mental health poems

Head of the Table

The best he can do,
Lash out at people who
Never had the opportunities
He did, who never did
Anything but make his meals,
Shine his shoes,
Clean his toilet.
Out of all the choices
Set before him,
He settles on writing
Things to hurt them,
To secure his place
At the head of the table,
And make sure the
Would be usurpers
Don’t get any ideas.

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One Person

All he had heard
His whole life
Is how bad he was
And how he would
Never amount to anything,
Until one person came along
And showed him that
There was more to life,
That words didn’t have to hurt,
A wonderful new world of
Love and kindness
Unfolded before him,
Renewing his spirit and
His belief in himself.

Tough Talk

How easy it is
To dismiss an
Entire segment of
The population,
Of human beings,
By simply saying
That they’re lazy,
Or that they’re
Lucky to get the
Pittance they receive
To barely subsist
Instead of meaningful
Opportunities to
Succeed on their own,
Or that they should
Just go out and get
A job when there
Aren’t any.
Tough talk is cheap,
Real solutions require
Nuance and compassion.

I Don’t Know

I take a chance to
Speak my mind and I’m
Instantly uneasy,
Such is the nature of
Consciousness, a moment of
Certainty followed by
Inevitable questioning.
What the answers might be,
I don’t know, though
Others assert they do;
I don’t believe them,
It’s always the ones who
Say they know everything
Who really have no clue.

Everything Could Be Better

I wish I could convince him
That things don’t have to
Be this way, that we could
Make the world a less
Hard and cruel place than
It sometimes is, that
Everything could be better
If fewer people heeded the
Call of fear, anger, avarice,
And became open to love.

Contort

I see his face
Contort, betraying
The inner conflict
That comes from believing
Something that isn’t
True, twisting reality
Into whatever it becomes
When it is extinguished
By raw fear and bias,
Self-preservation at
The expense of others.

When It Happened

It was only
When it happened
To her that she
Realized what
Other people had
Been going through
While she and her
Friends were
Putting them down.

Passing It Off

Just when it
Seems like things
Couldn’t get more
Appalling, they do.

Standard rules don’t
Apply here,
Just some strange
Perversion.

Passing it off
As normal,
This calamity
Of brokenness.

Impulse

He talks eloquently,
Movingly about
Things like
Equality,
Kindness,
Peace,
Hope,
Compassion.

He’s often met with
The same depressing,
Dismissive looks
And comments
Denigrating his
Optimism and
Replacing it
With hopelessness.

Entire spheres
Populated by
Dull
Bullies
Overpowering
Any positive impulse,
Creating a harder,
Meaner world.