Domus Insanorumque

Welcome to the gabble,
come on in and take a seat, 
your hairsplitting lobotomy awaits,
and the head nurse says, "so sorry, but this maison de sante doesn't
take the sane but enjoy the drug-soaked coffee 
it's free," and over in a far corner a pretty lady sings 
Billie Holiday's "Gloomy Sunday" in a comatose stare,
then an old card magician told me to pick a card
from a tarot deck, downward I fell, 
what sickness dwells here in this devil's playground,
in another room, an old man holds a portrait of
Jesus, and praying to die, to be freed from this madhouse,
if the stench of stinking feces and drug-colored urine doesn't
overwhelm you, then you'll be escorted to the next floor,
where patients in straitjackets talk in parroted demonic voices,
those who work here among the sick surely succumb to 
the madness, I heard one restrained with a straitjacket talking
or speaking in glossolalia, very unnerving and unsettling, 
if my belief in a God didn't exist I surely hope for one now,  
this lurid insanity so neatly preserved and
kept in a secured medical file, every case of every patient
driven to their own maniacal abattoir, 
jailed in their contemptuous minds, 
reluctant to fight the demons that subdue the hollow
despairing asylum of their frail minds;
yet death is but another sedation,
welcome to the madhouse, we've been expecting you.

- John Hardesty