conversion

when I think of it I see
a little room,
a bland white box, perhaps,
with smiling do-good chaps
whose dark pronouncements
resemble prayers about
a great monstrosity, the oddments
of their trade removed
and placed on a subject’s temples.

the smile itself is a temple on
these sheer and tense faces,
betraying inhuman design
as if to say ‘we’ll make you well again,
with just a little of the rope, thumbscrew,
and electricity, we’ll straighten you out
and make you anew.’

and so with much screaming later
the new man steps on out
as if through smoke on a stage.

gone is the modern mode of dress,
replaced with shirt and tie
and brilliantined hair,
a firm and upright milquetoast,
a father’s proudest boast.

he smiles too,
the same smile, disturbed only
by minute ticking of one eye,
pulling the right side of his face
a little up sometimes.