The Madwoman in the Attic

(for Sue)

I am the madwoman in the attic.

A psychic cancer dwells deep in me

and I am unable to control its preying tentacles

which creep and crawl through my mind’s dark passages.

I have been in the attic for sometime now

with my fantasies to keep me company,

and as I sit in my lonely corner

I contemplate the visions before me

of madwomen of all ages and times

who have sat in attics before I came into being.

I see these madwomen struggling for their minds

in a world of oppressive institutions controlled

by the sinister hands of the medical masters.

Shall I recite the litany and bring to mind the women

who stand as symbols for every madwoman there ever was?

Virginia listened to the birds singing in Greek

and chose to drown her madness.

Bertha Mason, animal-like and violent,

was hidden from the world and met her death

springing from Thornfield Hall’s battlements

to lie smashed on the pavement.

Zelda was a victim of a jealous husband and died

in the flames that engulfed her in the Swiss asylum.

John’s wife tore at the yellow wallpaper in despair

while Sylvia inhaled the gas of death.

Ophelia, a ‘document in madness’,

with the ‘fantastic garlands’ in her hair,

sang wistful ballads then lay dead in the water.

Crazy Jane wandered the places she had spent

with her lost lover and sang plaintive airs while

she dressed her head with willow straw and wildflowers.

Lucia di Lammermoor, with glazed eyes and bloodstained dress,

huddled in the bridal chamber and gazed at

the bridegroom she had just slain.

The litany could go on,

but we all know of a madwoman or two –

a relative, a friend or perhaps a lover,

we all know that somewhere in time

a madwoman burned at the stake or drowned in a stream,

died in an attic or succumbed to a surgeon’s knife.

O madwomen, my mentors,

my visions of you bring so much sorrow and anger

as I hear your lulling solicitations from afar.

But madwoman that I am,

who scorns our history of abuse and misunderstanding,

I wish to declare us the curators of our own psyches.

As She Gently Brushed My Long Hair

As the solid door closed behind me

and the brusque nurses led me to the locked ward,

I felt the world abandon me.

I felt myself abandon the world.

Before me were the forgotten people

who shuffled and gazed mysteriously into space,

and I was no one, just another nutter,

just someone caught in a cosmic game

where sanity and madness are engaged in a bitter battle.

But something wonderful transpired

and through my barriers came the unexpected.

She spoke no English;

she spoke a universal language

that broke through all my sorrow and madness.

And sitting in the day room weeping,

I was suddenly transported to a kingdom of love,

and a calm ensued

as she gently brushed my long hair.

Medicated

Roll up, roll up

join me on the medication trolley

I’ve been on it for years

I was Largactiled with bitter syrup

I was Pimozided & Melleriled & numbed

I was so Stelazined I was like a cat on a hot tin roof

I’ve been Modectated into a shuffle

& Clozapined into a stupor

I was Seranaced to drowsiness

& Abilifyed to sleeplessness

when I was Risperidoned I lactated like a cow

they Cogentined me to stop the look ups but I kept looking up

I was Lithiumed & Epilimed to even my pendulum

I’ve been Imipramined, Prothiadened, Lexaproed

Effexored & Zolofted to happiness

I was Valiumed & Ativaned into tranquillity

at bedtime I was Mogadoned, Stilnoxed &

Temazapamed to slumber-land

now I’m Zyprexaed & ravenous & fuzzled

I’m Lamotrigined & balanced

& Sero-quelled

yes indeedy, I’m medicated & dedicated to

the medication trolley

here’s looking at you pill bottles.

Cold Chemical Comfort

(After Wislawa Szmborska)

I’m an antipsychotic

I mend broken minds

let me turn your paranoia into trust

your confusion into clarity

I’ll expel those voices

and tame your wild delusions

I’ll numb your pain and deaden your anxiety

I know how to lighten your load

in the absence of family and friends.

But I have a dark side

I’ll make your head feel like it’s

stuffed with cotton wool

your ideas will evaporate in a fog

I’ll make you crave McDonalds and sugar

and have you eating food

like a deranged hog

I’ll watch you grow into obesity

with each morsel of me

I’ll do away with your desires and urges

your mouth will feel like a sand pit

your hands will tremble

and you’ll wobble

you won’t shit for days at a time

my kindness will eventually kill you.

But I am your chemical lifeline

give me your madness and

I’ll soften it with sedation

just swallow me with water

and let my cold chemicals comfort you.

Alice in Larundel Land¹

Alice

fell

down

rabbit hole

& landed in

topsy-turvy Larundel Land

locked up

captive to lunacy

& a passing parade of

Mad Hatters & March Hares

eccentrics &

musos & artists & a poet or two

& ordinary folk

with the

sorrows

& in-con-ceiv-able lunacy

sharing delusions

like needles

voices babbling in the background

ECT before breakfast

stelazine for lunch

prothiaden for dinner

melleril at suppertime

& to bed with a hallucination & a moggi

—a place full of hunger—

hunger for

—kindness,

—friendship,

—love

a curious, (secluded) world

its dark side

kept well hidden

shadow-haunted inmates longing for peace

with themselves

no one knowing the wars that raged within

or the deep pain wedged between

(spirit & flesh)

destroying lives—

friends & family picking up the pieces.

