Among the Put-Aways

“Sign for your medication,

your majesty,”

the intern drones.

Lazily, I sign my usual “Z,”
which no one knows is my protest,

a toppled “N”,
no use whatever
without the imperial seal
of the Bonapartes.

With a wink and a nod
he hands me the pill,
blocking the camera
as he takes it back.
Late night, in the parking lot
he will trade it for sex
with some homeless girl.

Later, the nurse comes.

“Flu shot!” she announces.

Ha! Don’t I know
it’s a lethal injection?

Promptly, I strangle her.
I practice Lon Chaney faces
for the cameras
until the orderlies come.

Again they want
a signature. I shake
my head “No” this time.
My friend the intern says,
“Let’s double his meds,”
wink-wink, nod-nod.
And as for the nurse,
just so they will not
get in trouble, they throw
her body down
the nearest air shaft.

Out on the grounds, where
all of us exercise
amid the topiary shrubs,
I am pursued
by a hillbilly zombie,
pitchfork thrust through
his back, four tines
protruding. “I like you,”
he says, “I like you.”

I do my best
at my levitation act
to avoid him. I float
just over the topiary tops

and sing in my best baritone
Over the Rainbow,
trail off after blue-birds
though no one knows anymore
what kind of thing a bird was.

Cold days, I am allowed
a corridor walk
which takes me past
the dispensary.
Renfield, the pharmacist,
shows only head to navel
at the dutch door.
“Don’t worry,” he cackles,
for nothing here is real.”
This too, I know,
is a form of medication,
but I have studied hard
at epistemology,
“No!” I snap back,
“Here, everything is real,
in the pineal’s basement.”

Next day, in the shrubbery,
the undead bumpkin
comes at me again.
I know if he gets
on top of me, the blades
of the pitchfork
will go right through me
and we’d be stuck that way
forever like two bad dogs.

That was before
the men who guard us
ran off to take pot-shots
at the invading raccoons,
and just before
the howling rainstorm
that lifted the roof away
to the shouted curses
of the regional chief.

I mark this all down
since I must never forget
I was a writer,
even a trained journalist,
before all this started.
Half of the drooling mad here
were college professors.

Today the green-skinned
zombie has got rid
of his pitchfork.
I help him un-do
his coveralls. His wounds

will heal quickly
since after all,
and like the millions
of his kind out there,
he’s never really going to die.

I’ve decided I like him, too.

He looks a bit
like Donovan,
the folk-singer,
and as for that
“eating brains” nonsense,
not to worry, he says,
he is firmly vegan.

We are planning our escape.
Whether the madhouse outside
is worse that the madhouse in,
we shall have to see.