Awareness

I was thinking about the competitions and awareness campaigns held by mental health, abuse survivor & similar activist groups, and how they often have similar themes like 'resilience'.

They all bow to the same refried themes,

sandwiches disgused as canapes for the industry

touting hope and wanting us to write

or draw or paint or just damn create

something

as long as it's hopeful and pleasing and

shows something positive because

God forbid the public see

the way it really is:

 

instead of a fancy appetizer

I am eating a soggy slice of stale bread
topped with cheese gone plastic

after a full minute

in the zapper-

because I got distracted and forgot

until the timer tinged and the cheese fizzed,

spitting grease and oil,

because my attention fled and for a moment

just a moment

breathing was too hard.

 

Everybody's learning that this could be them,

it could be their mother or brother or cousin

their grandfather or niece or child

breaking up on the inside

scattering into a jigsaw of caviar and moldy herring

and nobody wants that for their family,

nobody wants that darkness in their lives.

 

Oh, the caviar's fine --

everybody wants to think of those they love

as brave or strong or smart or resilient or

gifted from the traumas that could

have blown them apart:

 

but nobody wants to look at the ugly growth

or the scars we break our teeth upon

the tenebrosity that dogs a lantern

in the fog or the places where edges jag

from a broken monitor and all the good there was

is buried, the proverbial needle

in a pile of manure - the hay, chewed up

and spat out the business end.

 

So they give us the same refried themes,

sandwiches disguised as canapes touting hope

growth and all their flavours of positivity

but sometimes I would rather they tell us

just paint it like it is--

let the public see that sometimes

sometimes you can turn the sand to glass

but sometimes it really is

just dirt.

Author's Note

As always, all polite/relevant reviews are welcome - especially constructive critique, but also including grammar and spelling corrections. And thank you for reading/leaving a review!

Reviews

[Ethan]

Hahahaha refried themes is amazing. I love it, great job xD