Prologue
Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cold sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed agast and broken to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spittle. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweets - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spite. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm corrections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Called cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and sniff. Calm collects. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the side. Calm cool sweats - counted - cooed again and broke down to bed - swallow, swallow, swallow - quick to the sink and spit. Calm collections. Lie down. Head up. Side head headed down to the slide.
I (Ambulatory Sensory Division Perk)
Arriving - not timely - time is catering to nothing so still as still me I’m barely me.
Happens all the time, these guys.
How much rent you pay here? And it’s too much and I’d rather have the help down the stairs than with my economic real estate situation.
They look - at a phone, each other, me - ask questions about people and places and insurance. I answer, mixed up and mild, eyes fluttered and then fixed on the soft shoes one of them wears. I hand over my ID and struggle to remember my social security number. I give the wrong first four digits, I’m sure, and cannot recall them, and mumble forth some more numbers and that confuses them, I’m confused, and they ask me to repeat myself in a tone generally reserved for children struggling with their words.
They tap things, and call people at other places, and one walks around my apartment looking as if he were looking for something.
I apologize for not being terribly clear, and then wish I hadn’t done that.
They ask me if I’m ready to go. I nod vaguely, and go to grab my phone. When I had thought I would take myself to the ER, when I was feeling somewhat able and aware, I had a plan to pack with me things I would need if I ended up being admitted. Those thoughts were foreign to me, something like a pipe dream of sorts - or just crumbled like the last cookie in the jar out of a batch that wasn’t very good to begin with.
I struggle to slip on my slip-on shoes. They are the kind of shoe you wear when doing laundry, when running to get the mail, when you don’t want to wear shoes but need to. This fits.
I open the door, confused at what these men were doing, what their point was they hadn’t seemed to do anything at all. I stand outside my door, noticing a folded wheelchair and move over towards it.
You lead the way.
I get the point that I am intended to walk down the stairs myself and begin my descent, grabbing wistfully at the railing. It is slow going, but I’m going. the flat surfaces between stairs prove easy to navigate but the stairs - walked up and down so many times before - prove to be a bitterer rival.
I am grateful it is an awkward hour and won’t run into any neighbors. I never run into neighbors.
At the ground floor, I open the door and it’s kept held open behind me as I continue out onto the sidewalk. It’s the usual crew hanging outside the barber shop and whatnot. I’m told to go right but can’t think of which direction that is, and head forward, towards the street. I’m grabbed and straightened right, told to go to the back, where the ambulance door is opened and I climb inside. I sit on the side bench, staring at the stretcher sitting in the middle, grateful I’m not horizontal now.
I watch out the window at the streets passing by, unsure what direction we are going or what direction even is, I’m thinking of the word and the meaning seems somewhere else, but I know that what I’m thinking of as the meaning is wrong, so I at least have some sense of what meaning means at least.
I’m letting myself become detached now.
II (In a Room About Trouble)
Face ceiling. Call face. Face the fact. Call soon. Someone soon. I’m choked up. Tell some. More one. Two sits. My fault, fingernails. Stiff and small. Leanings interrupt. Cold face. No stop now. Go now. Small in summer. Summer so still. Still summer. Swing tear. Stretch to tear and back. Such a cough, a boy. Stomach chucks the boat.
A toss rout. Plastic gurgle as knuckle permitted. Next Sunday or next. Can you? Can you? Can? As young as anything seen. No window for something lost. Curtains. What is the weather? White. Wait. One on each arm. Two bags, dripping so dry. Swallow hard rock candy. Swallow, next, can’t and can close the eyes. Feel it. Feel it prick and drip and call you stupid. Noblood. Too much. Two by four by six bottles of blood on the wall. To tell well or just as well. Tell me about what happened.
Can you tell?
Tour the room with wheels. Doors open and legs forward. A crash in the computer. Birds fall from the sky all the time. Is something for caring. The reason the hair. You need this and it will hurt going down. You need yours as theirs, mine owned, used and fastened. Inadequate between them. You look sick, but you’re better than what’s next to you. It’s called irrigation. Two more. Wait. Here. A prick and a brood of blood drops smeared and scuttled on plastic. Congeal and mesh. The light is a mess.
