Music Banter - Two Poems

The first one is about my best friend in the National Guard who was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder and depression, and has attempted suicide 5 times, but they still won't get off their asses to do the paperwork to let him out, even though they've said they're letting him go. The second is from a novel I'm writing (the main character is a poet).

Fuck The National Guard

You’re holding an unstable boy hostage
Through your bureaucracy; failed efficiency.
You diagnosed him but you won’t let him go
He’s tried to kill himself how many times now?
He’s your number. He’s my best friend.

You’re bureaucratic methods are gospel to you.
And your laziness keeps an unstable boy prisoner.
How many wrists need to be cut
Pills swallowed, trucks jumped in front of
Before you take notice?

Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork.
But you won’t do it.
So he stays week after week
Even though he’s wanted out for months.
Out of the guard and out of this world.

Soon his guts will be on the floor
Blood on your hands.
What will you say then?

Misery Breaks

The lake brings me in
To a warm whirlpool
Slowly sucking me down
Into a silent reverie
Ever so silently
A calmer kind of violence.
Derailing dreary trains
My drawling is a soothing sound
To my delicate, thumping ears.

Gray clouds engulf the sky and block the sun
A soft light is left bleeding across the sky
Like a horizontal cut across the chest.
The whirlpool drops me into my apartment
In an angry city of lights, cars and buildings
Drug dealers and hookers and unsuspecting bystanders.

My ear rings with tinnitus
Aching, beating against it’s walls.
Misery breaks like water
Beating down on a whale’s back.
Rushing like waves toward the shoreline.