Michael Wilson
Michael has had poems published in numerous books, magazines and anthologies. He has performed in frequent tours of UK and Ireland, and in Canada, often performing with BSL sign language. He has organised several long-running events and been a finalist in international poetry slams. read more…
Community Psychiatric Nurses
Fold pieces of blue sky into a generous pile
Find a locket
and place its cheap metal tattoo your skin a kind of green.
Thoughts like an old shoe left in a corner to be found,
if you can reach one person,
you’ve spoken your breath to the world.
Legend is a word thrown around like dice these days,
driven by the thoughts that drive the clutch of things that drive you mad.
My Psychiatric Nurse holds hope in the wink of her eye,
A job for life,
A job of life,
Life and how to follow it round corners, lay-bys and hairpin bends.
Unpack pieces of white sky and lay them on the bed for tomorrow,
first I’ve got to learn how to be when my skin won’t fit,
Yesterday trying to press its way through the door,
Can’t get here from there.
I remember her words vacuum sealed and sense surrendered:
hope blossoms behind my eyes
“knock ’em dead.”
When I dream in violent green,
words without the anchor of language,
ghosts chant a garbled singalong,
that follows my ears to waking.
My mind flicks back through the stages of this room until they settle
on the advice she left behind,
and the feeling gets thrown down.
I know others find CPNs a gadfly in the ointment of their problems,
An auctioneer of issues,
once spoken they grow in scale,
bounce off walls,
fall back on themselves
seen as uncaring, intrusive or off the target.
What do you say when they leave?
About the eternal echo of what you didn’t say,
or the misjudged clunk of what you did,
a dischord with stumbling fingers on the strings,
Take pieces of rain and place them carefully in the bedside drawer
the vocation of a narrow pathway
sometimes it must feel like trying to coax a mind through the eye of a needle.
Sometimes it must feel like the fire’s floor.
Feeling the week run away with itself.
A baker’s dozen of life’s greatest troubles racked and stacked on the desk,
pages that can hurt the eyes.
Words that can tighten space.
The loneliness of secrets that can follow you home.
Get there before you and await your service.
The guilt of a suicide.
Trust can twist and break inside your skin.
Trust can vanish in the flip of a tongue.
Leaving poison within.
Bravery comes with the daily grind,
hope takes the place of love letters,
spoken from one heart to another.
When wellness creeps like ivy, never a second too early, never a second too late.
Sometimes there isn’t a blessing as full bodied.
Sometimes there aren’t enough hours to hold your joy.
One thought on the next to come.
One thought on the next to come.
One thought on the next to come.
Another on the many pathways that merged and separated before, and the lives you’ve lost and won
ECT
into a nod,
and he tells me the treatment will begin very soon.
Once he’d recovered his sense and the shape of his tongue,
Tim tells us all a ghost story.
How if you change your thinking,
if you try to get off the gurney,
they strap you down,
so they can safely feed icy water,
Into your veins to freeze the life inside you.
He tells me what the letters mean,
“You were tricked my friend but don’t worry,
it’s just like sleeping, except you wake so much more tired.”
The days stalk the walls like shadows.
My time is spent in circles,
orbiting the same thought,
the centre of which is a dark hearted sun.
I spend the night times sweating out my dreams,
and the day times sweating out my fears,
until he tells me,
it’s time to go.
Hold your head, you’re the lucky one.
On the gurney the ceiling glides over my eyes.
Distance and affection etch a sketched across the nurse’s expression.
Ward, Corridor, Lift, Corridor, Prep Room.
They inject the coldness into my vein,
and I count back through every mistake I’ve ever made.
They dropped the curtains so I never see,
the metal hands that pushed sparks into my mind.
And I come back in the middle of his sentence,
the world in front of me the size of a postage stamp.
He plonks breakfast on a table for me,
as my mind struggles into the clothing of thought.
“Come on,” he says “back to the halfway house,
Only 5 more treatments to go”
“Every time I see you, you seem more alive”,
became familiar words from visitors,
carrying brightly coloured bundles.
Visits are no longer conducted,
in cotton mouthed sentences
that muffled everything down to a murmur.
They told me at the last ward round,
I’d get out of intensive care soon,
a life to come as full as a harvest moon,
and eyes that have seen the things we hide from ourselves,
only to know the reasons why.
Shocked back into life,
and slotted back into the world.
Complete.
Michael Wilson
Publications:
Numerous books, magazines, anthologies published poems including Best of Manchester Poets, Ugly Tree, Unsung, Citizen 32, Pipeline, Mental Virus. (2007 onwards)
After All Tomorrows After Parties published by Knives Forks and Spoons (2010)
Bedlam’s Best and Finest published by Eyewear Press (2018)
Tours:
Frequent tours of UK and Ireland (from 2013):
Performed poetry in most regions of England, also performed in Scotland and the Republic of Ireland. A mixture of headlining gigs, book readings and tour of one person show: My Adventures in Mental Health.
Canada:
Halifax, Toronto and Montreal (2019) performed at the Toronto Slam, headlined gigs such as Arts Café at Free Times Café
Slams:
Winner Bolton Slam (2009)
Finalist BBC Radio 4 slam (2009)
Winner of Cheltenham Lit Fest UK All Star Slam (2010) – national slam
Finalist Superheroes of Slam (2013)
Winner of Belfast Book Festival Slam (2019)
Finalist in All Ireland Poetry Slam (2019)
Winner of At Your Place Slam (2020) – June, New Zealand based event
Events:
Organised several long-running events in Salford, Manchester, Portstewart and Belfast (2008 onwards)
Full run of My Adventures in Mental Health at Edinburgh Fringe Fest including a 5 star review (Bouquets and Brickbats (2018)
Performed at many music and arts festivals. Also often perform with BSL sign language.
email: mikewilsonartist@gmail.com