Paranoid Poem by Lonnie Hicks

I picked him up-
just released from
mental health treatment-

they'd drugged him
to some nth degree
and I could feel him
looking out the car window
deciphering hospital life
from the outside highway realities.

We pass road kill
and he yelled stop! stop!

I stopped, backed up and he got out
to have a look.

A dead cat, mauled
and bloody.
He got down on the road
and began to weep and cry out.

'What? what? ' I said thinking they had damaged him.

He said 'they killed him.'
'Who? '
'This cat.'
'Who killed him? '
'They did.'
'He was hit by a car, ' I said.

'No, no, ' he said.
He was not hit by a car, he said staring at me.

'They killed him in the bushes
and dragged him up here
to make look like an accident.'

He then looked at my startled face steadily and suddenly
laughed.
'Just a little paranoid joke' he said.

We laughed all the way home.