Michael Tugendhat

Psychosis


Like imprecision, psychosis
is nothing but a botched amputation

where you live amidst the nowhere.
In hidden life

she chews through you
toward incapacitated

momentum.

There is nothing
in the imperfect

but a shade
of something other.

The cuts in your wrist
are just wide enough

for blood to pour through,
palms flush cold

where the knife inserts
in the bow-tie veins

of your wrist, the dog licks
below at the blood pool

you’re knee deep in it now,
that schizophrenic cool.




Michael Tugendhat has been living with bipolar, psychosis, and obsessive compulsive disorder for the last two years. His memoir is due out from Turquoise Morning Press in 2012. This memoir details what life is like with a mental illness. He hopes to educate and inspire. He lives and writes in Philadelphia.