We are alive -- we write poems about Depression --

you and I

may never write any poetry near the quality of Sylvia Plath's THREE WOMEN or Poe's THE RAVEN

(the most metrically perfect poem in the English language)

but we are here, we live...

The constant struggle against Depression has NOT bested us.

Sylvia turned on the gas in the early '60's

Poe died in delirium in mid-1800's in Baltimore, only 40,

and now Baltimore is the only professional football team ever whose mascot

comes from A POEM...

I have lived SO LONG, and I am not giving up

My two closest childhood friends; neither lived past 25 - cuz of heroin.

Made ME stay away from it, I know that...

They are gone, I can't help them, neither can you

But you may write something that helps me, and I you

Sylvia and Edgar Allan are beyond help

they can only help us now if we do not become like them

Is this even a poem?  A confession?  A cry for help?

It is a cry to fight the poison thoughts, and never give up.

Dylan Thomas said "Do not go gentle into that good night"

"Rage, rage against the dying of the light"

and also wrote:

"Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; 
Though lovers be lost love shall not; 
And death shall have no dominion."

And I write that at Dailystrength.org

words shall float in to battle the Manic Depression that would devour...

humans all, against the inhuman forces that would tell us to give up,

humans -- write poems -- and despair not.