Do as they do. Do as do do. Do ask say do. I do what you do sitting down. Don’t do that. Do the wet as throat do does well wet two do and more later. Do wait here. Two do as to do two well. Do how. Do how now. Do that. All done upstairs. Can do, you do, we’ll do what we do to get you well.
III (Welcome to 9 West RCU)
1. Would you like to pay for television and telephone access?
The connections would become clearer once they are received by the front desk. Payment must be by Amex or Mastercard. No Visa. Phone for local calls only. Long distance can be made collect. Someone will be around each day to collect payment. $8/day for the television and $6/day for telephone service. The television will be connected shortly. How would you like to pay for tonight’s service? Alright. Now please sign here. Thank you and have a good night. Feel better.
2. What would you like for breakfast? Lunch? Dinner?
We have eggs, cream of wheat, oatmeal, fruit, bread (white or wheat). Coffee or tea? Stuffed Shells, Chicken, Fish. Mashed potatoes, green beans, carrots? Coffee, tea or soda? White or wheat? Pudding, Jello or ice cream? Cream of chicken soup okay? Salisbury Steak or Macaroni and Cheese? White or wheat? Mashed potatoes, green beans, mixed veggies? Strained Minestrone. Coffee, tea or soda? Jello, pudding or ice cream? Alright. Thank you and have a good night. And feel better.
3. And now this is the plan:
We’ll be needing to take blood samples every four hours, so you know. Someone will also be in throughout the night to check your vitals. We’re putting you on an insulin drip with the IV, and on a no food or drink period for now. You can have ice chips. Your numbers are down from when you came in, but still way too high. We’ll be putting you on a potassium and calcium chloride drip as well. Do you have any questions? We’re doing all that we can to make you feel better. Goodnight and we’ll see you in the morning.
IV (The Pain Came and What Can I Do? What I Can Do Is Hurt and Say Thank You Please)
A sleep so pointless
as to control sleep like
tocked time. A fuzz bent
beating the way the room
chills and forgets
the things in it. A flooding
of stolen yous, the victims
of the bachelors who only
have room for four or five
more in their plastic container
so full of insertion
and inertia.
They’re always watching you
even when they’re not.
The table as function, some-
thing there in the room
with you, holding the phone
and a cup full of ice
that you force yourself
to chew before, before
it’s too late and they come
to tell you
stop,
it’s water now.
V (Night Sugar Dada)
Carry me into the next. Take from me what is mine, me. There’s a plump vein there waiting to die rather than indulge in cakeless joshing pants. Submit your fantasy and all about to grab the bedrail and send shivers across the eyes.
It’s so cold and listen you’ll hear the television tell you again and again the following is a paid program. The false light hanging into the room, suspending the light into language and makes the words seem so stupid. There is a magic bullet coming to the air around you.
VI (I Awoke Still Chewing From the Night’s Refusal to Know)
On hearing what patients tell their doctors:
I don’t want
to be here and
don’t need to be
here and I’m going
to go now and not
look back. And I
thank you but
I’ve had
enough.
VII (And With Morning Comes a Bustle, a Beat, a Little Time Thinness So Ungraspable)
1. That is to say: I don’t care if it’s live.
2. That is to say: The lady has her charms.
3. That is to say: I see what you’re cooking and don’t care if it tastes good, mister.
4. That is to say: There isn’t enough insulin left in the world.
5. That is to say: Colorless, and begs red.
6. That is to say: A blue truth and a clear liquid.
7. That is to say: What loss forms here.
8. That is to say: Please. Thank you.
9. That is to say: I don’t want to be alone.
10. That is to say: People are a fear of oceans, oranges.
11. That is to say: I no longer, for example.
12. That is to say: I imagine bubbles and they break.
13. That is to say: This bed inserts barren and sores my butt.
14. That is to say: It is hard to weed out the deep ones.
15. That is to say: Yes.
16. That is to say: I would never go there.
17. That is to say: Explicit private-public.
18. That is to say: The idea outside of context.
19. That is to say: This monitor is sticking to my gown.
20. That is to say: Can I get some more. . .yes.
21. That is to say: Eyes always slide to the right.
22. That is to say: Was available.
23. That is to say: Another episode, a spread hand.
24. That is to say: How’s this illustrated version, buxed to the blonde who comes in from time to time, and takes your temperature and blood pressure and has a smile like a shy squirrel, all teeth and wedged intending a picture.
