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Articles/Essays – Volume 56, No. 2
No Man Can Serve Two Masters
Enjoy this poem in audio version here.
But my diagnosis says otherwise. Depression oozes
under my door: the destroying angel visits:
until I can’t get out of bed. One week later I’m waving
bloody hyssop like glow sticks at a rave
nudging sushi on the plate convinced it might
multiply as it rests against a hillside of rice.
I stare back at the orderlies who marinate within
interminable silence eyebrows raised to the square.
Tally marks on the wall: counting how many Jesuses
they’d met that morning. Maybe they want me to magnify
my calling as a manic depressive. O God, where are you?
And why does this psych ward have no bishop?
Straitjacket orthodoxies apologetics like soft walls.
If there are two masters two poles, then every fruit
grows between them: plum rage and peach naïveté.
We must know the bitter Lehi says, so we can better
taste the sweet. He knew the gulf: euphoria in raw meat
how it felt to be buried: like gold in a barrel of beans.
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