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spysgrandson Oct 2017
I didn't choose to be son of a scared Jew
and angry Irishman

who never laid a hand on her, even when
she turned the butcher knife on him

when he tried to stop her from slashing
her red wrung wrists

this spectacle in plain view of 5 children for whom "woe is the world" was daily refrain

I recall Father's blood trail on the concrete between our house and the neighbor's, a surgeon not expecting a bleeding Sunday guest,

but my mother's madness didn't rest on the Christian Sabbath, nor on her own

after that, the shrinks did their magic: Mom did the Mellaril march, the Haldol hop, the Stellazine stomp, and the less alliterative Thorazine shuffle

none of those chemically induced dances did a thing to increase the chances for my mother's salvation

soon she was behind the locked doors of "Ward 30," where I visited and Mom told me she had found Jesus

a befuddled revelation since I didn't know she was looking for him--her kin had hung him from a cross and taken the heat ever since

the doctors released her to the street, where she made misty retreat to the hills of Saint Francisco's bay

though she found faint solace in Pacific waters, she would never again see her sons or daughters

half a lifetime later, I found a long lost cousin my mother agreed to see, though not with me, for I was too much a reminder of scars which never heal

she sat with Mother near the end of days, sharing silence, the scent of Salisbury steak, and a view of the distant shore

as my patient cousin rose to leave, my mother finally spoke of a sea she watched turn from cerulean to indigo dusk

childhood beaches my mother did recall: the castles she did craft, the crawling ***** she did follow, the sun bathed sand where she made her bed

far from the one where she now lay, the one in which she would go smoothly into the night, perchance returning to blue waters, where hot blood trails cannot follow
E. W. C. 6/27/1925--10/15/2006
Gary R Davis Oct 2020
Once our illness meant possession
Sons and daughters of evil conception
In Bedlam's squalor we were a zoo
We shared the ovens of Auschwitz too

People don't know we are sick
Just because some think too quick
People know we've little recourse
Paranoids are wrong, of course

And try to tell it to the police
They'll ask you if you took your meds
It's a great way to lose your lease
Everything's all in our heads

We cannot carry guns you see
The Second Amendment doesn't apply
So our peers are left to die
In this great society

After there was Stellazine
They kicked so many to the curb
Community support was lean
With policy absurd

They had to use their deadly force
Without a Taser, a life was lost
They'll be cleared in court, of course
Yet, now we know what Tasers cost

— The End —