on psychiatry

Let them destroy the bitter dead
Who fill my head half with joys
And in part with sorrow, for after
Evening’s cloak turns red with dawn
And a new day’s marrow,
He comes at me with daggers drawn
Consisting not of knives but drugs
And pens that outline wounded birds
In their abstract chiaroscuro.

No, let for once my bitter head
Sour his sugar tie and sweetened
Belt buckle. Let for once the life
I’ve fed billow in plumes against
His sharpened harrow.

And in anxious night I draw the moon,
So full of stone that the ancients
Worshiped not the cycles but the
Weight of what does follow,
Let him destroy the bitter dead
But leave me light and even sorrow,
Let him outlast only the bitter wheat,
Scorched by drought and stuffed in a barrow,
Let me unfurl my anxious song
Before tomorrow bleeds in sorrow.