Depression-Related Poetry

By Mary R. Drews (Shefferman)

Although not every one of these is a "depression poem," each one expresses an aspect of my life that has influenced my illness. Some of these may be a bit disturbing. I have always found that putting my most difficult feelings and observations into writing is easier than talking with someone about them. The happiness jumps out ... well ... happily. The sad feelings, the isolation, those are harder to squeeze out.

All of these poems are written by me, Mary R. (Drews) Shefferman. Some have dates, some don't. Many were written when I was in my twenties and early thirties; some are older than that. In time, I may add some comments to the poems. For now, they're just here for reading.

If you have any comments, please feel free to e-mail me at Mary at ModernFerret dot com.

(All poems are copyright © Mary R. Drews / Mary R. Shefferman. Please, do not reproduce any of these poems without permission. Thank you!)

Beheaded My mind is blank. Numbness -- alive -- Has eaten my brain. Now it's crunching On the bone Of my skull. It's chewing off The top. It's masticating Its way down, Toward the start Of my spine. It's there now. © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
	Circle In the dark, anguish seeps up to consciousness from down below -- rises like Christ to remind me I am not perfect. And I do not know whether my lack of perfection is forgivable -- or whether I'll see Hell -- deeper and darker than this moment now that turns my head in circles in the dark. 2/20/89 © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
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For the Ducks I have no bread for you today -- it's Monday. I thought you'd be full from the weekend -- the parents and children feeding you stale treats. Besides, I came not to nourish but to be nourished. You are to feed me your tranquility, simplicity. Each day more I live more complicatedly -- I struggle for words, for sleep, for love -- Each need becomes more feverish, less satiable. And I allow this -- waiting for attention, waiting for someone to throw me a stale morsel. © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
I think one of the most important parts of recovering from depression is finding something we can be passionate about. It has to be something we give of ourselves that somehow helps others. In helping others, we feel fulfilled; as if our suffering meant something. This is true also of recovery from drug addiction or alcoholism. There needs to be a sense of purpose. "Kindling" is about my purpose: writing. It can be writing here to help others with depression and dysthymia or  writing poems or stories with which others can find some connection. It can be writing articles about how to better care for your pet ferret.	Kindling The leaves have gone from bright to brown -- they litter the lawns of this suburbia. Another November -- still I say the same things again and again. If each of us has one story to tell, then this is mine: Once, I was alive, and, trying to get back to that, I soak myself in the kerosene of words and rub my bones together, praying for the sparks of poetry to ignite my soul so I may burn as the living -- if only for a short while. 11/5/88 3/6/89 © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
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Rain Another day of rain. Another day full of cool wetness. And fog -- unmysterious mist. One day, we'll get out of all this -- the sun will blare down on our shoulders. The grass will green. The flowers will bud and bloom. So I'm thankful for this nourishment, this wet. Even if it shreds my soul and spins my mind into a web from which I cannot get loose. Even though each drop of rain fills me more with this drowning feeling -- each drop becomes lead in my soul -- forcing me down. 2/22/89 2/26/89 © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
	Where Beauty Lies Gray sky uneasy peace -- the sudden kind -- like the silent moment after thunder cracks. It doesn’t mean to be serene. The storm’s calm, the ruse. A plane drones overhead. A clock clicks. Birds -- tens of them -- ravage the backyard, then retreat to the trees, screaming in turns. Beauty is in the dying tree: Its branches brittle, its bark half lost. Beauty is there. July 26, 2002 © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
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As Cold As It Gets On the platform I wait in the wind, gloves hold my hands (or who will?). My jacket hugs me -- it knows I'm afraid. I tell myself cold is in the mind. The body disagrees: It is in the icicle-like bones and nerves just at the edge of flesh.  This is the cold no gloves or coat can warm -- no matter the insulation: Skin requires skin. Here's the train -- another shell to wear, another barrier to the outside. While inside, my bones don't melt. © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
	Love Poem You know, you're prettier than the ocean -- the syringe-filled ocean. And more exciting than the sea -- the filth-spewing sea. I love you, you know. He says -- his litany. Will you marry me? Have my babies? No, no -- it's all wrong -- I'm uglier than land -- than pavement, than blood-spattered sand, I'm violent as a man raping -- angry riveter. I'm cruel as ozone disintegrating -- as lovable as lice. 5/26/89 5/29/89 © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
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Nadir Pleasure reaches the deep recess -- a place with no drapes. Rain-filtered sunlight coats the view, presses up against the window, refusing to come in. The trees keep their distance. This small room constricts -- a box into which all joy must fit like a week-long vacation's clothes into an overnight bag. Nothing more can slip in here -- no one to talk to, no books, no comfortable chairs. Ecstasy faints on the basement floor -- concrete denies its cool resuscitation -- offers only its obstinacy. The happiness of one human depressed into an unsavory wafer, embedded deep like a forgotten grave marker, stiffened with death's rigidity. 3/30/90 © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
	DST Almost nine o'clock. The sun has stayed up to watch tears well in my eyes. Rude. Staring like that. Cruel. Keeping me spot-lighted -- but she's going down now. Leaving a dark cloud -- fading me -- folding me -- into blackness. © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
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Cuttings I know what these marks are for. I know why I made them. You don’t even ask; you haven’t noticed the scars, though I wear them for inspection. Unsaid words are better. The dark marks eye me like an angry dog. I think of the work to get dull blades to cut clean. I think of watching me changing my body to suit my mind in ways you’d never approve. July 23, 2002 © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
	November Seventh Something is not right -- I don't know what I look like -- I wonder what it's like to freeze. This attempt to say something is disintegrating like people do, eventually. I'm squeezed in between the lead of fear and the ice of what is real. I keep thinking I'm floating above, watching myself wave arms in the air -- feeling water when it's ice and I am frozen -- a cube of anger unable to burn myself free. © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
