Schizophrenia

He's a surgeon today.

Fingers clinching scalpels,
cramming the bits
of malignant tumor outside the
patients chest where
organs are nested, half-dead.
Then the scissors
do their thing. He takes them,
trying to keep himself
calm, he cuts the fiber
attentively, then completes the
stitches, sterilizes
the wound, checks the bruises.
He's done it and
he's proud.

Tomorrow, maybe,
he'll be a teacher, reading
hundreds of papers and
tending to little children,

or a musician,
or a dancer,
or a tax-payer,

but never himself again.