Lauren M. Hancock Poetry and Prose

Tag: health

  • poem: schizoaffectivity – 08/03/22

    poem: schizoaffectivity – 08/03/22


    SCHIZOAFFECTIVITY
    family can be a strange thing.
    One minute you’re loved then the next you’re like a pestilence,
    an unwanted being.
    Of course, bringing it upon oneself, well, that’s something different,
    but in the end, I was made the tyrant,
    laid away on the shelf
    though only temporarily.

    And I suppose, I suppose it is so,
    this falling-apart thing that happens to my mind
    when I go temporary awry,
    momentarily insane,
    is this the pushing button inside, or on my brain
    that makes me ill for two closed months
    when I’m made to be locked away,
    my words spoken loudly in vain?

    I am just a patient,
    mentally, I have delusions,
    grand, carried out about the land
    and while I whine and scream,
    still want to shine,
    in my hand a small cup
    of perilous potions to be sucked down inside.

    The system wants to treat,
    they do it in the best ways they can
    but some they cannot help
    people like me initially
    on medications I feel they burden me,
    I choke.

    There’s nothing different about health these days
    in fact, there IS, but in time I will realise
    that some just wanted to help
    some were happy for me to shine
    and like the ordinary world,
    with some others, they wouldn’t pay my words
    a dime.

    I understand I can’t always please,
    temporarily the medicine makes me want to heave
    there’s just so much of it,
    my addled mind,
    years ago progressed from bipolar
    to schizoaffective disorder,
    whilst in my “prime”.

    This tale can go on far, far longer
    but I won’t give away the book,
    I just want others to have a peek in,
    have a tiny look,
    and oblige me this favour,
    won’t you take my words,
    many were my saviours,
    but most of all,
    close knit:-
    family, friends, and a brave tolerant doctor.
    And her protégé, of course,
    but I cannot name her.
    © 2022 Lauren M. Hancock Poetry and Prose. All rights reserved.
    Cartoon photo by mohamed_hassan on Pixabay
    Original photo of myself

  • Poem: recovery – 08/11/21

    Poem: recovery – 08/11/21

    dastardly distress
    growing more
    not less
    unless there is a pathway being chosen
    is this a test?
    to make healthier of the situation
    lightness has already occurred
    consumption is the ammunition
    there is time
    there is time
    to fix
    alter
    mend
    darn
    this part of life.

    complications may have soared
    if I continued the way I had
    hollow
    eyes wide
    sagging complexion
    beauty, is this, dear woman?

    I do not know
    but I need to learn balance
    it’s a difficult way to dance
    pirouetting is what I desire
    not sinking because I’m allowing
    myself under.

    control, control
    in its finest form
    everything documented
    taken in
    and jotted down
    I guess obsession is easy
    to develop
    when I’ve the personality like mine

    but wind back,
    wind back the clock
    develop new, fresh, safer habits
    with time.  
    just learn the research,
    I tell myself,
    and you’ll be fine.
    (08/11/21)
    Copyright © 2021 Lauren M. Hancock. All rights reserved.

    Photo by Jack Bassingthwaighte on Unsplash

    Previous Post: striving – 07/11/21

    Lauren M. Hancock Poetry and Prose

  • Prose: Learning to be Content – 16/05/21

    Prose: Learning to be Content – 16/05/21

    I sit and I’m awash with contentedness, my full midsection makes me smile, and causes my toes to pleasantly curl. I’ve not felt this comfortable warmth amid a toasty winter’s bedroom in what seems like forever – I welcome the feeling, note the lack of mental feud. For, to feel and be satiated, with no inkling of guilt present when lately it’s haunted, consumed me for so long, is to show signs of progress, normalcy, and a rightness of thought.

    I feel a fire within my belly and a welcome drowsiness within my mind, lethargy is settling in, and regret is surprisingly hard to find. Whereas in the past, I’d pick and pick at my ‘weakness’ for allowing my capacity to slightly fill, I realise, I know now, I can make wiser choices, and this satiation I don’t have to begrudge, hate myself for, nor become angered or rage at myself as a drill.

