all you really need


the nights you wake up screaming
from dreams that seize you
with worms that suck with tender lips
your daring resolution to go on

the nights when prose lies dead
and sooty verses keep repeating
caution! caution! caution!

the nights when desperation
makes you listen to the noble rout
that hands you the barbaric tool
to end it all

those nights are when all you really need
is someone asking – “why?”
and let you talk

Expression_of_the_Emotions_Figure_20
Today Michael (grapeling) wants us to use words at Real Toads at least 3 words from a “dead poets society” remembering Robin Williams. I could not avoid trying to use them all.

August 13, 2014

24 responses to “all you really need

  1. A problem shared is a problem cut in half, so they say. They also say an alcoholic stuck in his own head is alone in a bad neighborhood. Reach out in the darkness….

  2. Oh yes….this is the simple and profound truth. In my work with clients in recovery, I took more than one suicide call. Each person just needed one thing from me: a reason to make it through the night till morning.

  3. Bjorn, That was a haunting piece and an equally haunting picture. If a person is in deep depression, they’re their own worst enemy. They need to get help! Quick! I read that Robin Williams was bi-polar and would go off his medication at times. My husband is bi-polar, and when he goes off his medication it’s bad news. The old name for it was manic depression. The sufferer alternates between manic behavior and deep depression. Bi-polar sufferers are often suicidal. —Susan

    • I have very limited experience.. but in that desperate situation, close to the edge, you cannot cure, you can only talk. There are countless examples of people literary standing on the edge.. and when you are there.. just talking take you off… I have done it myself once, talking to a friend, giving him options.. and yes that was probably a turning point.

  4. Wow, Björn … this poem really hit hard. Especially this part: “the nights when prose lies dead / and sooty verses keep repeating / caution! caution! caution!” What more can I say here?

    If only … if only ….

  5. Bjorn, you caught the essential part of Robin Williams’ demise: Isolation. No matter what happens, in dreams (what dreams may come) or in life, unless there is someone who has the will to talk you off the ledge when it’s just. that. bad., what’s the point of standing there when all you want to do is leap?

    Having lost several friends to suicide, I can truly say, I reach out whenever I can, but sometimes it isn’t enough… Insightful, stirring poem. Amy

  6. You use of words in the context of your theme is impeccable, Bjorn and your response is filled with compassion. What more can we offer the desperate than a willing ear in time of need?

  7. Talking does help greatly (I’m sure of it) to give peace to a tortured soul – there is a perceptive that comes when words are spoken aloud, that is often lost in the dark canyons of the mind – where despair echos and echos and echos.

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