under the dining hall’s
fluorescent glare. A boy
who lost his privileges for stripping
outside the Vic entrance panhandles the ward.
Bring me back a pack—voice cut in half
by the ward door’s hermetic seal.
Metal whisper. Bless him—
when he begs, he doesn’t distinguish nurses
from patients. No money till his mother visits
next week. When he’s refused, he falls to the floor
and weeps. It would be pathetic if he weren’t
so genuine. Each of us has our own way of mourning
our dignity. I won’t buy him cards because
the crowds scare me. From the Starbucks across the street,
I gaze at my new home shadowing
the oaks’ orange and yellow awning
and watch the clock, as afraid to be out
as I’m scared to go back. The crying boy is soothed
with a nicotine inhaler. I’m glad I stopped smoking and quit
giving a shit about sports. It helps me here
to need less. The Jays are contenders this year
for the first time since my childhood, when I stood outside
the SkyDome lot, ball in hand, chasing the players’ cars in hopes
of a signature. At a red light, they might
roll their window down and sign. I once caught Robbie Alomar,
but he refused. In eighteen years you’ll just lose it
in the nuthouse, he said and shut the nursing station window.
I wait patiently. The nurse thinks I want
a smoke. I ask for a pen. He slides the glass ajar
and slips me a Bic, asks if I feel safe. I imagine
he imagines I am writing Jack Torrance’s next novel.
Hey, I’m a marginally famous poet. I’m a sensitive man.
Don’t you recognize me? I say internally.
The ward is another place where poetry
makes nothing happen. The bat cracking a ball
on the HD TV in the patients’ lounge
kills me, insisting on life
outside of here. I read once about a dying man
who wanted nothing more
than for people to read him the news.
He still cared what happened in the world
though he was not long for it.
Meanwhile, I turn my face from the Toronto Star boxes
outside Bond Street, the election and the Jays,
even though, in both cases, our side is winning.
I can’t identify with the our anymore.
My only interest is the attempts.
Steve tried to hang himself from the shower rod
but not before taking pills and filling the tub.
As he swung, he planned to commit harakiri.
Claims to know the method well and proves it
with a plastic butter knife, pantomiming
a thrust inside his abdomen with a flick
of his wrists. The rod broke before
I could get the knife in. I flooded
my whole apartment, he says
and laughs. We all laugh. Frank tried
in the ward. Double knotted three Glad sacks
round his head and tied his hands behind a chair.
Even if I changed my mind, I’d suffocate before
I could tear off all the bags, he brags. I’m impressed
with how well they thought it through
and failed. Only ten percent succeed, says Sam.
He was bored when he took his wife’s Valiums
and drank a fifth of whiskey, listening
to Irish folk songs, sipping and waiting.
He describes the experience as rather peaceful.
Lacking the kind of courage of these thoroughbred men,
I took myself to the hospital instead. Steve says,
Nothing makes you feel more like you’re not winning
than failing at that. Tells me the way I did it, or rather didn’t,
was brave, and my tears patter
on my apple juice’s tinsel lid. When Elections Canada came
to ensure our rights as citizens, it felt pretend.
Last night, I watched the polls long enough
to know the Conservatives had lost.
Someone switched the channel to hear the baseball results.
How grateful I was to the patient who wandered in, then
sat at the decaying Steinway and banged out
a mangled Moonlight Sonata.
Ode to Zopiclone
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul
— John Keats, “To Sleep”
Sedative Cyclone, come for me.
Soul’s casket unhinged, squeaking at 3 a.m.
Lullaby in the whirlwind.
Not drifting off but drowning in you,
so blue. Opaque Aegean in my veins.
Side effects include short term memory
gloss. More crowbar than key.
You thieve time of events, pry dreams from sleep.
Whale tank of dark matter.
You taste of tin and Abaddon.
A revolver dissolving beneath my tongue.
Immune to caffeine, shuffle through a fog of re-gifted dreams.
Reverse rear-view—objects further than they appear
or I am further.
Soft embalmer of noontide.
You bind and agonize.
