No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader." - Robert Frost

Colleen Wells writes poetry and creative nonfiction. She’s a recipient of an Indiana Society of Professional Journalists Award and a runner-up for the Robert Frost Poetry Award. Colleen is the author of Dinner with Doppelgangers - A True Story of Madness and Recovery, and the poetry chapbook Animal Magnetism, published by Finishing Line Press in 2022.

Welcome to the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey. Colleen, what poems have you brought for us today?
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“Reframing”

The bare limbs of the birch tree
jut out, naked,
no signs of spring,
and the bee balm
looks stringy and tired,
against a backdrop of sludgy snow.

The window framing my view
is dirty, and the plants along the ledge slouch
under winter’s breath heaving in through the old panes of glass.

Maybe I should have gone to work after all,
or maybe I’m best at home.
Either way,
I’ve got to reframe my view.

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“Group”

In the morning they give me more Haldol,
which winds me up like a spinning top, like a
whirling dervish in a blue, terrycloth bathrobe.

After breakfast, it is time for group.
Our chairs in primary colors are fashioned
into a half circle.
I am told to sit down.
All eyes are on me.
Everyone is dressed for the day but me.

I turn to the woman to my right and ask her
if we are in hell and if she sees the black ravens
hovering in the sky like I do.
She gets up, takes another seat.
I am left alone, in group.

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“Out of Chaos Comes Art”

Once dubbed manic-depression,
bipolar disorder is a potent malady,
that wreaks havoc, making the ordered
brain disorderly, a broken puzzle.

Of the psychiatric disorders
in the DSM-IV,
it is a machine gun.

Rapid-firing tongues,
Sadness engulfed in inertia
psychosis destroying marriages,
leaving children
addled in fear.

A friend of mine who
shares the affliction
streaked through his yard
like a white, hot comet.

Lithium, Lorazepam, Loxapine,
Wellbutrin, Depakote, Haldol,
Mellaril, Seroquel, Abilify.

And don’t forget the Prozac.

I’ve swallowed them all
to regulate my moods.

Genetic or environmental factors?
The uncertainty belies the certainty
that without them,
some of the greatest writing
would be missing:

Sylvia Plath
bled poetry in the blue hours
before dawn, then silently
succumbed to the vapors,

Two orphaned children,
left in her wake,
one to wonder,
another to follow suit.

Hemingway was silenced with a gun,
leaving behind his stark, limpid prose
and a family
to pick up the pieces
like gathered river rocks
that started as sand.

Narrative arcs,
incomplete.

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“A Dose of Today”


Take your medicine, the 150 mg of Buproprion
and 5 mg of Aripiprazole.
Take your vitamin D.

Wash it down with cold water or orange juice.
Grab some coffee on the way out.
Wait for the alchemy to begin.

Grow your to-do list,
write it down in blue,
start on it.

Feel bored, get tired wonder what it’s all for.
You’re wading in the muck now.
Let it pull you down into sleep.

Wake up at four-thirty.
Get back to doing.
Check the list again.

Only five things are checked off.
Make some coffee, take a walk.
The sun is out now.

This is as good as it gets
for today.

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“Borderline Personality Disorder”

That summer and fall I am in and out of the hospital a lot.
I collect diagnoses
like I used to collect flavored lip gloss.
Depression.
Major Depression.
Manic-depression.
My favorite is borderline personality disorder.
I am borderline. My personality is disorderly.

You've been listening to the poetry of Colleen Wells on the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey.