Sara Hobler

The following poems are from Sara Hobler’s poetry collection, E=MC^2.

Holy Lunch

Chief complaints are boredom and back pain

And Hunger, puts the body under a strain

Hungry makes arthritis hard to ignore

They weren’t lying when they said it keeps the score of your life and mentality

Flesh prison ain’t a prison, just a slice of reality

Blue eyes blind to green, all purple and wordle and weird plurals and geese

Did I stop making sense? So did my mind

It’s a hard thing not to unravel with time

With all the endless waiting and watching

Even harder when your habitat’s plotting

Hard to be anxious, but they’re up above

There’s birds in the nest and they’re watching with love

There’s babes in the nest and they’re watching me too

They see me and are scared of eyes that are blue

Hell, me too bitch

But that don’t make me a stitch witch

Nor a snitch, bitch

Fact is I’m mostly hungry

Mostly achey

Arthritis all kinds of venomous snakes

Tryna not be so damn flakey

Not live under gear

It’s hard when there’s no control, I really have so little in here

Preserved in Amber like gold, a little choice

Gold hair, gold eyes, time to rejoice

Towel for a prayer mat, leader above

ECMC, psychiatric meds but with… love?

Maybe some of em

Lots of ‘em look and we’re scarin’ ‘em

Don’t wanna cause fear

That seems to be my easiest role in here

Fear is not a role I reject, it’s not one I claim

They got no photo, just remember my name

Say Ra like the sun, Saira like the air

In Spanish Sarita, if you like, if you care

About the love that I give and the love that I need

Needin’ lunch, holy fuck Can I get some food please?

---

Talent and Blessings Don’t Matter at ECMC (Lessons from the Psych Ward)

There is only so much process you can reasonably expect someone to do

I feel like I’ve hit my limit

Shit’s got me feeling bored and stupid like the village idiot

Need my creativity need a job

I’m all full of all sort of needs to sort out this agony of idleness

They say it’s a kindness to myself to take so much time to myself but what do I do all by myself except circle a drain I don’t want to drain out of?

Can I take a plane or a train off this cliff of boredom without alarming me and everyone that loves me?

Still processing neuropathy and dark shit discussed in therapy

Like the fact that the nurses sedated me against my will needlessly because they were scared of me

Don’t care that they’re the real scary she’s, the real scary ones

The ones keeping me locked away from the sun and the fan

It felt like nobody cared that the son of God sees all including patient abuse, including how if you scary enough they’ll take your fuckin’ shoes

They don’t got a clue the trauma they causer with the drama and gel/powder painted claws, damaging psych mentality, my prayer is done so more it be

Amanda and JD, were they manic or just anxious?

Why did Corey have to take all this?

Why won’t Fawzi just get all the words out?

Why wouldn’t they just let Jaxem the fuck out?

People no danger to themselves or me

Still in lockup, docs give no fucks you see

False profits and false prophets get out easy

Druggin’ the fun out of Aggie

You ain’t fun no more, that’s how you get free

Behavior in the health, good behavior in hell

And it doesn’t even come with Mercy

Quitting’ Cymbalta cold turkey

Can’t see color, can’t smell nothin’, feelin’ wonky

Temperature a mess, cold water on hot hands

No one cares to listen, no one really understands that big emotions are not themselves a disease

Drug’ll fuck your mind up till you can’t even see

I’m Eliza spitting’ rhymes now, not lies now, no I’m no fucking donkey

It’s a song but I wrote it in the wrong key

Singin’ red teeth, spitting truth through the nose bleed

Now I got time to kill but no blood to spill

You can’t take anything further away from me

Robbed of all my autonomy, my work and my loves all a trifecta of purgatory

Abuse and sex crimes by blonde bitches who look at me and see witches

Plural

I’m just one person, big feelings on a fleshly mural

Trying to make sense of the senseless violence done to me

Trying to make sense of the senseless violence done period

I’m deadly serious

This shit needs to get a hard look at it

A world full of angels seeking their halos and wings, instead get shot down with syringes and bans that take wedding rings

No wedding ring for me, no wedding ring for Sarah not even a tattoo

In the hospital they treat you like a damn fool and then wonder why you behave any differently

Sorry ECMC but the truth you saw in there ain’t the real me, it’s the me you brought out of me

It’s the eagle you carved out of a hummingbird that was trying to rest on a dead tree

I’m not a dead me, I’m just me, so why did you try killing me to make me whole again?