25. That is to say: Relief underneath all kinds of cloth.
26. That is to say: I want my mommy.
27. That is to say: Individual memories where others are involved.
28. That is to say: Wearing the striped uniform for luck and company.
29. That is to say: One more nap before noon, the hour is all there is for you.
30. That is to say: No.
31. That is to say: Of course I’m terrified.
32. That is to say:
VIII (Potassium Memory #3)
3 Hours.
(or)
It can be lessened and last
for six.
It starts slow, warming, rising and furious later, riding like you’re used to it, there’s color, unbearable, ugly quaint, glass shards for blood running veined and pussed. Prefer hillside chimneys smoked - turgid and liquid scape scraped against your living. Experience the consistency of the case. Ride it then, push you down, eyes rolled in your throat. The thinking of something else entirely made stupid, like daytime TV. The direction that you go is the right place and time and it’s right in front of you, slightly to the side, now behind the pillow - a blanket covering your blood like the hood of disaster. The promise of a form here, but there’s just all this noise in your body. A shrieking soprano that makes you solemn. Now so aware of the walls, all of them, the solid; the cloth; the fleshy ones being repainted jaundice. The sound the forearm brings. Certain definitions of pain shake loose and the janitor comes to clean them up off the floor. He smiles and sort of dances while sweeping. Concrete habits like a great wall of truth. Banking on being - the house always wins. Black out until the news is on and the bag is as drained as you are.
IX (Do You Represent the Next Minute?)
The night stays
The night stays away
The night plays
The night plays the stay away
This night:
Th th th th th th_____________________________ a holding cell of cells ________________ a big tenement of churlishness __________________________ getting tormented ________a high school show sings in front of you ________7 nurse students arrive ________ they are there to study you and your body _________________________ do you mind? __________ okay ___________ (the introduction, a Polish student asks about the name) ________Polish people please one another in cases ____________ that mark doesn’t mean anything _______ really, it’s been there forever _________ a hole _____________ deep breath _________ and again ___ and
now follow the light _____________ a listen to the stomach _________ that’s digestion __ when not a solid for days _________________________________ he does what he is supposed to do in this type of situation __________ that’s reflex ______________________________ solid and ______state of things_______ again _____________ attempt a joke _______ the girls laugh _________________________________ and again it’s reflex ______ everything is as naked as a camera _________ no sign ________________ back again, push down _________ I am in more danger with the entire need for danger _________________ these nurses don’t know how to cuddle __________________________ they’re not to stay (thank___________________god)______________________ dark swallow _________ the patent thief ________ pain as if it were a bird on a wire _____________ singing __________________ what he passes set within the set wing waving _________________________ it’s a sign, a fact, a done tomorrow ______ breath has no emotion to speak of _________________________ triage the family, at least the oldest __
_____________ little like left alone ___________ you will respect the machine, as it squeals and belches beeps in metronome time ___________________________________ the checking, check, the double checking, check, the answers, check _________________________ you’ll be keeping this in mind for the future _________________________ the spies, the lamb, the hides of applause _________________________ the news flows over and discharges __________ we thank you ____________ wrapped the emphasize the rectangular bandage that wraps around the arm with tape ________________________________ a precise description of a boy’s white skin __________________ unfettered to vitamins and ice chips _________________ the dread, unfurling the sail ___________________ I am not this, nor that, nor the speaker of the sail.
X (This Feeling Won’t Hurt Anymore It’s Pure Feeling)
A night like
written in
sand.
And the ice
that burns
the throat,
a cackle of
memory
a few days
past.
A 3 AM
blood bank
broker
now given
a name:
Jocelyn.
Two bottles
out of hand.
They clink
“cheers”
wishing for
wellness and
surveillance.
The TV
turning info
into commerce
and 1-800s
for whats unknown.
And then she
leaves
leaving the light on.
XI (If Morning Waits Alongside Him, It’s Enough to Call Light)
Snuffed September night
3 days without a true sleep
Dry sighs stern the dawn
Almost a nearness -
just to hang on to life more
takes practice and rooms.
They tempt you and blush
the brush of a near Mrs.,
a mother undone.
This white room reminds
me dying unbearable -
the cool, cooling kind.
Is it doubt or is
it disappointment that makes
lie there still awake?
The screaming sighs twice
in the next room down the hall -
we care together.
