A little drum

Bought a little hand-drum

And as I travel on the road,

My lover asks me to play.

It’s wonderful to have that

Encouragement from him

Compared to the memory

Of others telling me that

My rhythm should go away,

That my music isn’t their sway…

I beat out the intrusive past nagging.

I beat out what’s going on now,

Not between us lovers but

In government policy. Crimes…

So many things just around

The wrong way, still, today.

Laws that call torture ‘medicine,’

Laws that call forced-drugging ‘care’.

I’m throwing up the past inside

That flashes back its sense-memory.

And I pound and I pound my palms

As I hear those kind words,

‘You’re going to beat this

You’re going to beat this

Thing you’re not wanting,

This thing that stops progression,

That suicides a person’s health.

You’re going to beat this

Thing that has no right to exist

Psychiatric abuse cannot persist.’

All becomes sound

As I pound out the feeling

And the bad emotions go away

Gets put into the sound,

Sound that is heard, outside me,

Sound that says so much more

Than words will ever really.

I never want to misdirect

My justifiable anger from much

Denied rights and the damning

Of so many others still feeling

The pain psychiatry inflicts,

With which I very much empathise.

I never want to misdirect this.

I have memory of other things,

That sometimes get me too,

But I don’t misdirect that,

I don’t want another to suffer

The wounds of abuse

Ricocheting from my words,

That just need a drum sound

To clip their harsh content.

No, I don’t misdirect it,

That anger has a place to go…

And I have my little hand-drum

To beat and beat and beat

And a lover that is someone

Who gives me incredible amity

Such that I could never imagine

Possible before… He recognises

The serious flaws in mental health

Laws that attempt to manage

Diversity by crippling ability,

By infringing basic rights,

By dehumanising and debilitating.

I beat and beat and beat

So all goes into sound and I can

Find another way, another way

Another way that might get there

And give a panacea to pain

That intrudes from the past,

Traumas that demand some kind

Of way of being heard,

Even if not always through

Sensible words and legalese.

The beat becomes easy

And travels and morphs

Back to where I want to be

In the land of love, traveling home

With my lover beside me.

Beat out my heart then,

And the emotion between,

Love, love, love, that dream,

It cures all, that beautiful sense

Of connection drumming.