Hell

Hospital racket, nurses' iron smiles.
Jill & Eddie Jane are the souls.
I like nearly all the rest of them too
except when they feed me paraldehyde.
Tyson has been here three heavy months;
heroin.       We have the same doctor: She's improving,
let out on pass tonight for her first time.
A madonna's oval face with wide dark eyes.
Everybody is jolly, patients, nurses,
orderlies, some psychiatrists.       Anguishes;
gnawings.       Protractions of return
to the now desired but frightful outer world.
Young Tyson hasn't eaten since she came back.
She went to a wedding, her mother harangued her
it was all much too much for her
she sipped wine with a girl-friend, she fled here.
Many file down for shock & can't say after
whether they ate breakfast.       Dazed till four.
One word is: the memory will come back.
Ah, weeks or months.       Maybe.
Behind the locked door, called 'back there,'
the worse victims.
Apathy or ungovernable fear
cause them not to watch through the window starlight.
They can't have matches, or telephone. They slob food.
Tantrums, & the suicidal, are put back there.
Sometimes one is promoted here.       We are ecstatic.
Sometimes one has to go back.
It's all girls this time.       The elderly, the men,
of my former stays have given way to girls,
fourteen to forty, raucous, racing the halls,
cursing their paramours & angry husbands.
Nights of witches: I dreamt a headless child.
Sobbings, a scream, a slam.
Will day glow again to these tossers, and to me?
I am staying days.