This is no place to be a smart-ass, I counsel myself,
Even though I yearn to query how Our Lord and Savior got mixed up in Psychiatry.
These people are all crazy as shit,
And if I am not very, very careful,
They will usurp my sanity, too.
I decide to allow myself the luxury
Of thinking smart-ass, angry replies
And saying the exact opposite....keeping my thoughts to myself
Which is undoubtedly counter to the purposes of any good insane asylum, but then, I am not much on team spirit these days.
She lectures on, waxing philosophical about St. John the Baptist
And I toy with the idea of asking her if she thinks Jean Paul Sartre
And John the Baptist were related....
After all, Existentialists are Gods' Children, too, aren't they ???
(That smart-ass sanction pops up again....I re-gain control.)
Cognizant it will ingratiate me, I softly inquire if
Jesus loves lunatics. The Mad Russian takes my face in her hands, tells me Jesus can forgive even me....
and her eyes tell me she is saying something she feels should
Affect me heavily So instead of screaming at her that Jesus is the only thing keeping me straight in this God-forsaken
Through-The-Looking-Glass gone hideously wrong
I muster up the most contrite look I can manage
And say as how I hope I can be healed of my madness, then.
She smiles, pleased I have finally seen The Light and finally
admitted My Illness. I am thinking how proud Sigmund would be of her for developing such a novel approach to psychoanalysis.
I wondered when she would pass the plate. (You know, like they always do in church...)
I am also wondering what it was that made her so fucking nuts.
Did someone hurt her, as a child...
enough to force her into Religion
To hide ?
Always using Christ as a shield against the world ?? To protect her from the Boogey-Man ??? It occurs to me that if I am not very mindful,
I may say something which will illustrate my good mental health
Which would undoubtedly undermine the Good Doc Penitent.
I suddenly realize I prefer the "dormitory"
Where no pretense of sanity is offered.
It occurs to me with blinding clarity that if I were to
begin acting crazy
These bastards would probably leave me alone. It is my imminent sanity which disturbs them, Which fuels them to locate the onus The Holy Grail of My Particular Madness Which I am surely concealing from them.

The gruesomely endless days melt into
Jack Nicholson Cuckoo nights,
And I try to acclimate to
Where Life has landed me.

I learn the trick of holding pills in the pocket of my cheek
Hiding it even when the "Nurse" tells me open up and stick out my tongue
A skill I am proud to have mastered.
(A laughing manic-depressive taught me)
The pills made me quite ill the first time I was forced to take one
And I resolved never to swallow one again.
This resulted in my having to sit long periods of time very quietly,
As though sedated.
I used the time wisely, contemplating
What I could ever have done to deserve such appalling consequence.

I asked to take a bath,
Further proving the theory that I have an aversion to germs.
They lock me into the bathroom, which has only a toilet and tub, no shower, no windows, except for the wired glass they spy on you through.
I see disembodied eyes peering at me, depriving me totally of any foolish semblance of privacy. I try to bend my body so
They can't see me clearly.
I wash out my panties, since I only have one pair
And They don't give you anything but a johnny, much less clean panties.
The "Nurse" furiously scrawls tomes about my washing my underwear,
And I sigh with the prospect of trying to justify a need for clean drawers in my next session with the Mad Russian.
Since I refuse to wear a johnny, they make me stand in the bathroom
Dripping and shivering
Until my little navy blue dress with white polka dots is retrieved.
I wore that dress every day for 15 days and nights
And clung to it fiercely.
It was my sole remnant of The Real World,
And I determined not to relinquish it until Death.

I make a friend
In a sweet-faced woman who is 35.
She is not crazy, but a deaf-mute.
Her parents put her here in her early years because they could not deal with her disability.
(I guess signing would be tough for the illiterate.)
She is imminently sane, and we write notes to each other.
She laughs without sound as she tries to teach me to sign.
I look at her through tear-filled eyes
Because I am so grateful to have found her,
To have someone who isn't 100 miles an hour nuts
In this brimstone time-share.
She has an aunt who visits once a month
Bringing her chocolates, and she has learned to hide them
Carefully
So that Staff or Loonies do not steal them.
Eyes shining with mischief, she makes the sign "sssshhhhhh"
To me, which strikes me as funny, coming from her.
She digs around under her mattress, and comes up with this packet
Extracts from it one small aromatic truffle, and splits it in two
Precisely, offers me one half
With the same air of intrigue
As a covert CIA communiqué.
The two of sit in the floor, leaning up against the cold metal bed
Munching that truffle
Interminably.
The richness of the chocolate floods my mouth,
Makes those little glands ache under my jaw.
I am certain I am drooling.
Food has been making me strangely nauseous lately,
And it seems I just cannot eat some things.
This chocolate, though…
It is such a wickedly delicious conspiracy
She and I share.
Day by day, she split those chocolates,
The two of us partaking gravely
As if
We were receiving Communion.
We'd sit and grin afterwards,
Careful to clean all traces of telltale chocolate from
Each others' faces.
Sometimes,
She's catch me staring off into space,
And she'd tenderly touch my face,
Pull my shoulders over to her and rock me gently.
The sobs nearly burst in me at those times,
And I always had to pull away from her
Fearing an emotional dam-break that would surely earn me
Serious narcotics.
It stabbed my heart that she was so complacent about being here,
That she had given up.
She had been here for 15 years.
Fifteen years the law ignored her
The system failed her
Her family abandoned her
But still she shared her chocolates.
I regarded her as a William Blake mystery
Of the Universe
Impossible to be understood completely.
In the years that have gone by,
I often grieve for her,
Wondering what happened to her…if she is still there
Counting her candy.
Margaret…her name was Margaret.

The days add into weeks,
And I test myself daily to make certain
My sanity has not escaped
While I was not looking.

Daily, they drag me to The Mad Russians' office
To be grilled once more
Interrogated
Interminably searching for some documentable sign
Of My Madness.

(continued, part 3)