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.
