Our hearts are packed with medicine, our eyes are blinded of dismay and anguished distance between life itself and the voices in our minds that tell us not to try, not to live, not to survive. The doctors tattoo a label upon our head that feeds itself into our blood stream, poison! Splatters of lies, my friends, they are lies, my eyes; they see the lies.

I swear to you I’ve built a wooden heart to take the knocks of the nails and the pain of leaving the house and seeking a fountain of healing water and loving flows. My friends, I’ve built a wooden heart to help others with tattooed foreheads, I’ll build a wooden ship if I could, I’d sail us out into the ocean so we remember we are just people on this earth, and there’s peace out there you see, the voices are quiet, the doctors wouldn’t visit, I’d live out there with you all if I could.

I’ve built a wooden heart to conquer the waves of the highs and the lows, see, our bodies are like mountains, we can sing until our lungs ache on the top, but sometimes we fall, and we’ll hit the bottom, we scratch out skin and lay there for a week or so.

But, I’ll tell you this, my friends, my brothers and sisters, lets all build a wooden heart together and we can climb these mountains together, we can sing from the top and fall together, we aren’t alone in this anymore, I swear to you It’s going to be okay, we’ve got mountains and our peers have got fields, but that’s okay, because our bipolar makes us strong, only we can build wooden hearts to conquer this pain.

And when it all is too much to handle, please build a ship in your mind, as big as the Titanic, get on board and sail away, out into the ocean where nobody can hear you sing, go out into the ocean in your mind where there’s nobody asking you if you’ve taken your meds.

From my heart to yours- this wooden heart is strong, as strong as the fire in your soul is, and I’m telling you now, friends, it’s okay, because we’ve a wooden heart and we’ve built it ourselves!