Bipolar
Do you know how your head is a mumble of thought
and the devil pushes its way to the front of the line?
No, not that devil.
Hell is frigid temperatures and gonorrhea,
everything plaid and self-compacted,
your worst pet peeve sitting in the desk to your left
and someone very disturbed angry at your right.
You are, after all, a pet peeve too.
So where is the geography for heaven?
In the room where the suicide bomber rapes his virgins?
The home of fundamentalists unable to identify gray?
Nothing smells worse than a hospital corridor.
Michael H. Brownstein is a Chicago poet.