Overcoming low mood

Questions, always questions,

Said his brain (within theory of mind);

Why here? It said. Why sit so still

In a shallow arc? The quiet voice,

Participate: he’s disinclined.

The world moves on without him

In a rain storm at the lights.

He runs through various scenarios

While dark thoughts form like

Stalagmites, or stalactites.

This is about the low moods,

She went to the flip chart bold.

Three people spoke about failures

And the ennui that comes

In with the dead draft like a cat from the cold.

He felt that he was dying

Like a comic on his arse

And drifted into a vegetative state

Induced by church hall ambience

And impending tone of farce.

What is it about these chairs?

Formica topped tables and floors

Of bleached lino and wainscoting

That rumbles like insects

Or hail-pummelled doors.

Vicious cycle. Manage, tackle.

Behaviour activation time.

They give us control over lumbering lives

And a marked tendency

Towards the benign.

He wants out to a parallel world

That probably doesn’t exist,

To a church-burning, folk-hating

Alternative at the end of

His furled and sprung fist.

This is it. Two hours never

To be returned, no bill, receipt.

He checked the situation

With a critical eye for detail

And a prickly sense of heat.

He listens, though. It’s polite, after all.

Break the cycle and do more she said.

He parcelled up the phrases

With care and stored them

Pleasurably in his head.

Weather fronts came and went,

Motes descended laboriously,

And everyone dreaded

The social break without

Props (thus the chains of the free).