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Poem

I can’t tell you how it all started,
That night when manic moon 
Probed and punctured the pall.
I awoke hurtling through space,
Somewhere between ideation and shellshock,
Somewhere between vertigo and inchoate phrases.

I remember redundant circularity,
Premises tumbled into conclusions, 
collapsing onto premises,
A colliding kaleidoscope of real and demonic terrors.
I pieced together feeble fragments of form,
careening, cringing, crying out muted,
screaming out silently in suffocation.
For decades or a day, I was unable to say. 
Faces swirled by, studying me like a lab rat.
All their labels flew, but no one really knew.

Dumped at asylum’s door, 
I was an indentured servant to delirium, 
Where old drooling men were fed in bibs,
Where a nameless woman always danced with me,  
Where another kept clicking a TV remote,
and a transgender angel spoke the sanest words. 
The staff dispensed neural elixirs in Dixie Cups, 
Switching most of my socks and underwear
With strangers.

Then, one random Tuesday, it all reconstructed.
Everywhere permeating petrichor, 
Everything erected like Elysium, lush and dripping. 
Speaking softly, I offered sensible, sentient sentences,
Words assembled the way mental doctors liked.
I walked in consistent, persistent directions,
They sent me home, my muscles still
Quaking from all the meds.

In the end, no expert dared speculate on these events,
The how or why no one really understood.
My normality now suits everyone’s comfort zone.
But to those who shun my type, beware!
Deviant delirium always languishes hidden in every heart.

Accepted for publication: The Opiate, Spring. 2024

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