The captured glances
filter through this room and take
all this privacy.
This place guards hard dogs
chewing a pillow in birds -
small creatures look up.
Your life without it -
Sleep the day away tonight
and search the exit.
What nothing came here
and took your shoes, nightgown
& old companions?
Awkwardly mingled
at the foot of this short bed:
two feet entangled.
XII (We Observe So Many Methods of Moving When Not Moving)
The table is to my left. On it sits a telephone, a pitcher of ice chips, a styrofoam cup. My wallet. An unopened ACE bandage. A small stack of alcohol prep swabs. A plastic bedpan diapered with a medium sized cotton sheath. Next to the table stands a large machine on wheels where my IV bags hang and drip down. A nurse’s call button lays parallel to my left arm. The television controls next to that. I use both with my right hand, reaching over my heart.
A small team of doctors walk past me into my neighbor’s area. Discussion of a procedure ensue. The man has lung cancer and has been coughing steadily all night, though when the doctors ask him about it he tells them it hasn’t been an issue.
In front of me, on the TV, a woman is accusing her previously fired lawyer of overcharging for services rendered. She is suing for $2000. The lawyer claims to have paid her the remainder of her retainer via a check, but when the judge asks for proof, he cannot provide any. The judge laughs and rolls her eyes. She awards the woman $1000 and closes the case.
The small team of doctors walk single-file in front of me and out of the room. The man next to me coughs. He doesn’t stop for five minutes. I hear papers rustle and the sound of phlegm spitting and the rustle of more papers.
A nurse comes in to check my blood sugar and vitals. She checks my IV, changing the mostly empty bag. She tells me that they are going to continue me on an insulin drip along with the IV and I will be getting another 3 hour potassium bag this evening. She tells me my doctors will be back in the morning, but for now they want me to continue the current treatment. She leaves and I reach over to change the channel to watch something else.
Another nurse comes in to take four bottles of blood. She inserts the needle into a vein in my left hand. I turn away as I can never stand the sight of these interactions. I hear her moan and sigh. She tells me that while the vein appears full and juicy nothing is coming out. I tell her after all that they’ve taken I must be dry by now. She apologizes for having to stick me again, this time in my right hand, which produces enough blood for her, though it takes longer than expected.
She leaves, wrapping up her things, and asks if I would like the light left on. I tell her no. She says she’ll be back before bedtime, and I think to myself, I don’t know what that means anymore.
XIII (The Kindling In the Throat)
then scratch, then fire, then ice
(the ice only makes the fire burn brighter)
XIV (The Doctors In the Daylight)
It was the sound of shuffling that woke me. I had been sleeping for an hour or so before, two hours after the last blood draw attempt where after a half hour of trying to get anything out of me the nurse told me I could always refuse, she felt so bad.
How are you doing this morning? Any pain?
These questions they always ask. Starched routine. There is no answer to any pain? or how am I doing? There used to be clear answers, like looking out a window and saying what you see. There are no windows around me in this room. Or maybe I am the window, and it’s the doctors describing what they see in the daylight.
I cannot recall the last time I felt normal. I tell the doctors this, and they smile and laugh, and I didn’t mean it as a joke, but it must have come out that way. The doctors tell me that my numbers have come down, and that they would be putting me on a clear liquid diet starting today.
This will include water, tea, broth and jello.
This prospect excites me to no end.
I will continue on the insulin drip and IV. They will continue checking my blood at the same rate as before. I explain to them the difficulties the nurses have had at finding a suitable vein from which to draw. They say they will look into it.
And they move in to listen to my lungs and heart. They check my feet, my pulse, my tongue.
They tell me they will be back tomorrow. One doctor explains to me that they are suggesting as well that a psych team come in for a check. They ask me if I would be okay with this. I am here, and will take whatever they give me. I say yes. They say to expect someone in the next day, they will set it up.
They leave and I am a window left hanging ajar. It is breakfast, but I will have to wait until lunch.
The man next to me complains about the bacon and eggs to his wife. But you have to eat something... she pleads to him.
Don’t you tell me what I have to do! he growls gravelly, and coughs.
The wife sighs, damning the burden of windows.
XV (The Incredible Excess of Green Jello)
The plastic spoon in your hand dips gently into gentle.
you are pale.
