gracie square hospital

                 


             (...is madness fickle?....)

Do you remember the room

with sallow yellow walls

defrosting madness and 

thickening time, the recycled 

bed linens, a window 

and nothing else.

The bathroom bathed

an old woman who 

wet her bed and left

the toilet bloated

settling hell and odor

alive in my room.

Numbered graves, some empty 

dressed with starchy sheets

a tempered pillow and blanket

thin and bruised.

The captain of our vessel

filled the paper cups 

with pink, some white,

others blue for the dead

to swallow and breathe again

and mumble senseless words

and never once

looking in your eyes.

Some vaporized 

on the old brown couch,

others paced the sterile planks

soliciting for show

how to be crazy barnacles

feeding from a ghost ship.

one single impression