The world of a mad man, shown through loose leaf pages.
The years of torn notebooks, from forgotten sages.

Misplaced thoughts forever dated, inked in pen.
From forgotten science majors.

The light illuminated, made men wasted, broke me down,
in Nevertown, to Neverville, and said I could never make it.

I was frozen, naked, trapped and caged.
A madness loomed like cherry blossoms, in foreign places.

Medicated I was, and thrown on the bus,
brought to a different stage. My face was plastic, and waxed and wasted,
my waistline grew, my happiness faded. I never thought that I would make it.

Took my medicine, many of them,
till I felt I overstayed my welcome,
took a bunch of other meds,
got scared, depressed, still couldn’t pay attention.

Thought I was a joke, each cigarette smoked
helped me for a second, each drink and toke,

would help me, but my mind would send messages, scary thoughts,
broadcasted, embarrassed, failure, it was an epidemic.

Through the scars and bruised, mistakes I made them.
But that one thing that remained, remained faithful.
Music, the pen scratching on the table,

coffee in my veins, my hands shaking,
I would write till the page was an earthquake,
the aliens, moon landing, an avalanche, a heartbreak,
all to the sound of the scratching pages.

I kept with it, through all the grown man shit.
I faced it. Lost friends to death,
said I was not going that way,
met friends saw them make their mistakes,

some fatal, and some got them locked up,
and I was just like them, on a path,
but I took that page tore it up, kept going
in my notebook, refused to fold, never gave up.

Climbed up the irreversible mountain,
kept climbing, found something in writing,
that’s for sure why I still exist,
’cause two things, I put down the drinks,
drugs, made my fists stronger, learned how to fight,
spoke my mind, refused to be a medicinal victim any longer,
so Sense was a psych ward celebrity,
but then bam Oddball went mainstream,
maybe you don’t know it, it’s Oddball Magazine,
been a dream since I was fifteen,
and keeps growing.

But back to the ocean of mind,
my mental floating on subway bridges,
I didn’t want to live it, but yo for some reason
I kept going. So now, I am open, I let all the world in.
I am a Certified Peer Specialist
and love the life I am living in,
maybes its not the best thing,
and I still have to take medicine,
but the paper and pen, tattooed on my skin,
the magazine I make every day, keeps me going.

So, I wrote this on a break at Riverside.
It let me speak my mind for a brief time.
For some reason, when I listen to Philip Glass
I just get like this, and write like it.

So back to the beginning, always starts with an ending.
It was persistence, to keep going, to refuse to stay broken.

And truthfully, each time I stepped to the mic,
and recited what I write, made me feel so good inside,
and gave me a sense of pride, but for so long,
it just helped me keep on.

Writing singing shitty songs, strumming along
to four chords, and then some, but always in rhythm,
now I am changing the system and the way I think of it.
I’m not talking the system, I am talking
about the words written, and the nervous system,
the subparticle organism, intelligence that goes with it.
Reading a book called Punk Science, and me I am punk scientist,
that’s why I write like this, spreading like a virus,
only to open up your eye lids, that you may not know me,
and probably definitely didn’t know me then,
back them, even then, when they bullied me,
to being bullied on the T, being seen as a freak,
labeled, and thrown in psyche ward sheets.

But yo, that was then, this is now,
you gave me the strength to keep on.

Maybe it was my anger, and confusion,
turned into hope and respect for the people
with anger and confusion, the lens
that we are all going through something,
and that we aren’t losing, if we keep moving.

I have too much respect for this world,
this craft, of writing things down, in rhythm,
the soulful system of magical thinking turned,
constant wisdom into this piece I am reading,
finding something in nothing-

a Seinfeld way of thinking.

Thanks for letting me in.
And by the way Ben, Winna? is…winning.

 

Jason Wright is the editor and founder of Oddball Magazine. His column appears weekly. His new book is Train of Thought.