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Bipolar villanelle and Lithium – Extra poems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 June 2022

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Abstract

Type
Extra
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Royal College of Psychiatrists

Bipolar villanelle

Such rhapsody is mine at last
Yet not for long, my mind can tell,
Pain and misery will hold me fast.
Cruel melancholia is past,
the grinding sorrow, darkened hell
Such rhapsody is mine at last.
But still I know with all the haste
Of joy, that change will sound a knell,
Pain and misery will hold me fast.
This drama has me quite outclassed,
despite the times when all is well
Such rhapsody is mine at last.
Soon complacent, then aghast
By that returning vicious hell
Pain and misery will hold me fast.
My life would clearly be a blast
Without bipolar's nasty spell.
Such rhapsody is mine at last
Pain and misery will hold me fast.

Lithium

Lithium!
Element and traitor
What do you do to me?
but soothe my tongue,
belie my mind.
I see you
stretching through the years
at times abandoned
white chalk hard
What are you?
A two-faced mask
stealing feelings
You take my happiness
and laugh at it
through tears.
Metal, we are one.
You have my joys, my sorrows,
you make the night kind
and the day that follows
unremarkable.
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