13 Depression poems

I swallow a pill but there is no cure A city map won’t get me where I want to go Scaling the scaffold, mindless of the mall, unaware of driveways where housewives dodge the wrecking ball, I crawl outside these vacant blues and into the contours of your eyes

Oh happy shades—to me unblest! Friendly to peace, but not to me! How ill the scene that offers rest, And heart that cannot rest, agree! This glassy stream, that spreading pine, Those alders quiv'ring to the breeze, Might sooth a soul less hurt than mine, And please, if any thing could please. But fix'd unalterable care Foregoes not what she feels within, Shows the same sadness ev'rywhere, And slights the season and the scene. For all that pleas'd in wood or lawn, While peace possess'd these silent bow'rs, Her animating smile withdrawn, Has lost its beauties and its pow'rs. The saint or moralist should tread This moss-grown alley, musing, slow; They seek, like me, the secret shade, But not, like me, to nourish woe! Me fruitful scenes and prospects waste Alike admonish not to roam; These tell me of enjoyments past, And those of sorrows yet to come.

can kill you can fade your life away friends are all out shopping ain’t nobody home suicide hotline is busy and here i am on my own with a pill and a bottle for company and heart full of been done wrong i’m a candidate for the coroner, a lyric for a song saturday afternoons are killers when the air is brisk and warm ol’ sun he steady whispers soon the life you know will be done suicide line i can’t get you best friend out of town alone with a pill and a bottle i drink my troubles down the man i love is a killer the man i love is  thief the man i love is a junky the man i love is grief some call saturday the sabbath it’s the bottom of the line some say whether last or first, my heart’s gonna burst and there ain’t no help my way here with a pill and a bottle and a life full of been done wrong i’m a candidate for the coroner, a lyric for a song

My life is vile I hate it so I’ll wait awhile And then I’ll go. Why wait at all? Hope springs alive, Good may befall I yet may thrive. It is because I can’t make up my mind If God is good, impotent or unkind.

Roslyn has nothing going nothing to fight for no work to do she couldn’t name one desire that is not someone else’s or a man she cannot claim where she came from will not claim who she is or the way she cries so no one can see she has no work to do cannot finish books feed herself or go out alone she is always late not to sit alone somewhere and wait she wouldn’t know what to do Roslyn doesn’t want a thing but she waits for something anyway she has no work to do she holds off interests passions and opinions everything but the facts and these come to her from dramas and the papers she agrees with fiction and what people say i wouldn’t trust her in court or on my back a woman without a dream is a fault in the earth all steam and liquid fire Roslyn goes to work has a job but no calling waits for the word to call herself no one ever remembers her name or where they saw her she waits to be told she’s the only one her tyranny is silent small and sexual her losses are great she has not called herself said, “I’m here, now, deal with me” Roslyn wouldn’t hurt a fly but people fear her sleep her unconscious the primal whatever that wants to play it might have guns out for the rest of us

Let’s make believe I am happy, I laugh Black poison, all of me Its bottleful, Become sparkling water

So proudly she came into the subway car all who were not reading their newspapers saw the head high and the slow tread— coat wrinkled and her belongings in a paper bag, face unwashed and the grey hair uncombed; simple soul, who so early in the morning when only the poorest go to work, stood up in the subway and outshouting the noise: “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, I have a baby at home who is sick, and I have no money, no job;” who did not have box or cap to take coins— only his hands, and, seeing only faces turned away, did not even go down the aisle as beggars do; the fire had burnt through the floor: machines and merchandise had fallen into the great hole, this zero that had sucked away so many years and now, seen at last, the shop itself; the ceiling sloped until it almost touched the floor— a strange curve in the lines and oblongs of his life; drops were falling from the naked beams of the floor above, from the soaked plaster, still the ceiling; drops of dirty water were falling on his clothes and hat and on his hands; the thoughts of business gathered in his bosom like black water in footsteps through a swamp; waiting for a job, she studied the dusty table at which she sat and the floor which had been badly swept— the office-boy had left the corners dirty; a mouse ran in and out under the radiator and she drew her feet away and her skirt about her legs, but the mouse went in and out about its business; and she sat waiting for a job in an unfriendly world of men and mice; walking along the drive by twos and threes, talking about jobs, jobs they might get and jobs they had had, never turning to look at the trees or the river glistening in the sunlight or the automobiles that went swiftly past them— in twos and threes talking about jobs; in the drizzle four in a row close to the curb that passers-by might pass, the squads stand waiting for soup, a slice of bread and shelter— grimy clothes their uniform; on a stoop stiffly across the steps a man who has fainted; each in that battalion eyes him, but does not move from his place, well drilled in want.

He is pushing a black Ford through an empty street - a car like his father's that beat the flat roads like wind in summer and brought him here. He never forgave his father. That was the year he left home. Then there was talk of weather and everyone was packing. Windmills were stopped all over Kansas. He is thinking of fathers, the ways they never forgive you, withholding love like lust. But they quit, they stop like pumps. There is no way to set them working again. He is thinking of mothers, how she could not know how he half followed girls down dark streets of his heart, how that loneliness is passed to sons, to the fathers of sons. He is pushing a black Ford. Its problem is such a heart you cannot give it enough care. Like a father it will quit. And there is no end to this.

The descent has deepened the interior lengthened designated ending Blind pulled down inside and then shot up again to see east via the plateglass a moon a monsoon an ashram I used time almost wantonly in that bald but sensual sky to give me gusts and more measurement not to snap the stars shut but Joseph said you really ought to tender how you sail by eye your soul is just a length of baby

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of man In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be. But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan, O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee? Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear. Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod, Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer. Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.