(Not Yet Diagnosed Nervous)
I kicked over the wheelchair - couldn’t do the simplest task,
except the epileptic flailing of my army antimasque.
The hissing gas-lamp had me reaching for the mask.
You opened up my mind and you didn’t even ask.
I’m like a marionette with twisted strings,
my limbs are jack-knifing and my inner ear sings
of the pain of war and other perverse things.
I can’t find the peace that a hospital brings.
No matter how obedient your soldiers of war,
when shells reign down they’ll be shaken to the core,
until there comes a time when they can’t take anymore
and their minds shut down behind a glazed, closed door.
You think it might be shock waves, or poison from the shells
that’s making me withdraw into this epileptic hell
- sometimes you shrug your shoulders - say “we just can’t tell,
if it’s lack of moral fibre that’s making him unwell”.
Your treatments are barbaric, Persuade, Explain, Suggest
- baths, massage, electric shocks are really for the best,
when all my mind needs is aching, morbid rest,
and not feeling like a rat in a cataclysmic test.
You put me in this chapel, you sit me in this chair,
you give me books to read and feign a sense of care
-
but one day I will walk from here and people will not stare
at the dancing, crazy, screaming, Craiglockhart nightmare.
Leave me alone! Shut up! I think I’m going insane,
I’ve got all these bombs going off in my brain.
I’m like a rabid dog at the end of it’s chain
-
and they’re going to send me back to the front again.
© Ian Whiteley