    I realise, to some, how petty my worries may seem, stupid, precious or ridiculous to those with little or no empathy, but disordered thinking compounded by years certainly has an effect, and this comfortability now is a breakthrough here, I’ll allow my smile to continue yet.

    Still, balance must always be assumed, continually studied, and practiced, I cannot allow myself to become too comfortable, and make poor judgements, but, to be kinder to myself, it’s important as there is nobody else, no one here eternally, I am the one who must look after myself, my health, and my energy. Upon this path, it is so important for my journey, for my personal growth, and for my stability.

    © 2021 Lauren M. Hancock. All rights reserved.
    Photo by Александар Цветановић from Pexels

    Previous Post: ‘Unwanted Barbs – 15/05/21

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  • Poem: Stagnated Time – 01/05/21

    The minutes seem so long,
    the second-hand drags like
    fingernails in sand and broken glass,
    I’m impatient to know the answer,
    but I’m terrified to even ask.

    Tell me, what point is there
    in waiting,
    in watching the vapour of my breath
    cloud my vision, obscure with fog?
    The truth we will discover yet.
    I refuse to beg or sob.

    Ache not for the present, but recall tremors from the past,
    patiently, patiently, 
    in due course, 
    is it right to ask?

    I shall not flounder in my need, 
    in my desire to know, 
    better still lay the questions down to rest,
    I have no right to request, 
    nor you any obligation to let me know. 

    Would functionality take over
    if the seconds were given a chance
    to catch up with each other, 
    suddenly, a minute seems too fast. 
    The seconds trip and fall on one another, 
    clumsily, then altogether.

    (c) 2021 Lauren M. Hancock. All rights reserved.
    Photo by Logan Armstrong on Unsplash

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  • Poem: Where Have You Been? – 17/04/20

    Poem: Where Have You Been? – 17/04/20

    Unknowing of where you’ve been,
where have you travelled?
Where has your mind taken you?
Is it to the edge of your despair?

Are you aching,
begging to be heard without any
actual words?
Misunderstood,
underappreciated?
Does this strike a chord?
 
Do you wish you could move on quicker
to achieve your goals
within your dreams?
Is there a hollow in you
needing to be filled?
Measurements two by two,
or maybe just a clearer view.
 
I hate to see you in distress,
you feel you hide it well,
and from the world you want to encase yourself,
a solid armour,
self-protection still,
where the wind and sound will
rush over your body and not even care,
you will find that anonymity there.
 
And huddled in the tunnel you’ll be,
against the thick of a storm which strangely frees you
from hefty concerns and worries
which drag, drag you down,
and now you’re just a molecule
or a large particle
against which beats the busy air.
 
I can sense your freedom now
in the darkness,
in the shadows of that tunnel,
some may find such a situation
claustrophobic, atrocious,
but you, dear,
are released by the air,
being pounded by winds is no trouble,
each gust dispels care upon care.

© 2020 Lauren M. Hancock. All rights reserved. 
Image by Genty from Pixabay 

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  • Poem: Snorbert’s Deathly Device – 28/09/19

    Poem: Snorbert’s Deathly Device – 28/09/19

     Snorbert the Coiled Doggie possessed some terrible untoward thoughts
     he was obsessed with making smoke tricks with his vape
     he believed the special smoke gave him increased volume of thoughts
     and physical energy to make him trimmer and taut.
      
     While he was tripping on his words and slurring on his S’s and stumbling on his vowels
     his mind felt restless, more aware, yet not at ease at all.

     He imagined darkened thoughts of capturing ganders of geese 
     and frightening them into being tangled in masses of tall angry trees
     and then
     bucking with broncos and lassoing them with the most delectable of ease.
      
