The Diagnosis

As you sink into it, the malady I mean
your own personality, character, are shrunk 
    almost to nothing.
    Not at their hands, but your own.
Shrink to a mere diagnosis - bipolar borderline schizoaffective whatever.
And you tell the sweat-bead rosary:
    Is your hair in waterjets sprouting snakelike from your head?   Yes
    Do your balls hang low? Can you tie 'em in a bow?               No
    Upon dragging a bayonet up your gullet, does yet another 
        Searing cosmos sparkle through?  And is it beautiful?       Yes

    The dull, monotonic thudding
        yes no yes
        yes no yes
    rolls silently across the ward’s tiled floors
    lofts heavily into the night air
        the pleading
        let me out
        please let me out

© Rod Pederson