ALT ...Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK? Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow. God bless you all! Kurt Vonnegut

ALT For the One Who Will Have My Bed in the Psych Ward So it happens the darkness did not take you. So it happens you stand before the mirror and shake the grave-clothes' cargo from your shoulders. So it happens your shadow's wings are furled. Listen. Sit down at the table and break the bread, and drink your little water, and do not ask why you deserve this mercy. Someone, maybe you, must want this. Stay here. Eat. You have to. To save yourself is to save a stranger's world. —Joseph Fasano