I go to a lot of Melbourne poetry events and usually read my
comic poetry. And, while I get laughs and a good response to this I’ve noticed
there are ‘serious poets’ who think I haven’t got anything to say that might
make them think, that I’m not doing anything daring, that I’m flippant... I’ve
noticed this particularly with slam poets. They’re a pretty serious lot and yes
it is becoming a genre, you can pick current slam poetry by its rhythm, tone,
angle and length. Slam poets are into activism and human as well as animal rights and good on them. But,
I learnt a while ago that if I’m to get up there and say what my fight is about
and the prejudice I’m against, people seem to take a step back and cast me into
the bin with nonsense things. In other words, I may as well be doing comic
poetry, because at least then, I know I’ll have made the fuckers who want pure
entertainment laugh. At least some portion of the audience will be satisfied.
So here it is, my slam poem:
The psychiatric slam-it bin
I don’t want to talk about
This stuff anymore.
I’m wrong, I’m wrong,
I’m so very wrong…
To ever mention
Things on my mind.
My mind, that lost the plot
And got a blast of indifference
In a set up treatment plan
That shut me down,
And brainwashed me into
Continual self-hate stupidity
As I felt my brain switch off
During those doses and doses
That made me dose
And wish it was all over.
I could see no light
When they insisted I’d have to
Take it forever, their medicine
That stuff that made me sick.
I had to agree and be agreeable
To their treatment of me.
Thank them and tell them they're lovely.
But I shouldn’t mention this
Because I’m wrong, so wrong…
I know that’s what some psychiatrists think
And demand I agree
Or else I’m meeting criteria
In section 73 involving electricity
To my, ‘treatment resistant’ body.
My period flows immediately
And doesn’t appear again while I’m addled
By their medical treatments.
I couldn’t get pregnant if I wanted to
On their doses of neuroleptic drugs.
They give ECT to those expecting
Because they don’t want to give
The foetus too many harmful chemicals
That they think are okay to give me.
A few doses of electricity
Are less likely to hurt the baby
Apparently, yes apparently
'It’s quite a peaceful procedure,'
The psych nurse assures me.
'And what can you do
When someone hears voices
That are telling them to harm?
If they kill themselves
Then they will also kill their baby!
What can you do
But forcefully cause their temples
To sting with electric shocks
That make them forget they’re pregnant
And hopefully make them docile
As a cute little pup?'
I listen to the psych nurse
Giving his lecture
I hear a psychologist concede
With his beliefs that don’t
Match well with lived-experience
Of those who rage and complain
That they never want ECT again.
And I hear a command voice
That says, ‘Kill the fucker dead!
He’s advocating torture,
The prejudiced ugly smuck.
See that electrical chord
Plugged in for high voltage?
Cut it in half and take
The live wire to his ugly mouth
And ask him how at peace
He is with feeling that!’
My teeth grit with memories
I bite down the old threats
Onto the insides of my cheeks.
Freaks we are to them.
Those who label us ‘mentally ill’,
Tell us to be good little patients
And keep swallowing their pills
Or they’ll have to drag us in
And stick pricks in our behinds,
Full of the stuff they say is good for us.
It stops us from thinking,
It stops us from creating,
Our anger is squashed,
Our protest is dismissed.
We have to comply,
We have to be
Agreeable to their treatment
Or else, you see.
Medication has its effects…
Can’t really do work on it,
Can’t really talk on it,
Never can drink on it,
Can’t really drive on it,
Can’t get a job on it,
Can’t really read on it,
Can’t remember much on it,
Can’t enjoy sex on it,
Certainly can’t have a baby on it.
There have been cases when
People have gone full term
All dosed up to the fish-eyed stare.
Babies don’t like it though,
Ugly chemicals, really ugly…
Forced on those mothers
Like they’ve been forced on me.
Of course I’m wrong. I’m wrong
I’m so, so wrong… they say.
Society knows they are right.
They make the laws that do
What they think does good.
Tiny little pricks and tiny little pills…
It’s only chemicals in milligrams,
And I’m the one who is the fool.
It’s nothing, it’s ethically sound,
These psychiatric forced treatments.
Sometimes there’s side-effects,
It’s just something on the side,
But if you weigh up the imbalance
Who is listening to who?
‘I mean surely it is better
To drug than to talk things through!
I can’t be bothered with them,
They don’t make sense, that’s the issue.
And surely it is better to have someone
Who is disabled and depressed
Than running around manically undressed?
Because that’s what those sort do,
These mentally ill and who knows
If their neurotransmitters weren’t
Shut down to near zero
By our wonderful medicines,
They may turn psycho killer
As you know these people do.’
That’s not exactly what the lecturer says,
But it’s there in a hint and tone.
I can sense his bleeding heart prejudice
And his promotion of those
Who give him a stance and sponsorship.
And as long as society agrees to his tune,
His volume will be turned up to ruin us all.
The abusive laws will be maintained,
That police those who won’t ever commit crimes,
But have breached the law
By appearing, ‘mentally ill’
Which is enough criteria
For any psychiatric bin
That encloses us within.
I don’t want to go on about it
Or people will start to accuse me
Of being in need of psychiatric intervention.
And that I’m wrong, so very wrong…
Anyway, most people don’t want to know
About the abuse of the abused
Whose coping mechanisms lead to diagnosis.
They don’t want to understand.
They just want to know there is control
Over those who seem strange and give them fear.
They don’t want the unknown to be free,
Unpoliced with its scary possibilities.
Psychiatrists can show prejudice, no problem.
Complain too much about what they do and people can
Pick up the phone and make that call
That’ll have us incarcerated for nothing at all
And on those shut-it-up-shut-it-down drugs
Forced into strait-jackets by a society that could
Be better, if they thought a little more
About what really is happening,
What people with experience are saying,
Instead of keeping up their delusional beliefs
That there’s nothing that can be done
With a person in a waking-dream,
An altered state of consciousness
With unusual sensory experiences,
Except to drug and electrocute them.
That’s seriously unimaginative thuggery!
Of course though I’m wrong,
I’m so wrong and those who
Think I’m wrong are a totalitarian right.
Yep righteous upstanding citizens
Who don’t want to be bothered
Listening to all this, ‘upsetting propaganda
That deprecates psychiatric practice.’
Yep I’m a bitter x-mental patient,
A sick woman dampening pharmaceutical optimism.
I’m riddled with some apparent disease
They intend to find microbial cause for!
I should never be listened to,
Because I got diagnosed schizophrenic
And once you’ve got that, it’s there for life.
When propagating science argues against me
Of course it’s me that’s unbalanced,
Not science, society or the law.
I’m making up stupid conspiracies.
I should keep my bloody mouth shut
Like I did when I was under their order,
Or they might just decide
To lay down their outrageous ‘health acts’
That debilitate and contaminate
And make me fucking irate!
Psychiatric rubbish is something
That needs to be put in the bin,
And people who have been tortured by them
Need society to be listening
And recognising the changes that need implementing.
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