You dress like a Tamil a Sinhalese says to me. Mad.
I wear a brown poncho, nail collar, the street shouts Mad!

A life apart at school, alcohol bottles flying at home.
Mum unconscious on the floor, trip to Paris. Mad.

A philosophy degree of Anglo-Saxon logic stamps
on existential angst and large-print Mills & Boon. Mad.

Four hundred skinheads shouting at me You’re shit!
at a comedy gig, me saying I’m brown, not smelly! Mad.

My sectioned body dragged by police, barefoot, coatless,
friends willing me to go back into the hospital of abuse. Mad.

Chalice Am Bergris is a queer poet who is mentally and physically disabled, living in London. Her poetry has been published in Europe, USA, Asia, Africa and Australia. She has been a PhD Anthropology student, a church organist, a mediator, a teacher of anger management to offenders, a stand-up comic and a teacher of Medicine in Society to medical students, among other things.