     His favourite method of his state of being was of course, coiled, or rather
     known as psychedelic.
     He could be entertained for hours it seemed
     when his lungs were pacified, but secretly drowning
     their futures breaths to be shallow and frantic.
      
     But there were moments when 
     the clouded sky of raw brutal thoughts was shifted aside,
     away,
     to reveal a clearer mindset and a satisfied ride, 
     where he could mentally feel the ease of calm trickling rain.
      
     Where for a moment there was no idle feeling of him drowning with meandering sensation
     a repulsing sense of mentally altered satisfaction
     Snorbert now had a clearer agenda and it no longer involved becoming elevated 
     because of the vapour.

     Realising in this moment it was responsible for his strange thoughts and lack of ardour
     he tossed the device into a lake
     watched it sink, 
     deeper, under, deeper still:
      
     Soon enough it would never again be seen.  
      
     There was no time in his world for potential future mental illness
     and lung disease, or even death.
     He was a smarter doggie now, 
     he had awakened, he now knew the facts.
      
     That tempting temptress of a device could cause him the loss of his life
     or at least the comfort of deep fresh breaths 
     his God-given ability to inhale and exhale freely.
      
     There is a lesson to be learned
     but he shall not righteously parade his tale before you all
     Snorbert simply sits calm, still, clear-minded,
     as I finish recalling his story to inform, not to enthral.

    © 2019 Alice Well Art, Lauren M. Hancock also known as Alice Well. All rights reserved.


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  • Story example: A Marriage of Questionable Convenience (Grey lead sketch) – 15/07/19

    Story example: A Marriage of Questionable Convenience (Grey lead sketch) – 15/07/19

    By Alice Well (LMH) (c)

    It was a marriage of questionable convenience, the woman promised to her blender, preloaded with the goodness of a whole carrot, at the cessation of their nuptials, he knew where to send her. 

    The greengrocer held his palm across his sweaty face, when he saw this woman grabbing every piece of fruit and veggie in his store, everything was snatched away from their ordered place. Frantically she grabbed, left, right and centre, even one, almost unseen squashed black stinking banana.

    “He can blend real good, he can blend reaaaaalll nice,” was her working motto and mantra. Why did she marry a blender? This is a peculiar story I have to tell you. 

    This women had an overt obsession with health, and an unhealthy obsession with maintaining her weight herself. Often she’d go on juice fasts, the longest had been twenty days, with no solids, only liquified fruit and vege, she would cleanse her unhealthy days away. 

    She was also obsessed with gym, and it was here she met her true love, the Blender formally known simply as Gin, a singular word. He had once had a lover named Tonic, and each lazy Sunday they would blend themselves, intertwine and smile, downing alcoholic beverage upon beverage,  their love was known to last for many a while. 

    But Blender longed for someone far healthier, someone who would take care of themselves not only his heart and beats to drowsily, dreamily blur. He desired someone proactive in their health and themselves and suddenly he stumbled upon her, at the squat racks, wiping away sweat from herself.

    She shyly glanced upward, their eyes met in a burning moment, “Hi, I’m Blender, nice to meet ya,” and he offered his hand to be shaken while he continued to speak. His gym knowledge and fruitarian lifestyle understanding was impressive to this woman, soon to be his bride to be, they were fierce together, electric, their words a melded symphony from heaven.

    Over time, during their marriage, Blender began to wonder at the state of mind his wife lived in, he really began to ponder. Did she need help with her suspected issues, someone professional to talk to at least? But no, at this suggestion she would not bend, all she’d do was blend, blend, blend. 

    But as she became more comfortable in her relationship and circumstances, she began to put on a little more weight and use the gym facility less, and now she found out she was with child, what a glorious day, a future human-appliance child, weren’t they so blessed! How she wept when Cucie arrived, named after her favourite veg to blend, her life was now on track: love, health, family, personal wealth. There was no need to be tormented by inner demons anymore.

    © 2019 Alice Well Art, Lauren M. Hancock, also known as Alice Well. All rights reserved.

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