Poetry: Autism
An Asylum Diary
This is a series of poems written between 1986 and 1992 while I was in the charge of Bexley Mental Hospital; they are in no particular order and I feel that, as a sum total, they do express the chaotic feelings and weird thoughts of those years.
Painkillers and Poetry
This was written soon after my nervous breakdown and would be around 1986/7. The form is iambic pentameter in couplets.
Painkillers and poetry - they don't mix -
Pop-a-pill - kill-a-pain - take-a-fix.
Look at the air, dead and dull, mumble,
"My dear, please, please don't fumble!"
Fetch me a book of words today,
Let me read from 'Doubleday' -
Purple tree under a foamy lea,
Basalt vulture above the sea -
And fairy-lemon gateaux
Perched with nutty bureaux.
Avoid all vocal clots,
Beware of verbal blots:
Avoid the sound of 'Kaa',
That jungle ballerina.
Painkillers and poetry - they don't mix -
Pop-a-pill - kill-a-pain - take-a-fix.
©Chris Green, 1986 & 2006
Grammatical Schizophrenia
This was written in 1987 and is in the haiku form.
I am You and You are Me,
We are Schizophrenic,
are not We three.
©Chris Green, 1987 & 2006
Psychoses
1987/8 an attempt at humour, though it shows that I was not 'in touch' with what was happening to me.
'Neurotics build castles in the sky,
Psychotics live in them
And Psychiatrists charge the rent.'
Cynics do not believe in them,
Hypochondriacs die in them
And Critics, sincerely, doubt them.
Psychopaths kill for them,
Obsessives want them
And Advertisers boost them.
Psychologists create them,
Sociologists need them
And Schizophrenics live apart in them.
Mail Order Firms sell them
And Society buys them.
©Chris Green, 1987 & 2006
The Dark
1992, though short this is a complex poem in that I am talking about what makes each of us who we are, what we are; also there is the description of the asylum and the watching nurse; then there is the sense of isolation and torment; the memories from the past; the sense of the adult who is still a child; the sense of being trapped; there is a gothic element. The words are multidimensional and have separate meanings within each sub-construct. The form is iambic pentameter in couplets.
Definition of despair:
Someone's mind beyond repair?
A wilful creak on the stair
And a fly trapped in a spider's lair,
Torments of the child - alone
With the angry ringing telephone,
Echoes crash from the mockery stone:
Nanny's voice in the nursery tone
Brings cold comfort and order,
Stilling the anguished recorder:
"Child still!" Without a border,
Haunted by a watching warder.
©Chris Green, 1992 & 2006
Crosstalk
Written when I was in the process of 'cracking up' and was going through a bad patch with the bureaucrats of the civil service and their 'red tape'. The MoT is the Ministry of Theology, this came about following much argument and use of commonsense and logic which the civil service threw out as being irrelevant. It thus came to me that they must base their arguments purely on 'faith'.
"You are Emanuel Nailmaker the Seventeenth?"
"Yus!" Sniffs and then spits on the floor and clatters his teeth.
"You make ... nails ... What are nails?"
"Nailing. Nails ain't they. Nail-nails!!"
"For what purpose are they?"
Sighs, spits, clatters, "You see them trees,
well, thems bits of things, see,
and I puts thems that be
with thems that ain't and nail..."
"But what are all the nails for?"
"That's what you've got a hammaphore,
and semaphore, and a metaphore."
"I am from MoT: TRADERS,
and I wish to know:-
WHAT THE NAILS
will be used for?
Perhaps, some pails?"
"I've got to nail a man to a door
for Charity - "
"Who?"
"For the Market Traders;
all proceeds go to the top Temple."
"Is he MoT'd? You can't use a door -
definitely, you cannot use a door;
besides, it is not in the warranty:
doors are for blocking the holes in the walls."
"But we haven't got anything else...”
"You cannot use a door. No, not at all,
have you nothing else that could be used?"
"We want to have a solid construction...”
"I am sorry, but, absolutely, no doors."
"We've got two spars left over
from the last ferry from Memphis?"
"They'll do. You can use them;
but the final construction
will have to be MoT'd."
©Chris Green, 1986 & 2006
Grammatical Exercise using 'here' and 'now'
Confusion and starting to come out of the breakdown, no date but it is sometime in 1988, between the breakdown and the start of the rest of my life. Form is based on Pindaric ode (very, very loosely).
