#OCDIsNotAnAdj

In the shower yesterday I had the serendipitous luck to hear this story about a couple of authors coming to the area who have had obsessive-compulsive disorder slither its way into their work, much as it has into mine. If you get a chance, please visit this link to the story. I'll definitely be checking out their books.

One topic they touched upon briefly that made me "hell yes"-out-loud was how common it is for people to say, "Oh I'm so OCD about" X or Y. This is something that makes me cringe on a regular basis, and not just because of the grammatical problems it creates. I don't want to be hypersensitive about it, but on the other hand it trivializes something that is anything but trivial for the people who live with it. So please, unless you honestly mean that your brain torments you with fears that prey on everything you care about most, and that X or Y are legitimate clinical tics that compel you to publically repeat often-humiliating behaviors that you wish you could stop doing like you wish you could keep breathing, please don't say you're "OCD" about it. #OCDIsNotAnAdjective

Anyway, I've been meaning to post some more sample poems to my site for a while, so I'm taking this as a nudge to share one on this topic today. First published by Open Minds Quarterly of Sudbury, Ontario, I hope you like it.

High Functioning

Mr. Hughes, or may I call you Howard?

I’m sure we know each other well enough, living

in the same disturbance as we do, albeit

at opposite ends of the century.  Me, obsessive, you

compulsive, and also the other way round.

We’re grifters, you and I

flashing a series of parlor tricks, one furtive tic

and then another. Artists of escape, slipping

out of handshakes, turns of doorknobs, disappearing

into the safe small sterility of hotel rooms

and other dark, yet shiny places. Even there our most delicious

cravings are coated in terror that drops

into our laps in the quiet late at night like a flat, ovoid

cockroach losing its grip as it crosses the ceiling. Infected?

Syphilitic movie starlets? MRSA creeping hot and silent

into the divot of another scab irresistibly gouged

by frantic fingers desperately digging for the clean, fresh

untainted flesh beneath the platelet crust of our own mortality?

We hold the world together with cellophane tape

and a ton of excuses. It’s a nonstop sideshow

trick, pulling a never ending rope, hand over hand,

even as the fibers fray apart. Knotting faster than the human eye

can see. The imperfect spaces terrify me, the same as you. The truth

we hide beneath forcibly-slowed breaths is that

we can never be sure. Are we hallucinating or are they blind?

It’s still unanswered, Hughsy, and we’re both held

captive by that question, in the same dark cell.

Our fears crossing hand over hand through time.