My Mind – Shakespeare’s Words
My Mind,
Like two lovers star cross’d,
Doth protest too much,
Fortune like the market,
Where delays have dangerous ends,
And small things make base men proud,
Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear.
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity,
These words are razors to my wounded heart,
Such an injury would vex a very saint,
Asses are made to bear and so are you,
That unlettered small-knowing soul.
The heavenly rhetoric of thine eye,
For courage mounteth with occasion,
I will instruct my sorrows to be proud;
For grief is proud and makes his owner stoop
I do not ask you much;
I beg cold comfort.
Things past redress are now with me past care,
This music mads me: let it sound no more,
The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots, and wonders
At our quant spirits,
Lord what fools these mortals be.
I will make thee think thy swan a crow,
Virtue itself turns vice, being misplaced;
And vice sometime’s by action dignified,
See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.
Well then, once in my days, I’ll be a madcap,
A Corinthian, a lad of mettle, a good boy,
Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it,
Greateness knows itself.
I am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips let no dog bark!
God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man,
I never knew so young a body with so old a head,
This night methinks is but the daylight sick,
Past and to come seem best; things present worst.
Before thy hour be ripe,
I would give all my fame for a pot of ale, and safety,
But if it be a sin to covet honour ,
I am the most offending soul alive,
He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat,
Stemming it with hearts of controversy.
The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins
Remorse from power
An itching palm,
One out of suits with fortune,
The “why” as plain as way to parish church,
This is the very false gallop of verses.
Sell when you can, you are not for all markets,
A little more than kin, a little less than kind,
Season your admiration for a while,
Give thy thoughts no tongue,
These tedious old fools,
The indifferent children of the earth.
Come, give us a taste of your quality,
A very riband in the cap of youth,
Reason, in its self confounded,
Saw division grow together,
Words pay no debts,
My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr’d:
And I myself see not the bottom of it.
Farewell, fair cruelty,
The web of our life is of a mingled yarn,
Good and ill together,
Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it?
Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful,
Truth is truth
To the end of reckoning,
I do perceive here a divided duty,
For I am nothing if not critical,
Men should be what they seem.
It makes us, or it mars us,
Mend your speech a little,
Lest you may mar your fortunes,
The art of our necessities is strange,
That can make vile things precious.
Pray you now, forget and forgive,
I wonder men dare trust themselves with men,
I am Misanthrope and hate mankind,
Look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under’t,
Memory, the warder of the brain.
Shut up,
In measureless content,
Things without all remedy
Should be without regard: what’s done is done,
When our actions do not,
Our fears do make us traitors.
I bear a charmed life,
Eternity was in our lips and eyes,
Bliss in our brows bent,
Music, moody food
Of us that trade in love,
To business that we love we rise betime,
And go to’t with delight.
The beast
With many heads butts me away,
The game is up,
I wear
not my dagger in my mouth,
And art made tongue tied by authority,
The hardest knife ill used doth lose its edge.
O benefit of ill,
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art black as hell, as dark as night,
Your tale sir, would cure deafness,
The fringed curtains of thine eye advance,
Lest too light winning,
Make the prize light.
Do not give dalliance,
Too much the reign,
A kind
Of excellent dumb discourse,
But this rough magic
I here abjure,
O brave new world,
That has such people in’t!
The mirror of all courtesy,
This bold bad man,
Heaven is above all yet; there sits a judge,
That no king can corrupt,
A peace above all earthly dignities,
A still and quiet conscience,
‘Tis well said again;
and ‘tis a kind of good deed to say well:
and yet words are no deeds.
So may he rest;
His faults lie gently on him!
To dance attendance on their lordships’ pleasures,
Let us not burden our remembrances
With a heaviness that’s gone,
This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.
Shakespeare’s Words – My Mind
Ode to Li2CO3
For more than two decades,
I waged war with myself,
The perennial loser of each struggle,
People close to me aware that something was different,
But writing it off as the necessary eccentricity of a boy like me,
Peter Pan and Puck, Little Prince and Mowgli inside,
with Neruda, Hemingway or Einstein's mind,
My brain seemingly falling further and further into realized perception,
Madness,
Genius,
Insanity,
Unsure of what was going on or why,
Too humiliated to accept what was going on,
Or to let others in,
Paranoid delusions that were masked by internal pressures,
As my soul pulled me to this side of sane,
Which side I leave to you,
Using drinking and drugs,
Scotch and Cocaine,
Vodka and MDMA,
To settle my fraying nerves,
As the Beatles would say,
Eight days a week,
For through this destructive personal hell I created another day,
My inside joke,
With Doc,
Every session,
That he could medicate me,
But I felt shame,
I was embarrassed,
A personal indignity that hurt more than the recreational drugs and drink,
Nervous breakdown one;
1996,
my world began to let loose,
2001,
nervous breakdown two,
seeing the world different from reality,
this truly is where I began to slip,
breakdown three,
June, 2009,
No longer able to submit to anyone else,
Pushing love away, friends and family become strangers,
As the dance of disquieted animations held me in the balance,
Four, breakdown four,
Nervous,
Wanting so bad to change the world,
Make it a better place,
only to fail again,
as I had so many times before,
failure and abandon,
crushing my spirit as I slipped so deep into a depression,
that every minute I considered a gift,
as I wasn’t sure how much more I could endure,
how much can one man take,
after a lifetime of hardship,
thirty five years of perpetual unease,
how much more could I take,
no more,
becoming a recluse who everyone was worried may not make tomorrow,
as too did I consider whether it really would be a new day,
depressions hold on me,
so perverse,
so profound,
so permeating my every action,
getting out of bed a chore,
brushing my teeth,
cooking, eating,
even going to washroom became a dilemma of Herculean effort,
enter my psychiatrist and the inside joke that was no longer funny,
as my living had not become a joke,
it was a permanent and still is struggle,
between good and evil,
as I and I and I wage war with myself,
I still have a Napoleonic vigil daily,
The struggle for personal domination,
enter the management of mood and disorder,
through pharmacology,
the joke that was no more,
Cipralex, Zyprexa, Imovane, Seroquel and more,
Searching for the perfect combination,
That would return me to me,
Save that it didn’t,
Work on retraining the mind and getting on with life,
And now,
Li,
Number two on the periodic table,
Something about that fact extremely uncomfortable,
Li2CO3,
Lithium carbonate,
To manage my mood,
Three weeks to therapeutic levels,
That I may no longer be manic,
Up or down,
As I try to piece together the broken shards,
Of a once beautiful mind,
My eyes failing,
In and out of focus,
A side effect they don’t tell you about,
Forced to rub my eyes every few minutes,
Unable to look at my screen for longer than two minutes,
What kind of writing can I do in two minutes,
With little to now focus,
So now my struggle manifest is even greater,
As I fight against the clock of ill effects of necessary drugs,
My shame given way to determination,
That I can reclaim what is rightfully mine,
My own mind,
my fingers are crossed,
as currently too,
are my eyes.
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