Warm liquid caters to your burn and suffocates it into being born. Taken far
apart, the rancid stain of closing matters clapped.
A worn free breezing by as touched and tendril tipped
to intimacy.
This stuff is the
reward you want,
counting
the cubes raw.
XVI (Potassium Memory #6)
The six-hour routine - static motion - #########campfire grinds on the rules here ------>hotten trotters spelling matchstick heads to dust @corruptible visage and eyes slanted like weak junkies against a wall.
The wall falls down.
All is to be dared because of jealousy. I am jealous of the standing ones | the walking ones ----> the sleeping ones _____ the eating ones OOOOO. The ones who,se blood does(n’t) s*cor*ch from the (inside out) to a scream that co.mes out a moan because screaming would req(u)ire to---o much ef*fort. I am putt ing in all the (ef)fort I can afFord and it f(ee))))ls fa----lse.
Sheets [couldrepeatandrepeatandfold] ****swallowed time rank.......the lucky strike o/f of/f court(rip) the pAst as our micro:cosm(ism)----------)such dull ache, such as (it) i.s........a s’in ror pluta’tory ckack-le tre mis-h’pne corr......gis’in’pour*VALT........:::::aho’r d’aeream :::) belle’at rum (fISk) b///bUt^nam............*/:::::----------------**)p’darm-na quooo-------qua? du.........2....crakko sp(ree)din’g______________________________b’lllleeee’d fo’r th’raik’hs’vol’le a w//la/& bin’gle’e:::::::::y’lllow tun’em o’ut ba(G) -o- c’onne(ct)-iv n’9w
XVII (My Dream of Closing My Eyes and Dreaming of a Forest)
I close my eyes and dream of a forest. I am disappearing, and the pines poke at me as if jokingly saying I belong here. I wipe a path clear with my pillow and needles burrow deep in the down. The details of my life I cannot bring back, they’re mud now and I smell mushrooms. I see a red-tailed kite float above the trees, and then it’s gone. I was planning on following it for some time, but the disappointment I am now is a fort, I say to myself, and you can hide there. A blank in life now is green, growing, and is as tall as yolks. Good houses can be made from these trees: country homes, cows and chickens, sturdy with a penchant for settling. A family hearth bent fireside at night with a warm cup of mushroom tea. Mom is there and says that Dad has found a new gutter he didn’t know about and it is filled with bloated rats. A coyote cries in the distance and looks forlorn in our direction. The carrier is an adventurer. I walk outside into the forest and follow the sounds of birds breaking branches. I think how there are no great tragedies or jokes anymore. What these knuckles do is knock and repeat their mistakes on all the wrong doors. I feel connected now to the noise of the rain, which makes the path I’m on sticky and unstable. I do not want to miss the end of the world. I continue walking, my legs growing shorter and shorter until I am 2 feet tall and come across an old school bus half sunk in the mud. Today I feel like a man basted in hope, and hope to be taller. I hoist myself up into the bus via the back emergency exit and the back of the bus is foisted with dead mice, rotting and smelling of Morbier. The back of the bus is darker than the day I collected darkness. I can smell hot boys and crotches crusted over. I am missing seconds by the hour, miles before the wreck. Each seat of the bus holds two backpacks, left behind, they tell you to leave things behind when leaving a wreck. This makes the wreck more of a wreck for whoever finds it in the future. And then the ones who leave are left without their lunch. And then the mice come to claim the lunches and they’re poisoned, these mothers have been poisoning everybody all the time. I want to be in France, smoking by the Seine. This pleasant tense and blood blisters, running on a loop and lacking in surprise. A flock of birds burst through the bus and pick up all the mice in their beaks. They carry them away by the tail and out the exit back into the sky. Left behind, one lone pigeon who perches on a bus seat and stares at me. I know you don’t sleep, but can I borrow a teabag? it says to me, cocking its head to the right. I look in my pockets and find a used teabag (peppermint) and hand it to the bird who takes it and sets it down. The more you struggle the more I will fuck you hard, the pigeon says and I believe him. And your mother is a prostitute from Toledo. This I know isn’t true, the bird’s just fucking with me now, and I think to myself that pigeons aren’t forest birds, they’re city birds. And then the pigeon is gone and so is the teabag. I knew from the get-go the pointlessness of “borrowing” a teabag. I move up to the drivers seat of the bus. The body of my first boyfriend sits there, hands on the wheel. I breathe and smell so many open doors. Every other window on the bus is closed. Dead feet waft and waver throughout. I grab the body which turns to jello and puddles the floor and I take a seat. Not knowing how to hot-wire, I hot-wire the bus and step on the gas. The wheels turning, I drive out of the mud still days away, The bus passes through every forest with every turn - heaping on the bumps, avowal to nowhere, my only move forward. I drive the bus into a lake, a clear blue you can see through. The water floods the bus and I swim laps down the lane of the hollow vehicle. Out of the bus and into the lake and out to where the fish are. A large trout swims up to me, biting me on the hand and says Nothing’s coming out. I’m gonna have to bite you again. Sorry, honey. A school of baby fish come swimming out of my ass and into the lake, billowing out like beautiful silver smoke. And I wake up with a bandage on my hand and the light is on and I close my eyes again and sleep without dreaming for a few hours more.
