The Father of American Psychiatry

[tectak]

Madness nestles in vessels of blood
and you don’t fault a fellow for a fever
or blame a wagon for its broken wheel.
 
Drinking, dicing, his first-born disappoints him,
reading oppressive melancholia
on the Moral and Physical Thermometer.
 
Sanity breeds in regular habits -
bleeding, purging, mercury, emetics;  
the aptitude to judge like other men.
 
Escorted home, cobwebbed, uncombed,
no tongue or eye for kith and kin;
as familiar as The King of Babylon.
 
Heresy, buggery, blasphemy and theft
are bodily diseases oozing out
of each incautious orifice.
 
Father, doctor, shrink and gaoler
confined him in his own asylum
to wear deep gutters in the basement stone.
 
A hospital bed is not a prison cell.
The Gyrator and the Tranquiliser
are kinder than the stake or the noose.
 
He came home once and returned much worsened;
father’s footsteps too long, too certain.
Madness nestles in vessels of blood.
 

Hi ray,
once again, I apologise that I can no longer do a line by line...perhaps to the good...as technology has defeated me. Let me say at once, though, that this is a very brave effort. Rush was a prism of many sides and to try to extend a piece to refocus the light he shed is without doubt a challenge. In my humble opinion you have done well to choose facets which are visibly angled towards but a few focal points. Any more detail would obfuscate and not clarify...which Dale would insist is the very essence of good poetry. I for one found the piece strangely illuminating...to further stretch the metaphor BUT, and it pains me to say this, I find myself ingratiatingly sucking Dale's teat. There is a need to bring the character of Rush to the fore...clearly and succinctly, because you are writing a veracity verse which though suitable for opinion is more than less a solid and real personna.
I would like to have seen more of YOUR opinion and, being contrary, perhaps less of historical views through the backward telescope. Rush was, is and will remain controversial in many areas of his doctrinaire belief...I would like to see the heated blood of righteousness flow from your pen. It is what you both deserve.
Having made my thoughts clear...I hope... I can only envy your boldness.
Well done.
Best,
tectak
(Areas of semantic concern I leave to others. The word use seems competent for the complex ideas expressed...that is to say, open to interpretation and dare I say it, poetic licence)