Psych Ward Poetry

a millennial in bipolar remission writes about being crazy at a crazy time

photo by author, more than a decade after spending my 21st birthday in an involuntary legal psych hold

pulling honesty like teeth
from the skull of a mirage
I hallucinate the future
from a bed, strapped to the
gurney, wheeled in screaming —
gave birth to the universe
only to be sent to the
back of the line for life

I expected too much;
survival, normal housing
love, friendships. work.
I expected to be met like
a human being, but was
met like a rabid animal —
they can’t put down
human beings so they
put me away, instead

as if to be homoc1dal
(in the spurges of madness)
is illogical, when our time
capitalizes on suffering
from stock market lust,
creates thorns of inequity
and people living to d1e.

I sat screaming, rolling
on the ground, shaking the
metal push bars to exit
the locked…