Trip

 

Wigging in, wigging out:

When I stop to think

the wires in my head

cross: kaboom. How

many trips

by ambulance (five,

count them five),

claustrated, pill addiction

in and out of mental

hospitals,

the suicidalness (once

I almost made it)

but–I go on?

Tell you all of it?

I can’t. When I think

of that, that at

only fifty-one I,

Jim the Jerk, am

still alive and breathing

deeply, that I think

is a miracle.

 

Arches

 

of buildings, this building,

frame a stream of windows

framed in white brick. This

building is fireproof; or else

it isn’t: the furnishings first

to go: no, the patients. Patients

on Sunday walk in a small garden.

Today some go out on a group

pass. To stroll the streets and shop.

So what else is new? The sky

slowly/swiftly went blue to gray.

A gray in which some smoke stands.