I've changed my mind...

As Margaret Hsu has begun to form more fully in my head, I realize that poetry is the writing that will be integral to her healing, not working on a script. The script is too much me. I write decent enough poetry but it isn't my favorite form. I haven't written much, on my own, for a while. I wrote it in the hospital, though. I can write it for her.

Here, actually, is the one poem I wrote in the hospital I still like:

~*~

The Gargoyle Principle

Written Halloween 2010, in ---- Psych Ward (Nonviolent, Temporary, Women’s)

It was All Hallows’ Eve, Samhain, Hallowee’en when the pills

helped me fall asleep despite the shhhnoisyshhh

which, it being 3 AM, means it is All Hallows

the day, itself, with spirits awake and walking

the way I am awake and wanting 48 hours enchanted away.

We don’t sleep well here on the best of nights

and one might think our own demons animate

us to mutter and toss, thrash and request

for sedatives from the front desk, the night shift –

nurses nursing coffees as they nurse us.

Cathedrals have gargoyles as sort of psychic

bodyguards, a demon on your side to frighten

the ones that would do you ill. In my current

illness I have an ugly bat-doll clutched by my side

hug-sized, looking alarmed enough for the both

of us so I can be calm, calm, thanks to the gargoyle principle,

thanks to the slow but reliable tick of time

towards the day, hour, minute my body is free as my spirit

sheltered by my plush gargoyle and a blanket of inky scribbles.