Graduating to Wet Stones

In A Hospital, Anywhere, With Anne (with apologies to Ginsberg) What visions I have of you tonight, Anne Sexton, I dreamt you again. You sipping your gin at my kitchen table, offering a cigarette when I couldn't find my lithium. I sit up unconvinced of my consciousness, unconvinced there is a difference in being and not. I shuffle to blinds, peek out, look for any sign of you, my good muse. But only see long slices of silver interrupt shadows in the empty parking lot below. I leave my room, it looks like the one next door and next door and next door, only difference the occupants, like you Anne, here before on different anti-whatever medications. I scuffle down dim lit halls in brown hospital-issue gripper-slippers remembering your frustrations. I walk into the dayroom just as you light a cigarette and blow smoke at the "Thank you for not smoking" sign. The nurses just nod and smile. Will you sit with me all night, a companion to my bipolar thoughts? We can sit and share a cigarette, dream of life without bent chemistry, of a world of metaphors written without insanity. Will you sit with me all night Anne Sexton, here in these long slices of silver? I have no gin and they've taken my cigarettes, left me alone with you and these brown slippers

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