{"id":1901,"date":"2008-07-25T11:09:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-25T11:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=1901"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:29:31","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:29:31","slug":"poetry-friday-neurotic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=1901","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Friday: Neurotic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Join the Club<\/b><\/p>\n

Flashing my neurotic’s badge I dare them<\/p>\n

to ask me for my license. I don’t look<\/p>\n

much different from the rest of them –<\/p>\n

in fact, a certain calm emanates.<\/p>\n

I’ve seen and felt so much I’m like<\/p>\n

a bird on a withered tree, singing.<\/p>\n

Diagnosis proclaims me not psychotic.<\/p>\n

Sensitive and shy, this patient<\/p>\n

has symptoms of depression with a touch<\/p>\n

of anxiety and agoraphobia.<\/p>\n

We’re not supposed to read our files,<\/p>\n

but just the same, we do.<\/p>\n

It’s really quite interesting<\/p>\n

the way the doctors size us up,<\/p>\n

and there’s a preening of feathers,<\/p>\n

and comparing of notes.<\/p>\n

Sensitive and shy sounds quite genteel,<\/p>\n

as opposed to schizoid, paranoid<\/p>\n

and abusive, anorexic, manic,<\/p>\n

or simply mad.<\/p>\n

I’m really quite presentable – not that<\/p>\n

you could take me anywhere – I tend<\/p>\n

to shiver and sweat in open spaces.<\/p>\n

Still, I only suffer from a disease<\/p>\n

as common as a cold, ubiquitous<\/p>\n

as birds on withered trees, singing.<\/p>\n

Poetry as therapy is not quite acceptable.<\/p>\n

Myself, I find it more effective<\/p>\n

than valium. It’s just that if<\/p>\n

the literary world took us too seriously<\/p>\n

we’d be out on our necks, and ours,<\/p>\n

like Anne Boleyn’s, are extremely slender,<\/p>\n

even if the executioner is very expert.<\/p>\n

We are a clean and well-behaved lot,<\/p>\n

don’t need a leper’s bell,<\/p>\n

but keep our badges polished<\/p>\n

just in case we recognise our kind.<\/p>\n

I’m introspective. What are you?<\/p>\n

Oh, me, comes the reply. I’m just a bird<\/p>\n

on a withered tree, singing.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Elizabeth Bartlett was born in 1924 and died early this summer<\/a>. I discovered her through a piece in the paper<\/a> and really enjoyed the poem there. Before she died, a major retrospective, drawing on more than 50 years of her writing was published – Two Women Dancing: New and Selected Poems<\/i> (Bloodaxe Publishing<\/a>) – emerged in 1995. This poem is from that collection, and also appears in a new anthology, We Have Come Through: 100 Poems Celebrating Courage in Overcoming Depression and Trauma<\/i>, edited by Peter Forbes. The volume celebrates the 10th anniversary of Survivors’ Poetry, a UK charity founded to help support the mental health community.<\/p>\n

Poetry Friday is today at the mentally balanced blog of A Year of Reading<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Join the Club Flashing my neurotic’s badge I dare them to ask me for my license. I don’t look much different from the rest…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[93,10],"class_list":["post-1901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-poetry-friday","tag-views"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1901"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5046,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1901\/revisions\/5046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}