Better Yet – A Poem Analysis

Illustration by Ana Juan for Rolling Stone

Better Yet

By: Jay L Kierstead

Trapped in a body that sabotages itself

My mind is in a cage

And even then, they both work

In ways I cannot comprehend

“Mental illness,” they call it

An illness of the mind and body

What part of me is well, then?

I hear things that are not there

And see things that others can’t

Yet to act on those would further isolate me

And so I learn silence

Like a third language

I learn how to nod

How to swallow reactions

And how to smile through the symptoms

That claw their way hungrily through my insides

My body betrays me in quieter ways

Pain without spectacle

Fatigue that eats whole days away

Organs that forget their jobs or sabotage them

Without asking permission

Doctors speak to me in fragments 

And well-meaning promises

Numbers, acronyms, and polite concern

As if my body were a puzzle to solve

And not a life being lived

I am told to manage the symptoms

To cope and be compliant

As if survival were to be my main personality trait

To smile and “fake it until it feels real.”

But what is reality when your mind can’t be trusted?

Some days

I do not trust my thoughts

Other days

I cannot trust my body

Every day

I am told to trust both

“Oh, you’ll get better,” they say

“If you do the work and make an effort.”

And spoons and forks and knives are somehow

In my artillery, yet I am short on them all

I grieve versions of myself

That never had a chance to exist

And I am tired of being brave about it

Still

I wake up

I take the pills

I do the work of staying

In a world that keeps asking me

“Why aren’t you better yet?”

A.M. Sterling (Ink-Stained Archivist)

This piece of poetry by Jay L. Kierstead describes one of the most fundamentally human experiences: grief—except this is not grief born of lost love or untimely death. This grief rots and roils in the body and mind of a living ghost. Haunted by the hollow, theatrical chorus of fair-weather well-wishers, the narrator puppets themself through life, all the while acutely aware of the expiration date on others’ tolerance for their physical and mental health battles. This suffocating, sisyphean tug-of-war waged between one’s own failing, all-too-mortal vessel and those who claim to stand firmly on the front lines alongside those struggling is a well-known anti-heroic classic tale to those in the chronic illness community; everyone proclaims they want “better” for you until they realize “better” may never be realized. After that revelation, well-wishes turn into quiet complaints, which land heavily on the ears and psyche of the one who is struggling most. Kierstead’s use of plainspoken diction, free verse, and liberal enjambment collectively emphasizes the tense emotional spiral that so readily unravels in the minds of the disabled and chronically ill. The first-person perspective, which is starkly confessional in nature, further knits together the skeletal fragments of the narrator’s fraying endurance in the face of grief, illness, and a flawed system.  

 

Kaie_S

“Better Yet” is a blunt and devastatingly honest look into mental health and chronic illness that plague so many of us. In reference to the mind as a cage, this astute comparison hits a little too close to home. A person cannot run from or flee their mind; they are merely stuck with it, whether it is healthy or not. If one has a tumor or a growth that should not be on the body, it can be cut and removed. It can be made “pretty” again. The mind does not work that way, and so we are stuck with the damage that sometimes spreads.  Then the speaker delves further into the abyss of illness by asking if the body and the mind are not “well,” what part of them is? In today’s world, where the masses are told to grin and bear it, we are reminded just how not okay it is to be not okay.  

The message of the poem is that society does not and will not tolerate illness that disrupts the status quo. Mental Health? It’s fine, but it needs to be fashionable or fixable.  Chronic illness? Sure, you can have it, but don’t dare complain too much, no matter how much you suffer, because appearances are everything. Those who suffer are forever prisoners of the mental drain, the physical aches, and societal pressures.  Still, the world demands to know, “Why aren’t you better yet?” How can our society be better when there is so little patience and empathy for the unseen pain that countless people suffer? When will we begin to take care of one another instead of ignoring the calls for help by asking people to put smiles on their faces and get better already? “Better Yet” is just as direct and to the point as society is when it demands compliance. They ask, “are we better yet?” The answer is no. Deal with it. 

 

Magical Mythtress

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to have a body and mind that don’t cooperate? You tell your body to do one thing, expect it to comply, and then it chooses something completely unrelated without your permission? If you don’t, then Jay L. Kierstead’s “Better Yet” offers a raw look into their physical and mental illnesses, particularly the feelings of isolation and dismissal. Doctors who ignore you or offer empty platitudes. Friends who abandon you when the illnesses rear their heads.

A world that asks, “Why aren’t you better yet?”

 

Lord of Lord

The intention of a poem is to connect the poet with the audience and to create a shared feeling. This is as true now as it has been since poems were recited in Ancient Greece. That seems to be the underlying sentiment offering an introspective look at finding comfort in a world of uncertainty. While the poem relates pain and isolation, it also provides the reader with a sense that the cage will open, and with this freedom, a new lease on life. In reality, “all better” doesn’t happen all at once. It is a wondrous journey in which failure and success, pain and pleasure, all have a role in shaping that journey while the destination is the same for all living things.