No Asylum Poem by Herbert Nehrlich

It is his mother,
holding a sweaty hand,
and trying to, again
look into his blue eyes,
those eyes that she has known
since that fat midwife,
the one who smelled of licorice,
stopped yelling 'push'.

Only today, since yesterday,
a world has shattered,
into a trillion little shards
of timeless quartz,
the faceless crowd of orderlies,
and arrogant white starchy nurses,
has taken him away,
to medicate,
pontificate,
obliterate,
incinerate
perhaps the last of his,
and thus of their true bond.

They yell from down the hall,
and walk unreal rhythms
while whistling to the song
which has not been composed,
as yet, perhaps it never will.

He smokes incessantly,
and she is happy,
about the humanness of it,
a weakness of great promise,
he will return,
and soon,
God praise the competence
and its compassion
of Modern Medicine.

No more asylums,
sanitariums of gloom,
locked into kind despair
and catatonic smiles,
it is just Haloperidol
and bugger all Olanzapine,
no greater luck could come
to those who have been dropped
into the hole of no return,
and all of them will gain
the notoriety of
fulminating obesity.

It makes them cuddly, though,
and easier to take,
for those who care for them
without a care inside their hearts.

There used to be a stigma,
it was condemned
and universally subdued
through simple changes
in appearances,
today the stigma is,
for all of them,
the God who let it be.