Anagram Schizophrenia In a Numbing Society/Oppression

 

Anagram Schizophrenia In a Numbing Society/Oppression

 

This has gotta come off this band aid’s gotta come off.

I’m exhausted.

After 52 years of struggle.

“Bent out of shape by society’s pliers” to borrow from Dylan.

Violence in the womb.

Violence from birth.

Violence in school.

Going to live in the place with the highest murder rate in Europe.

Living in a flophouse there.

Putting out fires.

Literally & figuratively.

The literal one that saved everyone’s life in that house.

10 people's lives I saved.

Being around generally.

Being around.

Getting to know people at the bottom.

Getting to know people on the ‘wrong side’ of the law

Getting to know people on the ‘right side’

Who all jammed together.

Rival gang members at my house.

Being given a black bandana. A 'hood pass'.

Protecting a teenage boy being beaten up by his 6ft 6 Russian stepfather.

You know…

Friends getting beaten up

Friends getting killed

 

Then what was diagnosed at the time as an “Acute Anxiety with Psychotic Features.” (2008)

Being detained in a Singaporean jail for 48 hours of interrogation.

When I was found to be a healer.

& completely harmless.

& they let me go.

 

What else happened?

Yunno, being around, knowing people who’ve been sexually abused as children & helping heal them.

 

Marriage & Divorce twice.

My recent wife living for 10 years with severe illnesses

& me being her carer.

Having her near death 3 times.

18 months ago I had to give permission for her 2 brain operations.

& I picked the phone up from the surgeon to tell me they’d fucked the first one up.

& only I could give permission for the second.

10 years of caring for her.

Toileting her.

Helping her to walk again.

 

Then as she was doing better, her leaving me.

 

I fell in a heap.

Exhausted.

 

Then a month later my dad died.

 

In the last 6 years

I’ve lost my mother, my best friend & my dad

& my wife.

The 4 most important people to me.

 

Caring for both parents to the end.

 

At the same time,

Teaching refugee teenagers in Dandenong

Them wild post-lockdown

 

Oh yeah,

I was an essential worker during COVID

So I had to go into teenage classrooms &

We know how bad their hygiene is

With an immune compromised wife

Stressful.

 

At the end of the year

When I had elevated my student’s performances

Into elite courses the following year

My contract was not renewed

“Thanks for all you hard work!”

 

There’s way more

Running Harmony Day at a country school that had never had one before

3 days after the Christchurch Massacre 

When people were gloating about it.

 

PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)

 

& so I’ve fallen in a heap

 

My only way out

Is to take a plea of severe mental illness

& get a disability support pension

 

Did I also mention making 2000 audio pieces & 300 written pieces in the last 5 years?

 

Fat load of good it did me.

I’m a “privileged white man” in today’s identity politics art

& one can’t get a grant in this country 

One has to be ‘diverse’

 

And so my Psychiatrist said

Take a plea of “schizophrenia” & I can help you.

 

Even though my thoughts are clear.

& I am a sceptic of my own conceptions.

 

I have to be thrown to the social scrapheap

Lest I get thrown to the material scrapheap.

 

So I’m “lucky” I guess

If this thing gets up.

 

I mightn’t starve to death on the streets or be murdered.

 

One is punished for living a remarkable life.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

There’s so much I can’t tell you about.

 

One is also punished

For having a near-genius IQ

& having read the English Canon

& having read the major philosophers

 

Including Immanual Kant

In his Critique of Pure Reason

He is able to prove mathematically/logically

That the Synthetic a Priori is only possible

With an irrational leap of faith

Therefore one can only make universal judgements about human life with an irrational belief in (insert another word if you’re too hung up) “God.”

Therefore Psychiatry is talking through its hat.

It has no parameters.

& basically a Psychiatrist is nothing more than a jailer.

Focused on disciplining & punishing the body & mind of the subject/”patient” to “fit in with mainstream society”

So that I in this case

Agrees to work in a job completely alienated from my interests, gifts, strengths.

 

& living in this suppressed Neo-Victorian colony of the British Crown

Is hell.

Because people aren’t real.

Don’t talk about anything real.

Are ignorant & hostile to intelligence.

Because the Tradie is GOD

A “good bloke” who keeps his head down, watches his back, minds his own business, sticks to the crowd, knows his place, doesn’t speak up, every man for himself, like a GOOD CONVICT.

 

& so I am the deviant, a believer in communication & the making of peace & healing & caring.

I am a poet.

So I “must be CRAZY!”

 

Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

 

Linked audio album at https://danceparrot.bandcamp.com/album/anagram-schizophrenia-in-a-numbing-society