Larundel Land’s

red brick walls now rubble

windows s-h-a-t-t-e-r-e-d

graffiti telling another story

a playground for vandals & urban explorers

once peaceful gardens

dis-mem-ber-ed

sombre ghosts roam the precinct

calling us to remember them—

we will remember you

sitting in smoky rooms

crying alone

laughing with deranged angels

—muddled & paranoid

—chaotic & manic

—anarchic & confused

prisoners stalking locked wards

keys jangling

medication trollies

r-u-m-b-ling into melancholic rooms

& the humour

the-blacker-than-black-humour

the-cut-through-all-the-crap-&-misery-humour

you will not be forgotten—

we shall erect a monument

to commemorate all who

passed through Larundel Land

we will remember

the hell-hole & sanctuary

the bottomless pit of despair

unexpected place of healing

Alice landed on her head

in upside down

Larundel Land

the madhouse that once stood on the edge of town

where time dawdled

& everyone hid in the shadows.

Alice in Larundel Land is the name of a pantomime which was written by chaplain Len Blair and performed by staff at Larundel Psychiatric Hospital in 1979. Larundel was situated in the outer Melbourne suburb of Bundoora. It was closed down in 1999.

Confession

For Lisa

For too many fire-seared tortoise years,

I have sat in this small room,

in this black leather chair,

wringing my hands,

each fretful thought whirling and churning,

and all my sorrows building

into an epic Greek tragedy.

Memories surge,

my waking days are stalked

by your stubborn shades.

I have been running from you,

as fast, and as far, as I could,

since I was knee high.

You brought the dark upon me,

when I was too small to resist,

a nine-year old, weeping and trembling in my bed,

praying for dear life to the all-loving God

who Sunday School had taught,

loved me no matter what.

And singing to myself:

Jesus loves me this I know

for the Bible tells me so…

But where was Jesus?

And then wondering, why was our home

that fiery pit, to which, I was told,

only the wicked were condemned.

Bearing witness was too much.

I felt abandoned, unloved, forgotten and alone.

Was I that bad?

Grog gripped you.

I wanted to pour every drop down the drain.

I could have been a Rechabite,

standing on a street corner,

decrying the demon drink!

Inside, I was howling stop!

You weren’t listening.

Was I that unlovable?

When the homeland enemies faced off,

we were the Blue Beret child soldiers,

the peacekeepers,

standing between you,

fending off the punches,

trying to negotiate a truce.

But the anger between you

was too colossal,

the carnage too brutal.

Were we that unlovable?

Three siblings,

three solitudes,

three bruised and battered hearts,

three shattered souls,

three damaged people,

my sister,

my brother,

me,

trapped in our own silent, survivor silos.

This small, safe room,

filled with wretched miseries,

these pictured walls

heaving with the deepest despondency,

this sequestered world,

this temporary harbour,

this fleeting anchorage.

The incessant going-over,

the frozen terror,

the brokenness.

Hidden in a half-light,

I sit, collapsed in this black leather chair,

with a spear wedged in my heart

and a hatchet buried in my soul.

I surrendered myself to the talking cure,

to get out of your toxic psychodrama,

to break your spell,

to bandage the gaping gashes,

to halt the self-hatred,

to make myself lovable.

Confessor,

you tell me they were then,

that I am in the now—a better now.

And though I still see them

through sorrowful eyes,

it is from a safe distance,

from which I can unravel the ravelled past,

while my fingers fumble to hold

this foreign new hopefulness.

I curbed the self-pity,

kept the misery a bay.

This sheltering room,

this comforting black leather chair,

this mournful child,

this lacerated spirit,

this tangled soul,

this needy heart,

this approval-seeking wreck,

the scared little girl,

this wounded woman,

this outstretched hand—

to my confessor,

I make my confession,

and await absolution.

Note from the Featured Writer

My poetry has been a lifeline from the time of my schizophrenia diagnosis in 1976 when I was told I would be mad for the rest of my life. Such a pessimistic diagnosis was catastrophic for a young 23-year-old graduate who, sadly, bought into the dire messaging. I lost all hope, purpose and meaning in my life which looked like an utter train wreck. But then I started documenting my madness in poetry and drawing on my imagination. As I held a handwritten poem, on a piece of scrap paper, in my hands, that poem was testament to my existence. Nothing else at the time told me I was alive. My imagination was still active! In poetry we can say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable, utter the unutterable and sense the insensible. I want my poetry to make a stern God laugh and move angels to tears. These poems are from my first book Poems from the Madhouse and a more recent book, The Mad Poet’s Tea Party. The poem Confession is unpublished. It is my homage to the talking cure. I went from being trapped as a ‘psych patient’ in a life of total psychiatry which was killing my soul, to an advocate and poet. Something I could not have predicted in 1976! My story, however, is not a rags to riches triumph, but in a strange twist, a strange irony, madness has been my tortured muse.