Two poems- by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

​PTSD # 7
 
Those are cluster
bombs in the street
I can’t forget the sound
and the screams
and racing down the stairs
and out onto the lawn
I find my childhood
friend Morgan
sitting there in shock
reaching for his legs
that aren’t there
anymore
and his dying
body grabs me
by the throat
begs me not to
leave him,
but I can hear
all the other screams
through the fog
and leave him to die
there alone,
the ultimate betrayal,
but I have to find
all the others.


2nd Stint
 
During my second stint
in the madhouse
I was in a semi-private room
at the hospital
on the sixth floor of 
Health Sciences North
with the cardiac ward just
above us
                       
and every evening
the incoming helicopters would shake
the windows as they landed on
the roof above
 
and a code blue
would go over the hospital
loudspeaker
so that I knew someone was dying
right there on the slab
each night
 
less than thirty feet
above me
 
while the nurses snowed my roommate
with Trazodone
and waited for me
to get better or
kill myself
 
charting bowel movements
and fixations as they do
when the sane are still looking
to separate themselves
from the pack.
 

( Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Word Riot, Anti-Heroin Chic, In Between Hangovers, Red Fez, Horror Sleaze Trash, and Your One Phone Call.)