In my poems
You'll enter a world
Unlike anything
You've experienced.
Dark places
Where pain and suffering
Is commonplace
As hate and ignorance.
Victimhood
Isn't a badge
Wanting readers’ pity.
For these people
Don't have
Time or patience
In my journey of healing.
Rather
Society failing those
On the margins
What IT feels like
Carrying this stigma.
How people avoid you
Some type of Typhoid Mary
Spreading mental illness
Like the flu
Destroying lives.
Attack us
Implying
We're slackers
And fakers
Seeking easy ride.
Mental health cuts
Fiscal necessity
By short sighted governments
Balancing budgets
Funding law and order dogma.
Nary a whimper
From the voting public
Criminalizing a health crisis
Needlessly.
Taking easy way out.
Therisa © 2018
Author's note: A poem for Poets United’s midweek motif writing prompt: poems. Poetry, which speaks for those, who can’t.
4 comments:
These are necessary poems--hard as they are to feel and write. They are part of what's needed to change what is: "What IT feels like
Carrying this stigma." Yes. Thank you.
Poems that speak for those who cant - they are important, and I am glad you are writing them.
Poetry is a journey for poets believing in life's truth. And Words are wings giving power to the soul. Keep writing, dear friend.
You have brought up some very important issues, I can't believe the stigma still attached to mental illness, where there should be compassion there is only mistrust
https://mindlovemisery.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/poets-united-midweek-motif-of-poems/
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