I.
Having lived
with Schizophrenics
I have learned that they are not all that strange.
For example, I talk to myself
I do it all the time
I just don’t answer back
At least, not audibly.
I remember talking to a red headed boy
(he was between the age half adult- half child and was ancient guru on the art of deception)
and asking him, “Does it hurt when they talk?”
He smiled, interested at something invisible crawling on the tile floor
of the prison/hospital/ward/nightmare
before saying, “Always – it is just a nuisance of acceptance”
I have discovered
among other things
that we who are normal and those who are not
are separated by a small veil
and like a prophet’s death, it took something monumental
to tear it from top to bottom
like tissue
or like a conversation amongst ourselves
that is spoken in the confines of dark rooms,
in beds while our spouses are sleeping,
and the thought of speaking aloud and the answer
that we receive as we speak is shockingly familiar
but not our own voice
as it leaps off our tongue, out of the pit of our mouth
into the bowels of the night.
II.
I had always believed that
demons: the evil creatures dwelling in hell
were distant, were across the cosmos, in some other dimension
where the fires were hotter than Helios
and their claws sharper than the minutely cut diamond
and their wings were black and velvet like pterodactyl skin
and their voices, their voices were like that of roars or screeching
that echoed against all logical sounds of human halls of reason
but this is a misconception.
The demons are out
they are here
in our heads
You want to know why the whispers in the night
that make you long to be more than what you are
lead you to think that perhaps you’d be better off
dead
You want to know where the dual sided slanted
double jointed, two faced, out of place, spliced and
twisted voice inside of you came from?
Join the coral of us who want to know.
As I lived among the slightly misunderstood
the brave souls who lived among the demons
of past, of present, of future chemical imbalances
of past, present, and future misdemeanors and felonies
of the living mind that dies every time a whisper
echoes from the corner of the room
I learned a thing or two about
sin
or
poverty
or
evil
That sin separates us from the good, the righteous
the pure, the Holy, the upward climb to a higher vibration
of love
and poverty is the root of all evil – money, the lack of,
and those in power – the hands that exchange – didn’t
give one coin, one bill, one flying fuck
about love
and evil is anything that implores the demise of good
of righteously pure, Holy – and would rather trip us up
drag us below, hitting our heads on every step down and
because of love
somehow we survive.
III.
We are somewhat demonic.
The claws are our fingers, our nails, our knuckles
scratching, and scraping and punching
The roars and the screams
are our agony at knowing
we are so distant
we are fallen
we are evil
and
the wings that pierce our scapula
the wings black as pitch, as night sky, as the damp mind
are our arms flapping
helplessly
as we continually fall, the voices of our fellows
ringing in our ear
and fleeing out the other
Will the hell ever cease to exist?
Will we ever get it right?
We are the problem – humanity is not a solution to anything.
IV.
I remember faintly, sitting
in a mucus, and blood speckled chair
with holes in the armrests for handcuffs
watching a boy with scars, slashes, lacerations
on his arms, wrists, chest, and shoulders
begin to seize. He cried out for his mother
he cried out for his father
he cried out for me
and he cried out for
God
“to make them shut up. Shut them the fuck up.”
But no one came
but me
What was I to do – unarmed and ill-equipped
to handle the demons he wrestled
as he lashed out at anyone near him, spitting,
bloodshot, and rapidly crumbling – pieces of his sanity
melting straight through the floor
and I tackled him
and I wrestled with him and pleaded for him
not to stop
but to keep
fighting them
to keep yelling
to keep the battle going
I held him, a six foot four young man
in my arms, I, a five foot seven younger man,
not able to comprehend that such pain
such hell
can be wrapped up in the scars on the wrists
of a suffering boy
how heavy he felt
how massless I felt
as he thanked me, as he held me
just as much as I held him
in the dim light of the caged walls
in the empty corridor of the hospital.
V.
Whether it was the young girl that sold herself
every night on the street
and suffered from the voices that came when she would dream
or the red headed boy
who embraced the evil, who embraced the hurt
embraced the knowledge and the sin of power
or the scarred boy, who had only answered himself
and did as he told himself
and slashed his veins open every chance a sharp object
could be obtained and controlled –
or me
I who saw all this evil and did not control the binds
the whips, the snares that I deployed against
my own left shouldered voice
and lashed out at my peers with blood-ready fists
because the chemicals told me to
because the voices told me to
because my demons told me to
because I told me to
No angel
No prince of light or darkness
could ever account for this
my study, my expression, my art
has set me free
and no one, not even hell
wrapped in a hand-basket
called a skull
can turn my head back
can turn my eye slant
can turn my mind around
to face the past
and the many monsters I
with the help of sacred art
studied, and slayed.
Samuel J. Fox is a native of Statesville, North Carolina. Currently, he attends Western Carolina University and is striving for a B.A. degree in English with the ambition of studying Comparative Literature for his Masters. He is twenty-one years old and currently lives in Cullowhee, NC.
13magazine 