Poem: Dementia by Red Haircrow

DEMENTIA

I have gone mad and shall

die that way.

I have felt the murderous legends

move.

Wild with misery,

misery, misery,

agonies of then,

that time in the dark

when passion and sin

and brutality ruled the night:

And took and took

my soul,

my life.

This is the poem I wrote as a nineteen year old  a few weeks after I was gang-raped by three soldiers at the order of a former female friend. It is the introductory poem in my upcoming poetry collection, CORE. The first chapters of my upcoming memoir can be found here, The Boys Who Died. All my other writing and sequels have had to be put on hold so I can finish these two crucially necessary personal projects, I explain this at Unfinished Sequels: Why? Simple Answer: Reality.

About the Collection

Despite suffering years of child sexual and physical abuse, and acts of rape and violence committed upon me continuing through adulthood, even with the aftereffects of those terrible acts, I found the strength to endure by creating my CORE.

I found the strength to still believe in goodness and good people. Even in the darkest moments, I found a place to keep my spirit safe and what I could think of as untainted, though on the surface afterwards I felt filthy and undeserving of life: an amalgamation of determination and despair.

In that core, remaining true to myself, my ideals, and what I believed in, I learned to survive no matter what and to love myself, letting nothing and no one, not even myself, keep me locked in darkness or lies.

I began writing at age eleven as a necessary outlet, a place to which I could escape inside my mind, creating characters and journeying places I could only dream of ever reaching. These poems are the results of that necessary imagination throughout the course of my life.

With themes of suicide, loss and grief, but also of courage, joy and love, CORE is the revealing of the darkness and the light, of beauty and hideousness, of total desolation and infinite hope.

Walk with me the paths I’ve discovered, the journeys I’ve made, the people I’ve experienced, loved and lost.

This is my CORE.