I curse you all day, Sweet Anesthetist
& by midnight crave your chalk-salt kiss.
To My Friends Who Did Not Visit Me in the Mental Hospital
Re: symptoms
Shimmers, halos, light bursts, static, afterimages, trails or palinopsia as it’s called. Sorry
am I boring you?
Re: the ward computer
Spell-check corrects words incorrectly.
Despite the visual affect
reality-testing restrains.
knight-time is thorough.
Re: maybe you don’t understand
You understand.
I am here
because I want to die.
Re: please disregard
I try to wash your absence off
and my hands bleed. I won’t
claim stigmata
but it hurts.
Re: the shower room
There’s no bathtub in the shower room
so you can’t drown.
Other than the bathrooms, it’s the only place here without cameras.
A wide nozzle hangs from the ceiling like a giant spider
or god. Water goes everywhere.
I feel like I’m a prize bovine, hosed down
for the county fair. It’s difficult
to keep my towel dry.
Re: when are you coming?
I confuse your reasons for not visiting with my pills.
The pink tablets are your dog is sick.
The blue azures for sleep
are moving apartments this week.
An orange capsule that I think is a placebo
turns everything to shit.
Re: when are you coming?
You said:
The electrician is coming.
The Wi-Fi guy is coming.
The plumber is coming.
The Second Coming is coming.
Flu season is coming
and you’re very susceptible.
Re: treatment
I wait for doctors like you wait for
repairs.
They see me between the hours
of eight and five. When they arrive
they wear hazmat suits
on the inside.
Re: thank you for the phone call
Your voice stays in my brain
long after you hang up. I’m here
but I am not here. I am here.
Re: (no subject)
A faraway friend says I need to be grateful
for what you can give. Forgiveness
is where love and justice finally meet
says Roy Cohn’s nurse. My nurse
asks me to rate my ideation on a scale
from one to ten. I fail.
No one asks, but I rate my grace
a five and a half.
Re: objects
Fair. I mean flare.
Objects are fair.
Re: thank you for the presence
A puzzle, a razor, another puzzle
dropped at the nursing station
as you fled.
When I find god,
some universal truth
oneness, understand
paradise surrounds us,
I will forgive all of you
but your backside
hurrying towards the exit.
My backside
knows your backside
all too well now.
Re: my visitors
Those who came did nothing
again and again, I’m afraid
of everything, of nothing and
there was nothing to fix.
You would not have liked it.
The electrician wasn’t coming.
Re: maybe I’m being unflare
My faraway friend says I’m keeping a list
like Santa Claus or Peter.
No. Like Schindler.
No one is the prefect friend, I think, she said.
Re: the prefect friend
looks like me
but is winged
and hooded
doesn’t mind me
wanting to die
holds my hand
and leads me
to that same tree
where I nearly tried
and feeds me pills
one by one
like peeled grapes
if that is what I need
keeps asking
what do you need?
walks with me
into the courtyard
where the walls
are too high
to see the sky-
line and carries me
into the sun.
The fair, fair son.
Circular Labyrinth
… (T)he labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; and
where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.
— Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces
1.
After 8 p.m. snack we slouch a dozen laps
of corridor circling a cement meadow.
A citadel defends against the horizon.
Nothing in the centre of the centre. We pass
the hall burned with Monets, circle
the lily pond and drown, a little, each time.
It’s too green! Hurts, a faraway hurt
like the moment after burning oneself. Pain
and the memory of pain. We talk around
attempts till our pink pills spike. Pastel wounds
bleed sleep for the night. For our safety
we can’t be trusted with thread. A symptom,
delusion of protagonists, lost. Soon, the hero
will find us and we’ll, at last, be slain.
2.
Ativan, at last, gabapentin. PRN. Tim Hortons.
Breakfast. Klonopin. Nurses station queue.
Smokes. Lunch. PRN. Snack time. Slowly unravelling
tinsel lids. Ideation on a scale from one to ten.
Anxiety on a scale from one to ten. Privileges
revoked. Nicotine inhalers. A visitor cancels.
Computer queue. Googled side effects. Quiet
hours. Conspiracies re: lizard people.
