A Bilateral Dissection of Manic Depression
A Poem
The treachery of her illness
sliced age rings around my heart.
The bleeding continues.
When spring would unfurl itself,
she molted her dark mantle of sorrow
and squirmed back into the land of the living.
Her shining countenance lulled us
to drift back into our fragile cocoon of denial.
our eyes veiled to the coming heat.
Now she sought in earnest
to stretch the envelope of her euphoria
and cast off the burden of her housewifery.
She engaged and enraptured her unknowing accomplices;
the merchants and real estate agents
anxious to sell her dreams of new homes and shiny new appliances:
those necessities of the American dream
(thought to cure emptiness.)
Her mission of delirium was not to be denied.
Those were the modus operandi of her manic phase
before the crash and burn of her autumnal decline.
As the frothy excess of her drunken euphoria wore off
she quietly tumbled
down that dank stairway
into the basement of her soul.
And abandoned us for her winter lover.
She huddled under cover
and clutched her narcotic companion
until the circadian rhythms of spring
once again awoke the sleeping Medusa.