XVIII (And In Illinois, You Slit Your Wrist and Wrestle With It)
I had shit the bed.
Or, rather, the liquid diet had caused a flood of brown fluid to spread out beneath me.
A gall spools over me. I quickly come to the conclusion that I can’t stay in this state for long - I have enough of a head on my by now for this realization. I quickly press the nurse button. I know this will take some time, as it has in the past. I wonder for a minute about what would happen if I had a real emergency, given the usual length of time it takes for someone to arrive. Ten minutes later, a voice over the intercom:
Can I help you?
I mumble something vague, without wanting to announce to the room my body’s error. The voice says okay and there is a click.
I wait.
I cannot remember the last time I had such an accident. The last time I can recall was 1st grade, when my teacher would not allow me to use the restroom until I had finished my handwriting exercises. The pain, the need, the pressure made my hands go slack, causing squiggles on the page, until I couldn’t take it any longer and let loose. This was all conscious, so it’s a little different, but still, the last time I had shit in my pants. I recall sitting there, the squish against me, and it made me squirm making things worse. I kept quiet about the whole affair for the rest of the day. At afternoon recess, I remember this fat girl, Natalie, standing next to me and asking me if I had pooped my pants. I denied it and went to play tetherball by myself. I got home and hid my soiled pants in the washer, hoping they’d just get clean at some point and no one would ever know. It smelled like shit in the laundry room for two days, at least.
A new nurse that I don’t know comes in. I’m both grateful and appalled this is my first introduction to her. I’m glad I’m not soiling the previous nurses idea of me, at the same time, shit doesn’t make for much of a first impression.
Uh, so, I guess this liquid diet did a number on my digestive tract last night...I had a bit of an accident...
She nods understandingly, she’s seen it all before. But she hasn’t seen me before and I’m not the kind of guy who normally shits his bed at night. I’m not that guy.
She goes to get a change of sheets and some new gowns for me. I’m grateful for the way she says to me oh, it’s okay honey. It isn’t really what, but how she says it. A tone of voice that quells any sense of responsibility, and a dropping reassurance that it’s okay.
I keep laying down, not wanting to expose the mess. It’s all over my ass as it is, it’s not getting any worse. I watch Al Roker on the TV flailing about like a clown. Al Roker is the kind of man who would shit his bed I think to myself.
The nurse comes back with a stack of clean linens and towels and gowns. She tells me to go ahead and get cleaned up and she’ll change the bed. I know in my mind that this is hardly anything new in a hospital, that I’m hardly the mess I think I am, that these things happen. I get unhooked from my IV and I shuffle off to the bathroom.
Inside the bathroom, I’m forced to confront what is in front of the mirror: A wreck of a man. Stupidly thin, even for a New York gay; hair in tangles, smeared in sweat across the forehead; arms sullied with tubes and needles; eyes that bend downward, in shame and discomfort; a loose gown, shit smears down the sides; boxers once green, now brown, like a fern emerging from mud.
I strip down and run the water. Wetting a towel, I begin scrubbing myself clean. I soap up all I can, unable to use the shower due to my IVs. The towel turns from crisp white to deep brown to tan. I roll up the one towel, throwing it in the corner, and start in on the second. It feels good to get clean, or as clean as I am getting.
