bi-polar disorder
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
William Burroughs would like a word (or two)
I remember 22 and I don’t mind dying. I always had one last 1957 silver certificate folded in my wallet, coins for the phone, and the way to the next whiskey bar. Repeat after me: 504-522-9771. Manias magnificent opening night after night. The curtain of purple cannot mute the applause in my head. Repeat after… Continue reading
-
Bike
I’ve got a bike, you can ride it if you likeIt’s got a basket, a bell that ringsAnd things to make it look goodI’d give it to you if I could, but I borrowed it. “Bike” Pink Floyd I think I was cycling the other day. No, not around the park. Instead I started reading… Continue reading
-
Dymphna, Patron of the Mad
I am reading On A Wednesday Night poems from the creative writing workshop at the University of New Orleans, and discovered a saint story I don’t recall from my confirmation Book of Saints. That is likely because I had the boy’s edition, from which we were to select our confirmation name. I chose Thomas after… Continue reading
-
Touched with fire
“Sufficient anxiety is its own / persistent meditative state.”. – K.S. Reading an MFA anthology of a program I’m interested in and halfway through I come across a poem that makes me think: bipolar disorder. Most students have two or three poems and she has only one. I hope she made it. I recently met… Continue reading
-
Just another manic Monday
Sunday Neurosis: Victor Frankl is thought to have coined the term Sunday Neurosis referring to a form of depression resulting from an awareness in some people of the emptiness of their lives once the working week is over. Psychology Wiki. Saturday’s are my least favorite day of the week. Allowed to just sit and drink… 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, Trampoline, Unlikely Stories, Peauxdunque Review, LMNL Anthology, 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).
.
Well Bottom Blues 