RELEASED AGAINST MEDICAL ADVICE
Eliza’s Room 9:32pm
I slept in a nunnery the night before
I took My Brother Howard out
of Mt. Sinai Hospital
where He thought The World had ended
and a nurse told Me
He was not ready to leave —
I got Him on a bus
to the Toronto airport
where He thought the man behind us
was Our Second Cousin Billy —
Howard paced around while We waited
to board the plane —
He demanded to speak to The Captain —
He thought the plane would crash —
He had crashed
My dear terrified Brother
and My Mother and I
tried to take care of Him
with an Orthomolecular Diet
I tried to persuade Him
that His Hallucination
in Saudi Arabia
of His Step-brother shooting Him
in the stomach
with a “laser gun”
was nothing more than a dream —
He was fated to die
twenty-five years later
at the hands of jail guards
from The Burnside Correctional Centre
in Nova Scotia
having been “tasered” five times
by Halifax Regional Police
within the last thirty-six hours
of His Life
Joanna Gilman Hyde 