Review of “Dear Sick Mental Virus” by O'Cyrus

Score: 95/100 (9.5 out of 10)

We're blessed and honored to have yet another O'Cyrus poetry book be a part of our contests!
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Dear Sick Mental Virus is yet another passionate and spirited poetry book by O'Cyrus, the author of Sacred, a previous Outstanding Creator Awards super winner. It is debatable which of these two books is better, but both have a lot to offer and a lot to sink your teeth into, especially if you love poetry.

While Sacred was much more about the author and his personal struggles, observations, musings, and experiences, Dear Sick Mental Virus concerns and involves the author's wife, Melissa, to whom the book is dedicated. The book talks a lot about her personal struggles/battles including sensitive topics like suicidal ideation.

With that said, this book is surprisingly positive and uplifting. You wouldn't think that considering the subject matters. However, it became very clear pretty quickly that this wasn't a book about moping, whining, and venting, it was a book about inspiring, motivating, and uplifting. There were poems in here about determination, self-respect, self-discipline, faith, and personal responsibility. We greatly admired and appreciated that!

Let's just say it: O'Cyrus is a talented and masterful poet who really grasps poetic techniques and literary devices.

One of those literary devices is imagery: the ability to create images in readers' minds.

In “Haunting Image,” the poet very briefly mentions a detached/severed head, mentions how it made them feel, then pauses, leaving a lot of blank white space for the rest of the page. This is subtly brilliant because it forces the reader to imagine. It forces them to hang on that thought and linger on it.

As we've said in the past, the imagination of what might be is often more terrifying and haunting than an explicit description. Why? Because of mystery. Because of the natural human fear of the unknown and not knowing. It's unsettling.

One of our favorite passages also demonstrates the poet's use of imagery:

“Suddenly I was on the ground trying to scream for help but I couldn’t yell
Struggling to stand as if I was being grabbed by hands from hell”

You can vividly and viscerally imagine hands reaching up from out of the ground trying to pull you down. This is going to sound like a weird comparison, but it kinda made us think of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves with all the prisoners reaching up through the bars.

Repetition is also a great tool in a poet's tool belt, and O'Cyrus makes great use of it.

For example:
Red eyes Red eyes
Darkness lies
Red eyes Red eyes
Darkness dies
This also helps to create a beat or rhythm to these poems.

In fact, one of our favorite passages reads:

Be ready so you don't have to be ready

Not only does this demonstrate repetition, but it also makes sense. If you're prepared and do your due diligence, you're less likely to be caught off guard by what life throws at you. If you try to wing everything, then you're probably going to be caught off guard.

And how about:

"Defeated, Depleted, Received it, Relieved it"

Where O'Cyrus really shines is his ability to latch onto (and use) sounds via assonance and consonance. Many of these use the “E” or “I” sound like:

“It is much easier for a person to deny you than to apply you”

There's also alliteration in lines like:

"My sweat, My tears, My blood, My fears"

“Walk with bravado and believe”

“This life
My life
My life without my wife
is a life I can’t
imagine”

It's a lot easier to rhyme or reuse end sounds like “E” or “I” but O'Cyrus often does this with sounds in the middle of words, which is a lot more challenging. For example:

“A right haymaker above the side of my waist
I dodged that left hook but took an uppercut to the side of my face

Dropped clean on the center of the mat
Staring at the ceiling lying flat on my back”

So, why is the passage above so special? Well, it effectively uses and highlights two different “A” sounds, one that sounds like “ace” and the other that makes the “ah” sound.

How about:

“I would struggle to raise our children alone in a home where the scent of your spirit would roam”

Notice how he latches onto the long “O” sound.

Next, consider this:

“I’m to blame and I feel ashamed
So take me lord and drop me in the flames
Because I would rather burn in hell than see her in pain”

In the above example, the “A” sound is prominent, but it is created with words with completely different suffixes.

Even in poems when O'Cyrus just uses end-rhymes, they're not simple end-rhymes. For example:

“Deep down I’m scared and terrified to my core
And yet I provide her with more
More and more with death knocking at door
The harder it gets the harder it is to ignore
Blood pressure rising faster and faster
I’ve seen this story before and it ends in disaster”

In the above example, there are two different end-rhymes with two different spellings. However, they are very close in the way they sound. For example: “disaster” and “core” make two different end-sounds (“ur” and “or”), but sound almost identical when read aloud.

O'Cyrus is also able to use personification. For example, there's a poem that refers to depression as being a “Major” (like a military rank), calling it “Major DD.” The poem eventually makes it clear that this stands for Major Depressive Disorder. Is actually reminded us of how mental illness was portrayed in C.A. Nicholas's books like how Soudade, the monster, represented depression in Cycles of the Phoenix.

O'Cyrus also has a lot of uplifting and positive messages, which we alluded to earlier. One of the messages that stood out to us is encouraging people born as minorities to not accept that they are lesser than, victims, or destined to be victimized. He encourages Black communities to do everything it can (starting from individuals) to build itself up rather than accepting meager prospects. That comes with some personal responsibility and perhaps some change in mindset and culture.

We enjoyed this poetry book.

Check it out on Amazon!