I sit down on the toilet because it’s the only place to sit and I want to be sure the nurse is done before I go back out. I stare at the roll of toilet paper in front of me. All of this thinking about shit reminds me of a story I once heard from a one-night stand: we were hanging out on my balcony, in Chicago, talking, and he tells me about this one kid he knew who went home with him one night. They were getting all hot and heavy and eventually it turned to the kid bottoming. It was all going fine enough, he was tight as all hell, my trick said, and he was getting ready to shoot when the kid screamed out and passed out (they had been drinking). When he pulled out, the kid just shit an unbelievable amount all of the bed. He had completely passed out. This dude did everything he could to get the kid awake, and after a half hour of this, he put some towels on his couch and carried him over and laid him down, cleaning up the bed afterwards so he could sleep. When he woke up the next morning, the kid was gone, not leaving any trace of ever being there aside from the sheets full of shit. About a week later, he was at a bar talking to some other guy telling him the story. The other guy knew the kid and said that he had recently tried to slit his wrists and was now at the psych ward at the UC hospital. I wondered why this guy was telling me this story, it came so out of the blue. We made out, later, for a bit, and then we just went to bed without saying anything to one another.
I stand up and put on my gowns. I decide, since I no longer have any boxers to wear, to wear one that covers the back and one for the front. I want to feel cocooned.
Back in the room, the nurse is gone and my bed is fresh and bristling. I crawl in, rub my legs together under the blanket, and wait for the nurse to return to rehook my IV.
20 minutes after pressing the button, she shows up, smiling, calling me honey.
XIX (And This Is How The World Works When You See)
Team meeting: ultrasound today.
Cot cot bring the bags and cough. Fearful light falls on purpose.
Halls hurl past. The necessity of invisible hearts. Feet forward, knees bent; it is colder than was previously expected.
Elevator shaft skied upwards going down. Just after morning the wrong of the possible. Hot flash of friction against direction and forward. I am the water that grows so often less.
Have you ever viewed mountains in arm-bunches? Have you ever been dressed as a fat woman rippling? Do you fear the letters inside of language? Do you retreat to the bar and say “I’m not complaining” and order yourself two for one? What is the relation of rage to nerve, around 9 o’clock PM?
People left in a hallway are half a person. Other people come and go and there are people left there waiting. Feeling the trick drip slack of starving simply crossed. Rucksacks of cotton cushions and stately static pillows. Burning hells shook hands in exchange for ripened summer. Slabs of this road-end parking lot before the doctor calls you in and you can’t move and are pushed into it by someone in sneakers.
This is the breakfast room, but it’s lunch. Clear gel smear across and pull up the gown you’re naked underneath. Repeatedly in the reliefs and hyper-spelt passage sheets. Two standing, to the right, looking at a screen like you had been for days. This is where you see how the world works by not seeing anything but the ceiling at all. Try to remember to tell those back at home. The coldness of the touch makes a shiver come and it feels like a sharp needle, as now everything feels like a sharp needle.
They are fossicking for answers deep inside. Everything is grey and white and green and life has taken over. One explains to the other about pressure. The woman becomes gleeful at something over and over. Past burgeoning scrolls, she points to the screen and speaks of size and heft. The other one studies his forearm which flows forth in a half-minded stretch. The machine slides across my abdomen and the pressure thrives. They are seeing things that I cannot, nor want to, see.
They talk to one another, she explaining to him how to adequately run the machine over the surface, in what circles, patterns of displacement to hold on to. This is what it is as a heart of nature on a tray spelling out the docket for demise. Closed wounds like nervous metaphysicians. Basement lights keeping enough out of reach, but so blandly obvious. Gigantically pocked like something left behind after the oceans vanished. Riding now and knowing how to vomit makes things easier. Discussion about organs, this body has so many to the point of bloat. One may close the empty hum, this room and its sound, to the higher instances of clamp. These doctors wipe me down and exit the room, neither saying a word to me, only to each other.
Left alone in the lonely room, not knowing time and counting to try to recreate it. Uncombed hair, cranky, and the left foot falls asleep now. The IV, now drained, begins beeping. Counting the beeps as seconds, counting to sixty and keeping track on fingers how many times you do this. You run out of fingers with which to count, and you’re tired of counting now anyway. There is a drought going on and we might not be here. Afraid I don’t love you enough to do this. We live in rooms breaking out of hearts. Hand in hand into my nevermind. I fall asleep and wake up back in my room, with the TV on.
