Joker Joe said, “I am going crazy in this place.” He watched the other patients with an air of indifference. He thought himself smarter and far less psychotic. “I want to go to jail,” he said. Joker Joe felt tougher and more normal being behind bars. He did not like the stigma of being labeled mentally disordered. “I don’t want to be in this place,” he told his social worker. “In jail I don’t have to take these pills,” he told her. He screamed at her and held the psychiatric pills in his palm. “They will be the death of me and none of you care at all.”
Back in his room, Joker Joe was talking to himself. When the nurse came in to ask him to come to breakfast, he said he was not hungry. He told her, “I just want my cd’s. I bought them and my girlfriend won’t bring them.” He said, “I want to go fucking back home now.” Joker Joe laughed out loud. He was in hysterics. He cried out, “These pills and this place are going to be the death of me.” He told the nurse to go away. When she tried to reason with him, Joker Joe raised his hand as if to slap her, but he stopped himself. “I hate all the people in here,” he shouted. Under his pillow Joker Joe hid his morning pills.
Luis C. Berriozabal works for the Public Guardian in Los Angeles County. His newest chapbook, Overcome, a collaboration with photographer, Cynthia Etheridge was published by Kendra Steiner Editions. You can read a review here. Luis has two chapbooks coming out soon, The Book Of Absurd Dreams, to be published by New Polish Beat, and Words Make No Sense, to be published by Epic Rites Press.