I’ll tell you doc, you have cost me all sorts of friends by locking me up in this shit

Made some new ones too, but the anger and the loss are harder pills to swallow than anything you gave me in follow up

Divorce the PTSD, divorce from real me, you people never trusted me to take care of me

It’s scary

I know in a moment I had lost my mind, but damn is that license to be so fucking unkind?

How am I supposed to find peace in the belly of the beast?

How is anyone supposed to heal when you hit them hard with rules about what is and isn’t real?

Makes you wonder who’s the delusional one, the patients or the system

All I know is the needle toothed fucker takes everyone as a victim and doesn’t care if we scream or we cry

More fuel for the fire, more reasons to make people want to die to escape this

I know Al, you’re still here and you can’t take this

Neither can I, knowing people suffer every day in this hellfire of some hospital’s fucked up design

But what can I do, I’m just one person and I don’t even have a second shoe to drop because of what the hospital took from me

I have a lot of friends, lot of family

Most people ain’t so lucky

Screaming on the wind “why did you do this to me and him and her and them and everybody?”

I wish I knew an answer, I wish I had a better answer than just to scream

Maybe someday when I am healed I will have energy to dream of a better future for this

But for now, all I can do is sleep

---

Infinity Down Time (Akathisia)

Descending into madness with infinity fill down time

Boredom worse than a day without Sondheim

Missin’ Jackson and art and practicing fun rhymes

Who woulda thunk the answer was with me in the hospital the whole time?

How many poems does it take to soothe a soul?

Will there ever be a time where I truly feel whole?

Surely all this distress is still takin’ its toll

I feel wobbly on my feet, I ain’t no newborn foal

Born again, with religion to boot

Finding god, finding who, wait to drop the other shoe

The spirit waiting for the flesh to be a fool

In the kitchen waiting on hope like distant stars

Praying help ain’t any kind of way to far from here

Needing help in all things, feelin’ super subpar

Subpar medical treatment go figure

Treating patients with all the patience of the days of old tinctures

None of it measures up and neither do I

Feelin’ like Euridyce, longin’ just to see the blue sky

Lookin up, knowing it’s hard in the light with my own blue eyes

Prayin’ please God, how many times does my soul need to cry?

Do I really gotta want to die to be taken seriously?

Do I really need to cry like this for any kinda feeling?

I’m atlas shrugging, trying not to hit another guy

Yelling hey I’m out here struggling

All my insecurities smuggling past the psych point

Wondering the whole time what’s the damn point

Wondering when the payoff will be worth the investment

Feel like a baby again in purple choir vestments

Hey, at least now I don’t gotta ask for refreshments

Anxious gratitude, trying to feel good about recommencement

Is this really a fresh start?

Does all this suffering really do anything for art?

Or is all this shit more like a giant brain start?

Har har, very funny, at least you can still find some humor

Gratitude’s a real bitch when you remember it coulda been a tumor

Not cancer or anything even really life threatening

Just boredom and brain threatening to get lost once again

Keeping a firm hold on all the pink wrinkles in my head

No need to smooth em or slow em, I like my brain

Just need some more stimulus to keep from going insane

---

Respiradone

I can’t write poetry right now because I have no feelings to channel

Brain’s on the wrong channel

Body’s lost the signal

Just wanna run away, feelings too difficult

Feel them in my chest and gut trying to get out anyways

How can I help me, how can I stop and pray?

Trying journaling, not to make it stop, trying to identify decay

I feel like a tooth with a cavity and way too much novocaine

Gotta let it wear off and realize where is the pain

Can’t chomp down with broken teeth, ouch

So where is the pain?

In my stomach and my chest, tight like balloons ready to pop

I don’t want to pop again, rage ready to explode

How can I let out some gas, lighten this load I can’t even feel right?