Where is here? Here, here is here.
Here, as a wraith of shadow, here
And here, over here. There? No, here.
Here is now? Not now, but now - now.
Also, henceforth now, therefore now,
Now thence, and therefore, whence now.
Here and now is terminal life,
Death but an aged blink away;
If I die - where? Here and now.
Man; mad, mad man of Life's music,
Deafened by the 'Junk-box' sound
And highly 'preysed' by his critics.
Here and now is juvenile death,
Life but an infant blink away;
If I live - where? Now and here.
Now is here? Not here! Here, this here;
Here then, and here-to-fore ... when? Here;
Also, hereforth, therefore, here.
Where is now? Now, now is now.
Now as a sandy timer. Now
And now. And all now. There? No: now.
©Chris Green, 1988 & 2006
?
As near as I can tell this was done after leaving the hospital, but while I was
still receiving treatment (as an outpatient) - 1989. I was in a destructive
relationship with another ex-patient, and was feeling more imprisoned then, than I had in the lockup wards. My room window over-looked a road and this poem and the next reflect some of my feelings. The form is iambic pentameter in couplets. 'Priestley' refers to JB Priestley.
Along the road outside, petrol-driven demons
Demonstrate their wills; hurtling sermons
To some modern, mechanical Hell.
Fire and Damnation may delve and dwell
In 'Priestley' minds, but God Cars career
To some greater, better Hell, we hear.
Faster, faster, less and less fuel,
"Runs on air", some say, "Truth to tell".
©Chris Green, 1989 & 2006
Speed
I saw a piece of extremely bad driving, I saw a small boy, and I remembered a
conversation about the death of someone's son in a road 'accident'(?).
Speaking at a personal level, I believe that people who cause 'accidents' as a result of drink or incompetence should be treated in exactly the same way as a person who goes out with a potentially lethal weapon. This country gives misleading signals to children - we have zero tolerance for vandalism and noise; yet we tolerate people who drink and drive: we should have zero tolerance. No alcohol if you are driving.
My son sleeps in the cemetery;
He is innocent commentary
Against the pathwayside Power urge,
Of some Motorist's auto-cross surge.
"My God!! I didn't see him..."
"But I always come this way..."
"My God!! I didn't know him..."
"I save ten minutes this way..."
My son sleeps in the cemetery,
He walked by the way and bled by the way
Painting that 'pay-ved' promontory:
All to save ten minutes...or so you say.
©Chris Green, 1989 & 2006
Green's Biscuit Packaging
Sonnet with couplets. It should be read as though the poem is one of those advertising voice-overs.
"One pre-packed biscuit: MONSTER shaped "NESS" -
Sterile, odourless, crumbless and tasteless.
GUARANTEED; and Absolutely Crushproof;
And Absolutely guaranTEED (!!) GERMPROOF.
Handily packed - one to a box, only:
"NESS" - Monster Biscuit Value, REALLY.
For purposes of storage, stack six by;
Presuming your store is six metres high.
Use no hooks, as these may be damaging
To your Vacuum-packed Biscuit Packaging.
Your box may be stored indefinitely:
Biscuit must be eaten immediately
After it is removed from the vacuum...
(Fanfare for 'Crumbhorn'): GREEN'S CALORIE DOOM!"
©Chris Green, 1990 & 2006
Dying is Easy
This one is about suicide, a topic with which I am familiar, both from knowing
others who killed themselves, and from my own experience. In my case I made only one attempt, I was not crying out for help, it was my intention and actions to kill myself - I swallowed 60 prothiaden tablets, along with other stuff like paracetamol. At the time and for some years after I felt that I had been very unlucky. This work took a long time to write being started in 1989 and finished in 1992.
Dying is easy, it is the living that is hard;
A quick scratch of glass upon a pretty throat,
A razor cutting deep into a slender forearm,
The rope, the gas oven and that little bottle of pills.
Dying is so easy, too easy; living is hard;
You die a little each day, and each day
Is another day lived, when you could have died.
Dying is giving in to that tiny voice
That nags and wheedles in your mind:
"go on... do it... its easy... come on, do..."
It is harder to fight, to keep on fighting,
When the mind and body say, "The War is won."
Why fight? It is so easy to die, dying
By the wayside like some forgotten tramp.