Chopin. PRN. Harlequins. Gideons. The lilies
considered. Klonopin. HD TV. Blue Jays.
Yellow leaves. Ballots cast. Results. Moments
stretched. Safety plan. Activities. Someone
in restraints. In-patient Elevator. ECT. Unseen at
breakfast, soon forgotten (PRN), more or less.
3.
More or less, we escaped, at last, by way
of untruth. Carved ideation with plastic knives.
All those hours whittled could have been
spent turning inhalers to shivs: opposite,
depending on perspective, of self-defence.
We puffed. Silent kazoos sealing our lips.
Released at last. Turns out, the outside is more corridors
called streets. We return to the Starbucks
in which we spent our passes, discuss the way
nothing has changed more. I search my pocket
for smokes, find the stone-totem a friend gave is gone.
Inside, I held to the thought: it works if I believe
or not. Out here, lost also and free, more or less.
After 8 p.m. snack we slouch a dozen laps.
The Chestnut Tree Café
Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me:
There lie they, and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree
— George Orwell, 1984
Sad hour selected from the day
to go to the Starbucks. My name
on the sign-out sheet feels forged.
The nurse hands out our cigarettes
and asks, Do you feel safe?
She’s shielded by glass and mirtazapine.
Outside, we light up. This is still
my favourite season, I say, as we shuffle
through the fallen yellow leaves
under the spreading chestnut tree.
The barista’s glued kindness kills.
How can someone smile at a time
like ours, however … especially, fake.
Living, or not, is a personal preference.
It ought to be my right to take my life,
you say, over a spiced pumpkin latte.
I nod but double think, I too
would have called the cops
even though, in principle, I agree.
I sold you and you sold me.
We’re both out now, because we learned
to whittle ideation down to a five.
Ignorance is strength, I guess, boredom,
progress, and so on. The trees are leafless
but glare blue. The barista wears a red hat.
We return here though we’re free.
On passes for life, we reminisce
about the antics of the other patients.
But reflect, to us, they have already died.
Here lie they, and here lie we.
The literati of the ward, we thought
our Orwellian allusions smart.
No one in this Chestnut Tree Café
chain store is listening or, if they are,
cares. We’re free to protes
t … what, Big Life?
Still, you escaped with your integrity.
If I followed through with my plan
that night on Hanlan’s Point, you would
not have called anyone, but let me be
under the spreading chestnut tree.
Self-Parenting
Your teeth, you freak, are corkscrewed and blue
as the antifreeze that’s milk to you. I try
to lactate toxins from my paternal breast.
La Leche League has no advice for me.
I’m smoking and drinking to feed you
while you scream like a wrecking crew.
Single-minded as men set on ruin,
tired as babies by day’s end.
You enjoy annoying, asking, Are we there yet?
And, Which tools, which tools? I quit shaving
on Father’s Day, when you made me
a necklace of blades from my Mach3.
One day, tiny Leviathan,
I’ll steal your nose with a fishhook
and tie down your tongue. Gobble you
all up when the messiah comes.
You fear my ancestors’ tales,
want to hear your favourite fable.
Sit on my lap, my little jack-o’-lantern,
I’ll tell you the bedtime story once more:
I’m unsure, which one of us offers
the ride across the river,
and who is foolish enough to ask,
Are we there yet? After
the scorpion stings the frog, he says,
Don’t you see what you’ve done?
You can’t help, scary, scared one, our nature.
And then they both sank as one.
Noonday Yahweh
Not God but a swastika
— Sylvia Plath, “Daddy”
You speak my name from behind
a dark bush. But on closer look,
a thick short moustache. Hard to tell,
the little tramp or Mein Kampf?
One never sees your face.
Something black and burly
following me. Your cartoon nimbus
gives me hope. You’re coming!—
in a whirlwind. I don’t care
what is said. Just take me
somewhere ordinary,
a Kansas of the mind, I pray
to your iconic stache—
bristles my hair like a spider
crawled in there. I do not see you
in a bush. Not in a tree. Not in a car!
You let me be! I went to shul
and found the Führer. I prayed