Hospital's Hallway

"Hospital's Hallway"

by Jae Jagger, a poetry class assignment

 “What are the voices telling you?” She poses

Over my head with her dire, diagnostic manual,

And her virulent vocabulary in a virtual, towering

Computer keyboard, bored

With me

“They’re telling me that I should die,

That I should hang myself in the shower.”

I travel the noble, forsaken path,

On repeat like the metal arms of the washing machine,

Spinning in decadent delight, fixed in solitary purpose, listening

To the swishing of heavy sweaters and socks and Secret stockings,

I travel the friendless path, up and down

And up and down, hell’s hallway

On the frozen, coolant ice rink, on its artificial brink,

White of tile flexing for my eyes

“Dive down here,” they say. “Die.”

Diddle a little with your life and its dull strife

I travel nihilism, up and down

The heart beating like old, worn out windshield wipers

During winter

I pass the guards and the generals and the post-love artillery

They hooked me up to the machine in a bunker for the brave

They set it to sizzle, brains like barren Holstein ground beef

“How do you rate your depression today?”

Always the same, difficult to obtain

Any noose for just a swing in the sultry shower

Naked like sex, numb like Norco’s aftermath

Just hung there

In the doctors' playground, children are just codes,
Pass out the pills for mania's merry-go-round

I can sing with my throat slit,
Gaping at God's damnation