in a pale green room,
one sat, rocking slowly, an improvement,
the white ones said, but catatonic
was not a word she knew  

another crouched in the corner, also swaying to and fro
her Haldol doubled the week before, so she stopped scratching her legs  
but not before she had carved a Picasso on her thigh, a Dali on her calf  
****--there were no “cutters” then, black clad children who needed razors  
we had our own claws

my cell mate rocked too,
in her sleeveless jacket, by the window,
where the mesh cut the afternoon sun
into dappled diamonds on her frock      

the oldest woman in the world
crawled the linoleum highways counting each square
spouting off formulas, to prove the universe had order
though she did not have to say much to convince us
this was eons before “chaos theory” and we knew all the butterflies
flapping in all the world would not make a sound  
their vibrations scarcely noted, and no hurricanes
would emerge from their winged tempests  

I rocked too, and ****** my pants,
because I could, and if I did not, the white ones
and the zombie zoo doctor god, might decide  
to release me to the warped world, where
I would be expected to never rock again,
where there would be no queen counting squares,
where the clock would try in vain to measure the sun
and the scent of ammonia would be replaced
by nothingness