Aftermath



Listen to the sound of the sirens screaming
They have come to take me away.
The voice I heard, I heard,
Vehemently speaking, into my right ear,
In a language, that was unfathomable.

It was a very early morning, mid-May,
Darkness still masked my bedroom window,
Hidden by the silent motion of the vertical blinds,
As they swayed ominously in the late spring breeze,
Back and forth, to and fro, in some irregular motion.

Lost in thought in some nebulous fantasy
In which I found the friends of the family,
Rummaging through my belongings, they were.
It was the aftermath of my suicide,
The poetry of my pain they found, then read,
Huddled in a corner weeping copious tears.

In its own way my illness was terminal,
Chronic, in some sense of the word,
Psychologically fatal,
It had ended my life.
I had painted its time line across an oblong canvas,
Shades of darkness: schizophrenia.

I now am somewhat aware; they did not believe
How mesmerizing the situation.
My thoughts and speech at times, incoherent,
My behavior deemed irrational.

Listen to the sirens scream;
I had threatened arson;
In my left hand, I held a book of matches that came from an old tobacco store,
The boom box blared “Burning Down the House.”
They came, arrived and captured me.

A dark curtain was pulled over my eyes,
As many weeks passed me by.
I sit alone now in my living room,
There is so much I do not remember.

.
Haphazardly sitting upon my glass coffee table
Were a pile of torn envelopes, bills and letters,
Unrecognizable as the pictures on the sallow- toned walls.
Everything seems so far from real now,
Although the frightening voices seem to have gone,
The ones that threatened to take my life, though
They still speak garbled words in monotone at times;
They are my sole companions.

I once believed I didn’t deserve to live,
But that is over, at least for now.
I still believe I am being talked about,
From the first floor to the fourteenth,

I hear their vicious and conniving voices
As I turn the corner in the hallway.
Strange voices still plague me at times,
As the boom box blares at its highest volume- but
I no longer hear the sirens screaming…




Claudia Krizay (schizoclaud)