The psychotic babble of the outpatients next door starts to drive me insane The voices in my own head begin to blur with theirs Causing disequilibrium, dizziness, nausea They relive, relieve their awful memories Which spill out their windows and into mine Trailing echoes of terror, trauma, tragedy Crying, coughing, laughing, weeping, begging Their little thoughts ricochet around my head Like the desperate squall of cicadas Endlessly rubbing their legs together Searching frantically for a suitable mate
I can't separate their thoughts from mine Their haunted childhoods replayed in gruesome detail Exaggerated or not for maximum effect In order to procure the proper medications Whose increased dosage will help to minimalize the aftershocks Of a humiliated life both past and present I'm not so fortunate
Snippets of conversations free fall against warm brick Trickle upward and cloud my vision Their scoldings, scaldings, beatings mingle with my own nightmares Grim grimy fairytales, hard luck stories, lousy jokes Incriminations flavor every dialog Even their doctors deliver speeches meant only for their own benefit And of course I've heard it all before I've heard too much Hear too much Too acutely
The wasp against the drainpipe stupidly battering itself In a wasted effort to gain entry Field mice in a neurotic scramble seeking rotted scraps on which to feast The long distance moan of a mournful freight train Miles away from the stockyards and slaughterhouses On whose outskirts hobos wander Waiting for stray fowl to find its way out to the smoke and spit The endless muttering of the seven borderline personalities next door The human zoo All suffering from multiple fractures whimpering like animals Pleading, begging for compassion, for understanding Knowledge, respect, companionship For humanity Who inhabit, cohabitate with not only each other But the multiple others who dwell within themselves