Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

After her third mental breakdown, they locked
Alice away in some ward in an out
Of town asylum for the mentally

Insane, as they termed it back then. We will
Visit, Father said, and bring goodies and
Bunches of flowers and see how well you

Improve (if you do, he said behind his
Hairy hand) and maybe, if they say you’re
All right, we’ll take you home again, and you

Can have your old room back and we’ll move the
Lodger elsewhere in the house, maybe the
Attic, despite the cold and damp. But he

Never brought any goodies or bunches
Of flowers, he never showed. Mother came
Once or twice looking at her daughter with

Nervous eyes and fumbling hands, gazing
At her wristwatch, wanting the time to go,
Muttering dull pleasantries and watching

Alice’s every move or gesture
Of hand or uttered speech. Have to go now,
Alice, Mother said when the bell sounded,

Be back again next week. But she never
Came again, only Molly the girl next
Door came, and sat and talked in her slow drawl,

Offering Alice the occasional
Cookie her mother made. Alice sat and
Listened and sniffed and stared and smelt the stool

Of death in the girl’s words and breath. Alice
Sits alone now; the visitors have all
Fled or gone away or grown old or dead,

And outside the window snow drifts and falls
On fields and trees as her other self calls
Through passages, doors, rooms and lonely halls.

I presume you know that your readers cannot "enjoy" this poem. Although, and you need to be told, it is a poem. jim

I presume you know that your readers cannot "enjoy" this poem. Although, and you need to be told, it is a poem. jim

funny, I never thought about the word "enjoy" in how I fell about poem reading

to me it has always been a certain oddness, though not just odd, more like striking

a place that resonates with a whole slew of feelings and lack of them, not

sentiment or nostalgia exactly, really more like jazz, hitting that on off note.

i see in this poem, not to compare it to the others, i see the question of madness.

is the writer being coy with us? are the people depicted real? is there some

pun on the whole point hidden in the folds of her dress? the smell ? hey Alice!

straight to the moon! was her condition so already in the prognosis? tune in

next installment.

A very real and moving poem for me ... my father's spinster sister was in a mental home for years. The times I tried to take her out for a visit (which she was allowed) she could only bear about half an hour in the real world. Well done, Terry. Sue

I worked as a nurse for the mentally ill in the 1970s and saw first hand their lives and read their histories. This is a fiction based on a combination of those histories. Thank you all for reading & comments.