Slouch the rounds
of doctor
and therapist,
hands on my knees
in waiting room
chairs. My eyes
have trouble
meeting their eyes
and I become
an expert
in rugs and corners,
in traffic patterns.

A new drug comes,
and I take it
like communion,
holy water
from the tap,
wafer in
a blister pack.
It takes a week
to crenelate
the blood, until
the smoking mirror
in my mind
is cleared.
I exorcise
the patterns
of night thought
with bell book
and candle
that come
thirty to a bottle.

Every night
St George and
his red cross flag
wields a lance
of lithium salt
against a
perpetual shadow,
a piece of my brain
that flickers
and hisses
like the dead
channels that lay
between the shows
on my childhood
television.