2 Time Capsule: Dr. Jekyll's Syndrome

Title:  Dr. Jekyll's Syndrome
Date:  between 04/07/92 and 01/28/93
Setting:  Junior year of high school
Form:  Free verse

A man calls out,
Not to his wife or siblings,
Not to his mother nor any loved one. 

A man calls out,
Not to God or the angels,
Not to the heavens or the sky. 

A man calls out,
Not to the devil or hell,
Not to fire nor blood. 

A man calls out,
Not to anything visible,
But to his mind—
That continues to bind him;
to a personality not his own,
to a soul he does not want. 

A man calls out,
‘Free me from this unholy bond.’
Then sets himself aflame,
In a monstrous rage.

Notes:  In my first Time Capsule post, I made mention of this particular poem. As part of a culminating activity during a unit on poetry in English class, each member of the class was asked to share one of their poems on a blank sheet of white paper. We then all sat around in a circle, passed the poems around, and comment on them. As I mentioned during my first Time Capsule post, I had passed two poems around. This is the second one (even though it had been written the year before and not during the lesson).

Artifact I: The results of sending my poem around the circle of classmates.