I’ve written a duet of poems to add to my collections. I’m sure you’re all aware of the tragic tale of Dr Henry Jekyll and his somewhat evil alter ego Mr Edward Hyde from the 1886 Gothic novella the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. The inspiration for so many movies, drama’s and stories.

Even I tried to reproduce this story in the form of a school play once with a load of primary school kids, myself being one at the time, and playing the lead role; of course. Well you can imagine how that turned out. The children didn’t have a clue or care about the story; I was a crap director being only about 10 or 11 and the teacher called it a day after an hour of total anarchy. Yes, I was that young.

As I’ve mentioned before, I do love a bit of the macabre from time to time, a bit of Gothic horror and it’s this story that inspired me to write about the feelings and emotions that I sometimes go through when I’m; not quite myself.

This first part is the objective side of me that knows the trouble I get into when I lose it and the problems it causes.

The Jekyll in Me

To be possessed

Is that what poor mental health once was?

To be a sufferer

That disconnect from the world

 

I almost understand

How days ago, Demons were to blame

The shame they brought on a lost soul

That science now calls chemical imbalance

 

It’s like…

That veil of Red Mist

The transformational possession by the other one

The moment I forget…

 

Only to wake from it after lost time

To the fallout of my mood and temper

And the family who just deal with it

I don’t see the turmoil that’s left in my wake

 

Like a distant memory

When I’m not me, in partial amnesia

Feelings raging, consideration lost, uncontrollable

The mouth engages but the brain does not

 

It’s not right I know

But that moment of lost control

It’s the Hyde in me

A personal ecstasy

 

But then I fall

From the metaphorical ceiling to floor

Back from the ecstasy in him to the hurt in me

And the floor hit’s hard, I awake

 

Awake to emotional devastation

To the collateral damage

That is the disbelief of those that faced me

And bored the shrapnel from my forked tongue

Copyright © JRFC April 2018