Tag Archives: depression

Lindsay McLeod, ‘The Swing’

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The black dog comes less to me lately
I fight the bait of the Siren’s barbed songs
I’ve tightened my belt to the hunger I’ve felt
scanned the sky for a place to belong.

But I’ve been to this point of the compass before
since we twitched off our vows and our rings
alone in the dark at one end of the arc
where that half-broken pendulum swings.

Still I’ve nothing left here to hold onto
afraid I’ll fall back to the place that I came
where I’ll take up my axe to the rainbow again
and bite deep into bright shining pain.

*****

Lindsay McLeod writes: “Fear not for my current mental health, as I wrote this 20 years ago.”

‘The Swing’ was originally published in Snakeskin.

Lindsay McLeod is an Australian writer who lives quietly on the coast of the great southern penal colony with (yet another ferocious Aussie animal) his cattle dog,  Mary. Lindsay still drives a forklift to support his poetry habit.

Image: “Feeding The Black Dog” by @mich.robinson is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Ballade variant: Johnny Longfellow, ‘Like Normal People Do’

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Ya’ ever wanna go someplace?
I mean…jus’ disappear.
Leave ev’rythin’. But, leave no trace.
Git your ass out o’ here
To somewhere – could be far or near –
Where you’re no longer you.
Where you can dwell, year after year,
Like normal people do.

Ya’ ever stare at your own face
But still can’t see it clear? –
Ya’ struggle hard jus’ keepin’ pace,
While neighbors, they all steer
‘Tween college, marriage, an’ career,
‘Til – somehow coastin’ through –
They barbeque, an’ drink col’ beer
Like normal people do…

Ya’ ever think they won that race,
But still, fall prey to fear
Them dreams ‘n’ rainbows they all chase,
Once gone, won’t reappear?
Or, do they jus’ choke back each tear
As one beer turns to two,
Findin’ it’s Hell to persevere
Like normal people do?

Ya’ see? You ain’t the first to veer
Off course. That much is true.
Or, last to lose all you hol’ dear
Like normal people do.

*****

First published in The Rotary Dial, Issue 34, December 2015 – best dial poems of 2015

Johnny Longfellow writes: “I’ve discussed the personal circumstances that partially inspired this poem in interviews at the Talk with Me podcast and at the now defunct Sonnetarium, both of which can be linked to in the bio below. So, I’ll just note here, the poem was written roughly six months after a heavy bout of depression. During said bout, I inadvertently stumbled upon The Geographies of Missing People website, hosted by Glasgow University, wherein I took special interest in their Stories of Missing Experience page. Listening to those mashed-up accounts of people who’d elected to go voluntarily missing was profoundly helpful to me during a dark period in my life. With that, I can only recommend to anyone going through a similar period in their own lives that they consider listening to those accounts. For, I can confidently say they helped inspire in me more than just a poem.”

Johnny Longfellow is a poet from Massachusetts. His work has appeared in The Five-Two, The Literary Hatchet, Misery Tourism, Punk Noir, and other fine literary venues, with more work forthcoming in Form in Formless Times. You can learn more about both him and his poetry at Heeeeeeere’s Johnny . . . Longfellow, that is.   

Photo: “Missing Persons” by ChiralJon is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Odd poem: Abraham Lincoln, ‘The Suicide’s Soliloquy’

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Here where the lonely hooting owl
Sends forth his midnight moans,
Fierce wolves shall o’er my carcase growl
Or buzzards pick my bones.

No fellow-man shall learn my fate,
Or where my ashes lie;
Unless by beasts drawn round their bait,
Or by the ravens’ cry.

Yes! I’ve resolved the deed to do,
And this the place to do it:
This heart I’ll rush a dagger through,
Though I in hell should rue it!

Hell! What is hell to one like me
Who pleasures never knew;
By friends consigned to misery
By hope deserted too?

To ease me of this power to think,
That through my bosom raves,
I’ll headlong leap from hell’s high brink,
And wallow in its waves.

Though devils yell, and burning chains
May waken long regret;
Their frightful screams, and piercing pains,
Will help me to forget.

Yes! I’m prepared, through endless night,
To take that fiery berth!
Think not with tales of hell to fright
Me, who am damn’d on earth!

Sweet steel! come forth from out your sheath,
And glist’ning, speak your powers;
Rip up the organs of my breath,
And draw my blood in showers!

I strike! It quivers in that heart
Which drives me to this end;
I draw and kiss the bloody dart,
My last—my only friend!

This poem was published anonymously in the April 25, 1838 edition of The Sangamo Journal of Springfield, Illinois, under this introduction: “The following lines were said to have been found near the bones of a man supposed to have committed suicide, in a deep forest, on the Flat Branch of the Sangamon, sometime ago.” For various reasons it is now commonly assumed that this is the poem that Lincoln’s friend Joshua Speed told Lincoln’s biographer William Herndon about, a poem that the President had written on suicide as he struggled through a period of deep depression.

A full discussion of the identification of the poem with Lincoln can be found in the magazine Shenandoah, and I happily quote their assessment of Lincoln’s merits as a poet:

The poem is similar to other mortality poems of the period, though even more melodramatic than most (the last stanza, in which the speaker continues to narrate his feelings after he has stabbed himself through the heart, is particularly painful). Aside from the historical curiosity of its authorship, the piece—with its glamourizing of suicide and its overwrought morbidity—does little to distinguish itself from other amateur poetry in the school of Poe.

Photo: “16 Abraham Lincoln” by US Department of State is marked with CC PDM 1.0