The Hawk Kitchen Outpost 3:15pm
Now when I reach
for My Life Glass
it is not to quench
My Unquenchable Thirst
drug-induced —
that craving is gone forever
now when I reach
for My Beautiful Glass
it is to take in
the moderate fare
of My Drug-free* Living
by one or two sips
*still taking 1mg Clonazepam for sleep to be weaned off
after My Children leave
The Hawk West Desk Window 7:28pm
It filled My Mother’s Sun Deck
during a student year
I used a lot of black
with three blotches of red
positioned unintentionally like cherries
on a banana split
I left It out overnight
when the wind got up
and stuck the paint with leaves
and shaped the canvas
into a highlighted streak
of accidental luminosity
The Hawk Beach 7:00pm
Beside My Lovely Guzzle
The Transparency of Flaming June
is complete —
finished in a two-day almost frenzy
& I am almost exhausted —
here for My Fortification
with The Waves @ My Sneakers
I have somewhere to go
while My Husband rows
His Dory
and We take a break
from discussions of
The Medical Cartel
The Hawk Deck 3:57pm
Once, on a Canadian Grey Hound
a man called schizophrenic
under a voice’s command
beheaded a fellow passenger —
was He on anti-psychotic drugs
only to be locked away forever
in a place for the criminally insane
and drugged and drugged
until He dies?
The Hawk Deck 10:10am
I have said Good-bye
to My Darling Cow Bird
Whose love affair with My Car Mirror
is gone
He bowed off with another
female two weeks ago —
I have said Hello
to My Husband
and will be hanging The Bedding
in Our Hot Sun
I will be playing
The Cow Bird’s Song
on an internet recording
for The Arrival
of My Children
one week
tomorrow
The Hawk Beach 2:45pm
I have walked The High Tide Line
to The Restoration of My Reason
and so have reached The Guzzle
a rivulet of blue and aqua
flowing into The Atlantic Waves —
I have satisfied God’s demands
to feel the need
of living and so
I sit with a flock of gulls
adjacent to The Supreme Essence
of Peace I have become
The Hawk Kitchen Outpost 9:15pm
I think I fatally injured
an innocent spider
down in the cellar
cleaning out the kitty box —
did I sweep Him too hard
with the broom?
I think I may have stepped on Him
as He crumpled up and then lay flat
moving only briefly
before I put Him in My Palm
and emptied Him
into the trash
The Hawk Queen Bed 12:55am
The Rooster and The Cow Bird
seem far away
and I am in the hard core
of My Sleep Restoration —
I have slept tonight
unaided
yet I have woken
to sweaty pyjamas
a cat washing Her Self
on My Head
and an urge
to get up
and write
of My Victory
The Hawk Deck 4:04pm
Since that first spring of 1993
with a ten-minute diagnosis of schizophrenia
crowning My Head after My Mother’s Death
and a summer’s hospitalisation for depression
when a psychiatric nurse tried to assure Me
“There will be other summers” —
how could She have known
there wouldn’t be a straight one
until now, twenty-three years later,
when My Second Husband
allows Me to throw
My Bed-thrashing Knees
across His Hip
in the dead of night
and reads My Extensive Medical Records
on His Lunch Break
to find out what happened?
The Hawk Beach 2:57pm
My Father never had Me
or when He did
He pimped Me off
or felt the need
to collect Me from sleepless
hotel rooms —
His Best Hope for Me
(My Brother He had given up on)
was to say,
“You are in ‘Recovery'”
Well — if He could see Me NOW
down by The Guzzle
in The South Wind of July
sitting in The Sand of My Achievement
He might come down from Heaven
or where ever He ended up
and shake My Hand
and send Me on My Way
Joanna Gilman Hyde 