Protecting normal people like you, from people like me...

Activist poetry doesn't always have a place in the Melbourne poetry scene, particularly if you're talking psychiatric abuse. The audience tend to not listen and hear anger only. So, I rarely perform this style poetry in venues.

The ODDie poetry night was an exception, it was all about activism.
           These two poems I’m performing are about that shushed voice and the inability of society to listen, when activists speak, to anything but their memory of cruel propaganda campaigns.

 

The first poem, 'I've been trigger' talks about the idea of psychiatric abuse being justified because of the belief that 'but, they're violent, aren't they?' which is said about any marginalised group that governments wish to crush, or use in a way that infringes on standard human rights. Also the unjustifiable fear of symbolism and creativity, that is attempting to put OUTRAGE into peaceful means of protest, that ends up being called 'wrong' and 'ill' by psychiatrists.

The second poem, 'Unshushable' is a shortened version of this poem. It speaks for itself, or it should. 'We're already LOUD because we have every right to be allowed!'

ODD is a support group for activists, that ran the ODDie night. The ODD group are reclaiming of the term that diagnoses youth for their ability to recognise the need to defy abusive authorities.

Oppositional, disobedient, disordered, but with good reason!

Our outrage has been ignored and hushed for too long. Psychiatric survivors should be allowed to have a voice and psychiatric abuse should not be allowed!

Appreciate though, how difficult talking about this abuse is, because of where society is at, and because of what we’ve been through.

awareness is everything!

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Suicide prevention

I just don’t want to call the CAT team

I can’t apply what I learnt as a child

As a way to help another out of suicide.

I cannot cry those tears of desperation

To show my love, that prevented my mother

From taking her life. But I can listen

Like I did back then, to the things,

That psychiatrists judge and diagnose.

I can give enough understanding that may mean

That suicidal feelings can be expressed

Without the need for the actual action of harm

Happening to the self, perhaps, yes perhaps…

I just don’t want to call the CAT team.

I just don’t want to call the CAT team.

I hear myself scream as I am hauled in socks

Across the road, I cry for help, I am lost,

When that is the policy and procedure

To help someone through suicidal ideation

And unusual states of consciousness.

I just don’t want to call the CAT team.

I just don’t want to call the CAT team.

My mother feared that enough to know,

Never to see a mental health professional.

I know it enough from my own experience,

To flee when it is mentioned as prevention.

I just don’t want to call the CAT team.

I just don’t want to call the CAT team.

I am looking for something else,

Not what I did as a child for my mother,

But something else, because I’m an adult,

Who knows policy and procedure, but,

Wants to prevent that from happening

As well as the potential suicide…

I just don’t want to call the CAT team.

I just don’t want to call the CAT team.

What is and isn’t responsible I feel is warped

In our society, to the point where

Aversion therapy is the legal way

And gentler methods are discarded alternatives.

I just don’t want to call the CAT team.

I just don’t want to call the CAT team.

I don’t want a person that’s hurting to become

Subjected to imprisonment and forced drugging,

Asked about their symptoms and not

Considered as a person with individuality.

I just don’t want to call the CAT team.

I just don’t want to call the CAT team.

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