bi-polar disorder
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Spin the (pharmacy) bottle
The medication for REM sleep disorder, what leads me to occasionally smack Patrice with my left arm as I reach out to catch a baseball or assume yoga positions while asleep, foregrounds my amazing Technicolor dreamscape which I jokingly refer to as the Chase Light Calliope Fun House of Madness. It is overriding another medication Continue reading
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THIS SPECIES OF MADNESS
THIS SPECIESOF MADNESS This species of madnessWhich isn’t just talentGleams in the dark reachesOf my thinking self Without bringing me happiness.There is always, in the city,Clear or cloudy skies, but in meI don’t know what there is. —Fernandi Pessoa 6 OCTOBER 1926 Continue reading
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Vulture Heavy
I am vulture-heavy. My stories are caskets filled with black feathers, But the dead, in their vast merriment, egg me on. Write the motherfucking poem. See why I love them? — “I am vulture heavy”, Diane Seuss I am capable of light verse but it’s not my natural tendency. I’ve been diagnosed variously with adhd, Continue reading
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Down Into and Through and Out of Darkness
“this is the cold doing” — Charles Olson, “in cold hell, in thicket I do not know if I want another pill or a drill to trepan this malevolence that hangs like a dark shroud or a straight razor to slice life out of time. This is not a threat or letter in an unsteady Continue reading
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Divine Aphasia
title from a line in Lucky’s speech in Waiting for Godot—Samuel Beckett They took my hat. Yes I was rampaging mad drunken unsteady ever ready like an electric cat on a hot tin roof and glorious glorious the invasive Blakean angels and writing my God writing writing all the time writing. Some said it was Continue reading
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AWAKE
Brain: WE’RE UP! Body: What? No. We’re exhausted. Brain: There’s a war on, soldier. Rise and shine. Body: [Looks at elapsed time on CPAP.] We’ve only had six hours sleep. Deeply, physically exhausted. Can’t stop yawning.. Brain: We have to write this down. Body: [Deep, jaw-cracking yawn. Another.] Brain: RFK, Jr. wants to put people Continue reading
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The Chase Light Calliope Fun House of Madness
The medication for REM sleep disorder, what leads me to occasionally smack Patrice with my left arm as I reach out to catch a baseball or assume yoga positions while asleep, foregrounds my amazing Technicolor dreamscape which I jokingly refer to as the Chase Light Calliope Fun House of Madness. It is overriding another medication Continue reading
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The Agency of Chaos
A. I would not be here if I had not started my medication. B. I would not be here if I hadn’t stopped my medication. Both things are true. (Pages of examples, good and bad.) Continue reading
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Silent Running
Yes. I misspelled it, but I wasn’t at my best eight years ago. Bi-polar disorder met the job that almost broke me, and the Risperdal began to kick in. The pill saved me, and it erased me. I not only stopped writing, I stopped reading anything difficult. John Berryman and and Dylan Thomas might as Continue reading
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My Lost Years
This poem by Charles Olson so clearly captures my lost years, when poetry and I were strangers. The dose for bi-polar stole the lightning from my mind where poetry is born and I walked among the the dead of spirit. La Chute my drum, hollowed out thru the thin slit,carved from the cedar wood, the Continue reading
About Me
Mark Folse is a provincial diarist and aspiring minor poet from New Orleans. His past blogging adventures included the Katina/Federal Flood blog wetbankguide on blogspot.com which David Simon told NY Magazine was one of three blogs that helped inform Treme, and Toulouse Street–Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans, which once outranked the Doobie Brothers on Google Search. His work has appeared in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, The New Delta Review, Metazen, New Laurel Review, Ellipsis, What We Know: New Orleans as Home, Please Forward, The Maple Leaf Rag IV, and A Howling in the Wires (which he co-edited).
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Well Bottom Blues 