Schizophrenia

Apocalypse

Olanzaprine had made him fat, constipated, dizzy.

It gave him insomnia, indigestion, erectile dysfunction.

He had a rash, he was weak and fatigued and swelled and rigid and twitchy.

So now the warning voices—

his only friends except Sam the van driver who gave him wet cigarettes—

were talking to him again,

alerting him to the poisons in the electric lights,

the diseases carried in the sweaty mouths of policemen,

the knives in the nervous fingers of doctors and nurses,

sending instructions of elimination before they killed

everything he had ever loved, before all of this,

in the days of his old childhood,

when there was love and being loved

he couldn’t protect them all

but he could die trying, or before they caught him

and stabbed him again in the ass.