Dying is easy: what will they give you?
A little stone marker in some wall -
The ash is over there, in that petty urn;
Half-a-pound of ash, half-a-pound of granite;
And some cemetery scribe will pen a last line:
"Born... Died... Rest in Peace, you of little Faith."
So you have died? What are you doing here?
Or could it be that you have decided to stay,
Live awhile longer, reach out and grasp Life;
Solve that mild problem that you had,
That wheedled and nagged, and said, "Let go."
Living is hard, it is the dying that is easy,
Each day a little more lived, each day
Another day follows, time drags
Like Kipling's Minute; you think too much.
Live each second as a new second,
Each minute, each hour, each day, each year;
Live: learn to love the little minutes
And the difficulties that inhabit them -
It is the problems that make life worth living.
©Chris Green, 1989-1992 & 2006
Some Thoughts About Leaving a Mental Hospital
In 1990 the then Conservative Government came up with the NHS and Community Care Act, which effectively closed a large number of mental hospitals, and large numbers of clients did end up on the streets. However, prior to this the hospital was releasing patients knowing that they had no homes, no abode, no help, and no money. I left the main hospital in 1988, full of hope for the future.
I'm going out today,
this is my day:
full of confusion
and much disillusion,
stronger than I thought
but no time to be bought,
friends at my side
with a place to abide
and love in my heart
which will never depart.
Now I'm going today
down the real highway,
sadness in my breast
and fears to best,
a life worth living
and something for giving.
I'm going, like Mr Toad,
on the open highroad.
©Chris Green, 1988 & 2006
Tramp
The reality was somewhat different, while at the psychotherapy unit I was left
to my own devices at weekends and holidays and when I left. I became familiar with the best sleeping places on Dartford Heath or Streatham Common, I knew the best places to push a broom so that I could get a meal, and I knew where to go as a jobbing gardener and where I could get a shower and a change of clothing. Then there is knowing what water is safe to drink, and what will give you diarrhoea. Where to go to defecate or urinate. Where you were safe and who to trust, and who to watch, and who to avoid. I was on the streets for a fair while, but I never begged, I never sat around looking pathetic with a scrawled sign and brand new £70 trainers on. I worked and the little jobs are still there, the ones that buy you a meal, or a bath, or a change of clothes, or somewhere to sleep.
"His home's that rubbish bin," they yell
as they cycle by on their new BMX bikes,
bought for them by proud father.
A stone is thrown, a boy yells, "Tramp."
No pity, no love - just indifference,
the boy walks away ... home.
I go to Crystal Palace and sit in the Park,
my feet are wet with sweat and pus from blisters.
Mosquitoes drink freely on my bare skin,
I watch as each is gorged and flies away -
little friendless wanderers, I'll not hurt you.
Children running in the Park, "Tramp!"
"Ain'tcha gotta home mister?"
"Nice bin over here mister, smells luvly mister!"
I wish they'd go, leave me in peace,
and yet their taunts fill my lonely space.
There is no more lonely time than dusk,
the people leave the park, heading home,
day withdraws into semi-gloom.
People walking dogs become less,
the streetlights come on: and I?
I wait for the darkness of night,
I wait to find my bed and hope it isn't wet,
don't let it rain. I snort half-laugh -
there's rain enough in my heart.
Please can I have a warm night?
©Chris Green, 1988 & 2006
Christmas
For me the loneliest time was Christmas when I was homeless; it is a time when the lack of a home or close family is especially painful. I did not, and do not, like Christmas as such because the enforced jollity makes me depressed. What I missed when I was homeless was the sense of 'belonging' somewhere, somewhen, somehow, with someone.
Murmur of voices and soft lights,
Christmas trees and coloured balls,
Shapes dancing on the curtained windows:
The cheerful creations of Christmas.
Soft footfall, head down, plodding -
Not looking, but knowing the scene:
Not wanting to look, but needing to belong
And have a nicely-bricked address.
Tears of the heart, neither love nor hate
But longing - deep drive for belonging:
Stepping sadly, no price for a haircut,
Nor money for food, nor bed, nor shave.
Passing the church and the lytch-gate,
He is drawn to the yellow-wreathed door;
Hears the soft choir and the calling voice:
"My dear friends, welcome and thank you!"
©Chris Green, 1988 & 2006