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Death Death? Yeah, I've seen it. It grows and grips lungs and spinal cords. It steals breath and ability to walk, slowly. Then it says, "Time's up." My family's saturated with Death. It's been here for ages. Heart attacks, strange diseases of the mind, Cancer. I've seen it. I watched my mother -- devoured by cancer. It's clear now, then it was blurred -- too close. I have a curse. One of those nasty things -- it's internal -- in my mind. Death, all around me -- in me. This hell you call Pain is me all the time. The eyes of the dead are memories now. They're in me, and they're dead. And I'm dead. © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
	Mother’s Grave Is your grave the same, mother? Still cold, sunken inch for inch with your body’s decay? Graves don’t do that now so much do they? The box is laminated for long-last-ability. As if preventing the soil from reaching the body is a good thing. What do you care? What do I care, for that matter? You’re not there anyway. The second you expelled your last breath, you slid into my head to pluck and pull at my brain. And yet I wonder -- when you tire of my dishevelment, do you go back there? Does anyone go back there? 6/22/02 © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
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On The Train Another sadness -- just like the old one, only better. It attracts me like someone else's misfortune. I watch everything from this train. The sky is perfect: grey cotton dropping down, covering my head, stuffing itself into my ears. It grows down through my skull, into my throat, my lungs until I suffocate in its heavy comfort. © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
	The Neverland No one said life would be easy -- or fair -- or even kind. And no one asked me whether I wanted to be born. Had they told me before I burst -- into two, then four, then millions of cells -- would I have chosen living? Had they told me I could fit all the joys of my life on the point of a pin -- No. I'd have stayed in the Neverland. 2/27/89 3/2/89 © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
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Season From the bright fields of summer to fall's murky black forest -- each year a pilgrimage. I go from season to season -- looking for something that might not exist. It's darker now -- and the air is clean, but unkind. Each breath is a labor of hatred -- each second. Yes, if you close your eyes, the darkness is the same. But with eyes wider than a child's dreams, this world is darker than his nightmares. And the dense foliage of autumn closes in like night. 10/4/89 3/31/90 © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
	For... My dear, didn't they tell you? It gets no easier. It -- read, life, I suppose -- becomes cold as the metal on an ice-stiff car, as hard as sight for the blind. But it's a game. No fretting over lost moves or changed players. No time for that, dear. And no need for suicide -- in whatever form, nor living hells devised in your mind to help you drift from the rules. The rules. Break them, dear. That's what they're there for -- breaking -- just like glass. You've broken glass -- remember? When you were young, your knee broke a mirror -- you regret it today as you did at the crack. That echo won't leave you. Take it as a clue -- use it. Smash what you can. You see, my dear, this game -- this black icy game -- is to see who can sculpt happiness from fragments of pain. 5/16/89 © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
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Lull This day knows how to last -- now that I'd rather it was gone. But light lingers -- and wakefulness drags on. I have much to do -- but no energy -- only a nagging throb in my chest that keeps everything suspended like the moment just before a first kiss. 4/25/89 © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
	Spitfire Sometimes, Every particle I own Spits hatred Like a she-devil. Sometimes, I cry. Because It is not fair. It is not unfair. It only is. Whatever it is. My hatred. Each pore of my body Breathes in Deep and long And holds onto The air      The bile. It burns, and so I exhale all the hatred Of the world. And it's still in me -- No matter how I try To force it out. I vomit. I bleed. I spit. It's in me. It is me. © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
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Sunday It is not sunny today -- the phlegm of clouds sticks in the sky's throat. I am sucked in -- suspended in this stubborn summer cold. Greens dull, blend -- a futile syrup that only thickens -- whose vacant promise raises fear, panic, terror -- as the day's consistency proves insoluble -- motion, impossible. 8/2/87 © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
	The Children All the children tucked into bed, warm as bunnies. Smooth skin broken by scabs -- remembering the scrapes. Eyes shut tight, each one dreams of pretty places, sweet people -- loves. But one -- her eyes flutter in make-pretend sleep, too scared to let go of the day. 5/17/89 © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
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Renovation Mad depression sets its feet in the wet concrete of my brain -- footprints on my petrified imagination. No wonder my head aches. Drill holes -- get the jackhammer. It's time to knock down this condemned building. © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
	Offerings The grey moves in, all the sad colors, and in the midst, bright purple-pink -- the magnolia cracks the sky in two. Hope in the dark, sunlight in fear. The pretty buds open cup-like towards Heaven each year -- a sacrifice. © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
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Gift A single rose waits on my desk. What have I done now? What mediocrity is rewarded with one of those things that die? I try to be pleasant -- but sludge lingers in morning air. I breathe it in like good oxygen -- holding it until I'm high. I exhale only the expected. This rose is open now. Another day and the petals will droop, then drop off onto the desk blotter. I'll pick up each one, roll it between my fingers, and bring the dying scent to my face. For a moment -- hope. 8/31/87 © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
	Young We know it. The light, the glow. What's left of them -- not memories (those are here). But the flash seared fast into us. The fused part where we meet. Where we'll always meet. Dense as the dark now, but for a sharp impression snapped across the sky then gone. There's the trouble. The absence of light -- knowing what's gone once was not gone. Once was here, was illumination -- life. How can we not know it? The spark, ash -- already.  2002/2003 © Mary R. Drews Shefferman
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