I'm glad as hell to be away from it all, although it took a couple return visits, but there ain't no harm in looking back now and again, maybe being a bit more grateful for how things turned out.

I met folks in there who told me things, who had things happen to them that were so unspeakably sad I can hardly think about it without choking up. Folks who had yet to see 19 who had tried to cut off their hands on account of a seriously wayward reading of The Bible. Folks who had been teachers, who had known more languages than I could spell, and who now couldn't write a damn sentence.

I last saw Jesus 2 sitting at a table outside a café, looking just as disheveled as ever, speaking to me but not really knowing who the hell I was. I can't remember if they gave him ECT.

Jesus 1 was still at the hospital when I left. A couple weeks prior he had made his way to the casualty ward, demanding that the nurses treat a wound that didn't exist. He ended up fighting with them, biting somebody on the hand, and I was asked to leave the room while they shot him full of tranquilizers. He was taken to a much more secure hospital outside Belfast, a hospital for folks who are most likely gonna spend their lives there.

Thankfully he returned a few days later, looking scared as hell.

So that's it man. These recollections just come to a fella now and again.

A man needs to be thankful every time he feels like shit, is what, since however shitty I may feel on occasion, it ain't even fit to be noted alongside the shittiness from back then. However apathetic I might get, I just gotta think about the folks that didn't even know who they were anymore, folks who had concocted fantasies in their minds about jilted lovers and junkie sons, folks who had very little bindings with the world outside their heads.

A man needs to remember shit like that, is all. No good can come from forgetting it.

Thanks folks.

The Duke resides at Mondo Irlando

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