Poetry

"rescued from the filth of paradise, hosed off, shining, my cracked fingernails caked with dirt."

"The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters, with four dead and eleven wounded."

"The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters. Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape, the label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt."

"...seeking and longing for the garden of cherry blossoms..."

A psychiatrist reflects on the importance of time... and living in the moment.

"We were three men alone in a ward room built for fifty, dust film on the floor..."

"I can smell the aroma of spring tulips filling the air-spreading peace and good cheer..."

"For we are a healing and a growing greenhouse..."

"For you and I, know that this space, this pace, this race is a gift to be shared, craved, and loved."

"In the corridor, he demands a confession: Who peeled back his bandage? Who let him look?"

“In the realm of psychiatry, the therapeutic value of poetry lies in its ability to transcend the limitations of prose, offering a space for the unsayable and the ineffable.”

"He’s dying on dialysis—I’ve known him since my first days as a doctor, and now he wants to quit..."

As Martin Luther King Day approaches, a psychiatrist shares his thoughts... and hopes we are in within reach of those dreams and ideals.

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world..."

A psychiatrist reflects on a new year and anticipatory growth.

"Spray the perfume of your smiles on the incision. Inject the song of life into my veins to wake me up. Gently beat the drum so my mind may dance with yours, my doctor, day and night."

Here are some highlights from Frank A. Clark, MD’s, Poetry for Inclusion from throughout 2023, as seen in Psychiatric Times.

"...my eyes searching for the one skater in every crowd who glides graceful as a god, like my father years ago in his black leather racing skates..."

"This letter I write from the heavenly ashes wishing that ebony and ivory twirl as one into the arms of divine humanity."

"My black cat sprints through the kitchen door, a glassy-eyed cottontail hanging limp from his jaws."

"Walk through the garden's dormant splendor. Say only, thank you."

"You will love again the stranger who was your self."

How does one heal? Perhaps by "degrees of revealedness," according to a psychiatrist's reflections.

"Hat factories closed quiet as prayer books, and loss lingered in my father’s guts like unswept garbage after a big parade..."

A psychiatrist reflects on gratitude and Thanksgiving...

A psychiatrist reflects on how much we all have in common and the need for healing...

A poetic conversation among a Palestinian Israeli psychologist, an Italian Canadian psychiatrist, and a Canadian United Church Pastor in a time of war.

"Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite."

"It was a time when men wore fedoras banded on the crown, each band with a feather tucked into a bow, and inside, sweat bands carved from calf skins with their sweet smell of animal and earth."

"Of her choice virtues only gods should speak, Or English poets who grew up on Greek (I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek)."