Something must be right, I can still write

Not too contrite

Miss being able to feel

Miss my own bright light

Girl, you know I like to shine bright

---

Violent Quarantine Part 2

In heaven you’re not forced to strip

Endure rude quips

Prove your worth to every captain of said ship

In heaven they should give a shit

Smile even when they’re in the shit

Or, at least that’s Nick

Betch, Beth, she seemed a bitch

Turns out she’s a good witch

Magical charge nurse, gets the ward fixed

Main provider soon, that’s the real miracle whip

Not the rules whips

Not the heaven quip on the med floor

Psych knows what’s up, won’t make you beg for more

Won’t make you beg period

Five zone 2, you don’t get much except the basics

Better than six, where you get a lot if you can take it

The abuse that is

One to one don’t do their job, shit

Gotta know what my rights are

Have them tell when the fights are

Med floor, I got some battle scars

---

Two Tongues

Ni sé como comenzar, el ritmo de la lengua no es igual

Pero la conozco, la sé, me tiene envuelta como tamal

Entre los brazos que me abrieron las puertas

El agua quiere fluir pero no sé manejarla

Esas manos excavaron otro río en mí

¡Aguas! Así dicen cuidado, me cuidaron así

El sol me quemaba y me dejó cambiada

No soy de allí, pero me atraen sus mares

Las profundidades que llaman

Más que las calaveras dulces

Las alturas de las jóvenes montañas

Afiladas, opuestas a las que vi de niña

Otro mundo diferente, en los dos necesito guía

Siempre extranjera, por lo menos lo admiten ahí

Me sanaba, me sana algún parte rota de mí

Capaz que esté tomando una medicina no mía

Pero quién puede negar la vida está mejor cuando es cálida

Nunca me lo olvida

La mami que dijo que aquí son todas frías

Son? Somos? Temo ser una de ellas

No sé expresarla

Las palabras son mías pero también son extrañas

No son tantas

La segunda lengua necesita más práctica!

Pero me sangra

Me pinta

Una boca no puede tener dos lenguas

Es una

Ambas trabajando juntas

Cosidas por un hilo que a veces me corta

Y no puedo dejar esa que estaba por todos esos momentos

Que me partían

Que me sanaban

Que a mi corazón transformaban

Me ardía, me arde, como el humo del volcán

No es mía pero es parte de mi

En el techo traduciendo para que my friends see

In August of 2023, I told my family I was done with their interference in my life. They had suggested, citing vomiting and weight gain, that I was too ill to function and that I needed to go on Ozempic to reduce my weight and therefore (somehow) improve my mental health. At that point I told my parents enough with their 27 year campaign of control over my weight, sexuality, and gender expression. Following much tearful reflection and arguments, I chose to go no-contact with my parents. My efforts to maintain this boundary went up in flames in December of 2023. Following the violent deaths of my student Briyan in a train accident and my dear friend Duncan in a car crash in the short span of six months, my mental health was spiraling. My partner, in a panic, communicated with my abusive mother, who then drove eight hours to come and convince me that I was beyond the help of my life partner and that I needed urgent psychiatric treatment. While my own private therapist insisted I just needed rest, Tammie and Anna instead coerced me into leaving my home and my partner and dragged me upstate to Erie County Medical Center’s help center. What followed were the most horrific, traumatizing, humiliating three weeks of my entire life. I will never recover from what ECMC did to me. This is my story, told in verse, the only way I have been able to tell it. One of the things they locked me up for is for speaking in verse. I act in open rebellion against the pathologization of my creativity. These are my stories. These are the ECMC files. 

Raised in Buffalo, NY, Sara Hobler is a polyglot educator, translator, language justice warrior, and community organizer. Their interest in immigration and education began at age 17, when they completed an internship with a shelter for asylum seekers. Through providing basic interpretation and ENL services, they realized how their interest in language learning could be utilized for social justice. Sara went on to study history and sociology at Binghamton University, where they completed coursework and practicum that prepared them to enter the workforce in community organizing and education. They oversee and teach in a middle school two-way dual language program that strives to provide accelerated study to recently arrived migrant students in New York City. Sara holds a BA from Binghamton university, an MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from Hunter College, and a certificate in Labor Studies from the CUNY Murphy institute of labor. They are fluent in English and Spanish, and proficient in several other languages and dialects. Sara found a renewed interest in mental health advocacy after being violently institutionalized against their well in December of 2023 at Erie County Medical Center CPEP.