20150607 (moods, meds)

The first time we met I told my shrink 

There’s nothing wrong with me a

Stadium full of cheering fans couldn’t cure

I already have a patient with a stadium full

Of cheering fans and he’s no better off

For it than you he answered with aplomb

When he retired years ago I said I’d be OK 

But took the card of his successor that he offered

As I rose to leave. Now except for

The green morning pill and the yellow

Evening capsule to keep me upright

You might never know the mess who

Came home in August of 1964 

From the Dominican novitiate

After four days of constant tears.

They had tested me, an MMPI which was

Clearly not enough to find the flaw

In my well-trained unstable mind

To this day I cannot say why my

Rebellion took that infantile form

Which shames me as I write, reminds

Every future me stands on shaking ground

For most of my senior year I weekly met with 

A religious counselor whoprayed he was adept 

As he tried  to wash the wound 

Daub it with mercurochrome

Apply some gauze and bandaids which 

Enabled me for graduate school 

A dutyless assistantship, enviable award

Had I known what I was doing

But that patch too unravelled to reveal 

A seductive black hole as deep and destructive

As any whirlpool I’d ever imagined drowning in

Bumbling through the next few months I

Met shrink number one and tried talking it out 

Drafted he sent me to shrink number two

For whom I took all sorts of tests I have them still

Did I want to try pills no my father took pills 

Goofballs he said made him fuzzy and sleep

Talking I managed to go on with life

Job, marriage, promotion, and kids. 

These guys knew what buttered their bread 

When it’s time to quit you’ll know, they said

I knew when to come back too

When the ground started shaking

And the black hole left notes in my pockets

Shrink number three was a waste 

But he got me through a year or two

By shrink number four I knew 

Talk alone was no serious help

Prozac, Paxil, Effexor, Wellbutrin 

We’ll have to find what’s just right

Like Little Red Riding Hood I teased

Did talk ever do any lasting good? Can't say

No Rosebud had a scene in my movie 

So with the little green pill in the morning

And the little yellow capsule at night now

When I wander past the sucking black hole

I don’t get vertigo and fall in. But what I pay 

For the safety of step is forever forsake 

The exuberant joys of heaven and earth 

Which from time to time I sorely regret

c. J.S.Manista, 2015