Beseeching the God of Mood Disorders
“…there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, Who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains…”
—Mark 5:2-3
I
here we are at the high tide of a new parable
all I can do is kick shells and watch them spark
foam against the incoming waves
what’s the difference i ask between revelation
& delusion? you scratch in the sand & say nothing
i look out toward the wine-dark sea: currents
without a shore: riptides & water-damaged
scripture: a horde of hogs: millstones falling
there’s a burning in my chest not the holy ghost
it’s a manic episode paramedics morph
from your robes i’m on a gurney my tongue
splashes prayer across the ambulance walls
you are here your love is all around us
suffer the manic depressives to come unto me
II
in the mental hospital you sieved my brain
thru the wounds in your hands
passed my neurons thru a narrow gate
i leapt to touch the hem of your white garment
but when you turned around only
an orderly remained all of us have visions here
but none of us the doctors say are prophets
just sheep who bleat at shadows wondering
which friends will cut a hole in a thatched roof
to lower us down at your feet & who will carry
us into the troubled water where angels dust
bubbles with lithium on my first night
i heard the rhythm of your heaving chest
like a countdown until impact my window bled
rain from every pore i saw the atonement
was a tidal wave your body was a wooden pier
III
Every night I roll aside the stone—
I gaze at the floor while they draw my blood,
imagining the linens of Christ.
White as a skull, picked clean by time.
Healing is not as simple as the stories say.
They give me medication in a sacrament cup.
I have bipolar. Not an unclean spirit.
Who wouldn’t miss visions where Jesus pulls
you into a bear hug? Picnics on a green hill far
away—where everything aches for heaven
and finds it gazing back.
Gregory Brooks is a poet and psychology student at Utah Valley University. His poetry has been published in venues such as Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Utah Life Magazine, and Touchstones. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2013, Greg cares deeply about poetry as a means for reducing stigma and speaking openly about mental health. You can read his work at: gregbrookspoetry.wordpress.com. Feel free to contact him at @bipolar_greg on Twitter.
About the poem
These verses are an open question, not a conclusion. They probe the nature of spiritual understanding within the reality of our human body. The first two parts have a chaotic structure, mimicking a manic episode, but the end is more calm: accepting the hope of a balm in Gilead. Nearly 10 years after returning home from a Maryland mental hospital, I still think about the nature of an embodied Christ, especially what version of Him will survive the contortions of my life.
