Personal tools
You are here: Home → Knowledge Base → Arts → Mad Poetry → Mad poems by Liz Purcell → Sick
Look inside...
 

Sick

A poem assuming a social versus a medical cause for mental upset.

 Sick*

 

 One day, on my way to the market for bread,

 I found a scrap of paper . . . that read:

“Question: ‘How do you keep a deaf girl from telling after you’ve raped her?’

 Answer: ‘Break all her fingers.’”

 

 Suddenly, my gut . . . began to churn.

 And with a fever . . . I began to burn.

 For bad enough . . . were it writ† by a man.

 But the signer of the joke . . . was “Nan.”

 

 I saw a doctor . . . for my consternation.

 He wants to give me . . . medication.

 But it’ll take more than a pill . . .

 To cure this ill.

 

*First published on MindFreedom.org, October, 2008.

†Written.

 

 Copyright ©2008, 2009 by Liz Purcell.

 

  

Document Actions

We are MFI



Amy Smith, psychiatric survivor, organizer and artist

From her home in Colorado, Amy Smith provides leadership for the movement to change the mental health system in a variety of ways, from events to art work for the Occupy American Psychiatric Association peaceful protests by MindFreedom International. Amy is a psychiatric survivor, who has been psych drug-free since 2008. She is the former director of Colorado’s statewide consumer organization, and the creator of RISE University, an education program designed to illuminate the experience of labeled individuals and their families.

E-alerts

Facebook Like Box