One of the most pressing problems, to my mind in our modern society is mental illness. Drugs don’t seem to be the answer. In fact it seems that many drugs exacerbate the problem. I wrote this poem in an attempt to gain some sort of understanding of the state of mind of someone who is losing his grip on reality. It must be a terrible thing.
Live well,
Ollie Lind
Reflections of an Old Young Man
I am but one and twenty years,
and yet I find the weight of fears
oppressive, to the point of pain
cry,”I’ll never do that again.”
From bad experience I withdraw
cast my gaze down nevermore
to look with calm and steady eye
at any stranger, passer-by.
I am so young and yet so old
even as a babe, I’m told,
did shrink from anything unknown
like startled bird to safety flown.
It seems the more I try to see
and understand what bothers me
the less I know the more I cringe
I am forever on the fringe
of life and love, feelings vivid,
frustration, anger, makes me livid
as I curse and damn my lot
I sometimes think it is a plot
to deprive me of my mind
though who could be so unkind
to one whose fixed so in his fate
life so early, love so late.
I seem to live as in a trance
a slow, compulsive ritual dance.
Never touching, seeing, feeling
partners, spinning, twirling, reeling.
My life seems lived by another
I observe, father, mother
trying to involve their son
in the family, all as one.
But the distance still remains
I live life dragging chains
of past bad deeds for which remorse
is absent from my discourse.
Old age is but a backward glance
at times ago, look back askance.
We regret what might have been
if only, in youth I might have seen
that living in the present time,
see the clock, hear it chime.
And feeling what is here and yonder
could make life live, full of wonder.
Ollie Lind
