Mental Health Poem
Airports remind me of the fertile crescent.
The hanging gardens of Babylon suggest Saarinen.
His IBM design for Dulles
as comely as Nvidia cores, as
prescient as a tulip chair. Weightless as Mesopotamia.
People think I hang around outside houses
because I know who lives inside,
but I don’t know. I’m waiting
for my health insurance provider
to approve my scrip; I’m waiting for cash
so I can pay my credit card debt;
I’m waiting for my girlfriend to return
from the pink, blue, and green sands
of California.
We said goodbye within the radius of the airport
at the light rail parking lot. I equate
the awaiting days
with scenes of mental health:
I stupidly left my expensive headphones at the clinic,
god damn it. There in the metal bathroom
where I peed into the plastic cup.
I can see them sitting on the gleaming
shelf. I’m scared to go back and retrieve them.
My jostled bottle of pills now a bottle of powder.