bear with me.

I have found some who can mock me at my smiling honesty, but I can assure you they all run a mile, when I am manic.

Read my poetry / prose / my 'About myself' on my profile to know me better, if you will.

If at times like these, I write too many words, it is because part of my disorder is racing thoughts; words that stumble over each other in an effort to get them out.

Perhaps you meant something else by this poem.

But you needn't say if it is too personal to say.

But I only do candour.

I am Bipolar.

It is both my greatest blessing and my greatest curse. I inhabit the world of double-edged swords.

You wanted a reaction to your poem GD Monster?

Well I think you have just got one and as for all your readers it is highly personal.

To smile back at a reviewer who supposes I think myslef better than anyone as an author, I repeat, 'You have the makings of an author', a saleable writer, in my humble opinion, such as it is.

Your fellow traveller and with kind regards

James

[Rika]

thanks, im bipolar too, i really apreacate your thoughts on my piece, im glad you liked it. -GDM

[James Hanna-Magill]

Dear GDM

Funny thing is I read you as bipolar.

I guessed before I commented.

Hence the immediate recognition.

Bit like I recognised the bipolar in Leonard Cohen, the first time I ever heard him sing.

We are all artists.

It takes one to know one.

With my best wishes

James

[Shannen Forrester]

short, sweet and complete... ignoring my silly rhyme
nicely written and enjoyable to read, nice job :)

[Rika]

thanks so much!

[Shannen Forrester]

you're welcome XD

[Coyote Poetry]

A very nice tale. A amazing story. To write a complete story with beginning, plot and good ending in so few words. Take talent. Thank you for the outstanding poetry.
Coyote

[Rika]

Thank you very much!