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Neil Carpathois

Contributing Columnist

Sometimes poetry can serve as a vehicle to cleanse the self of pain. The writing of a poem can objectify and make more manageable an internal affliction. Putting the best words in the best possible order on the page can help one to organize a mental state of chaos. In other words, although dark-themed, certain poems are necessary to the poet’s survival.

A young area poet who goes by the name, Jane Midnight, offers up this sort of poem. Jane Midnight writes that she volunteers at SOMC and SOMC Life Center. Her dream is to one day become a surgeon. Despite her more scientific career leanings, she writes poetry regularly, and her favorite poet is perhaps the master of the “dark” poem that conveys the complexities of the psyche: Edgar Allan Poe.

Here is her poem:

Ugly

I get uglier as the days pass,

I feel my soul inside me rotting,

Like broken extremities in casts,

Or a gutted building toppling.

There’s something bad going on inside,

Something that could destroy them and me,

A pain I could not cry out, but tried,

It will kill me eventually.

It cuts, scrapes and punches from within,

I forgot to make money to eat,

It pulled all my focus in on it,

As layers of plaque grew on my teeth.

My schizophrenia, it scares me,

Half the people I know don’t exist,

Half tell me that I am not ugly,

Half’s real, but I forget which half is.

Thanks to Jane Midnight for this poem, and for sharing her intensely felt Poe-like vision.

Send poem submissions and correspondence to: ncarpathios@shawnee.edu or Neil Carpathios, Shawnee State University, Dept. of English & Humanities, 940 Second Street, Portsmouth, OH 45662. (740-351-3478).