XX (Psych Interview #1)
Q: Can you tell me why you’re here?
A: The present. A sharp nausea. Tied together like a church.
Q: New every morning?
A: No. Not every morning. This morning, yes. Yesterday, no.
Q: So it is not a dream?
A: Only if I dream it that way. Just a shade to be told. A ravished color some days away.
Q: Did you sing as a boy?
A: My voice dropped earlier than most. It wouldn’t work with the choir, so low to the ground. I played piano for them instead.
Q: What term do you allude to?
A: Water.
Q: No phone calls?
A: I do not call, but people call me. I talk. I talk all the time. I’d forgotten. It’s extraordinary how the minutes add up. I always carryover. Nights and weekends too.
Q: Do you favor the toad over the frog?
A: Sometimes. No, usually.
Q: Can you recall the last thing you said to the last person you know to die?
A: 3:33...PM.
Q: Do you like to visit grave sites?
A: The whole still is ravished and blanched. You live with them for the money, not the conversation. I meet my debts and I came here to listen. Finish this one...it’s the right one. I’m saying to myself, say what you like, it’s the music that matters. The places are too still to get anything done in. It is a need that becomes a need by needing so quiltly. I crave lips that part down a little way.
Q: Are you seeing anyone?
A: I am seeing you right now.
Q: Are you seeing anyone special?
A: Do you not consider yourself special?
Q: Let’s change the subject: What was your childhood like?
A: Strange with shocks of light. No. Normal with blankets and television and wet grass and sprinklers. Riding bikes and the candy store, but I don’t anymore. Nothing being asked of me in the empty air. Skinned knees and band-aids. Observing and listening and music and dance. Mothersmiles that break your heart and hold your hand.
Q: Do you keep your hands in your pockets?
A: Only when walking.
Q: Why does motion sadden you?
A: Does it? I don’t know. With things moving all the time, nothing is ever the same? I sleep in one position and wake up in another, and you call that rest? Being static isn’t any better though. Like now. I don’t move. I lay here all day long and it’s restful, but boring, but it’s not all boring...I’m thinking of things to say to you, of things to say later. Being in motion makes thinking more difficult, you’re mind is busy thinking of legs moving and where you are going and don’t step on that dogshit there. There is a lot to think about, about moving, when in motion. I’d like a glass of water.
Q: Here you go. And do you think better when you are at rest?
A: I think better when I can think at all. When I can keep up with objects and other people. When tunneling through the clear-cut hedges and edges of what I want to be. When hearing carols camped out in bed and the rest of the hunger winter.
Q: One more question: What do you think of when you wake up in the morning?
A: I don’t think of anything in the morning. I try to remember my dreams, and struggle and rustle in bed. My dreams are always moving and they’re usually traumatizing, but in a funny way.
XXI (In the Space Next To Mine)
In the space
next to mine
the old man
who lays there
has his family
for a visit.
His wife asks
him if he
has been eating.
“Yes, damnit, I’m
eating just fine!”
he says to
her with scorn.
His daughter tells
him that he
needs to listen
to the doctors
if he wants
to get better.
“Don’t you think
I know that?”
he says flatly.
Another woman has
brought two balloons
each of which
says “Feel Better”.
Family has it
you can’t back
out of it
under the same
old faces that
make you old.
“What do you
want us to
bring you for
dinner?” the wife
asks, her voice
slightly more sad
than it was
the other day.
The old man
coughs and makes
spitting sounds, leading
to the sound
of people shuffling
and moving things.
“I just want
you to come
home, dad. You
need to be
around people who
can love you.”
His daughter chokes
up a little
and I can
hear her take
out a tissue
from her purse.
There are the
unresponsive people and
the other kind.
A signal approach
and the people
taking the place
of the place.
There is some
silence for a
bit, and then
the daughter says
“I need to
feed the meter.”
I watch her
walk past me
and she smiles
and nods in
my general direction.
“We brought you
some of the
doughnuts we know
that you like,”
his wife says.
The old man
grunts like a
hurt dog that
can’t even lick
his own wounds.
“You know, Ron,
I don’t know
what you’re thinking
right now, but
I really need
you to just
focus and do
everything you can
to get better,
and I’m talking
about right now.”
There isn’t a
response to this.
I hear her
sigh, and sit
down, pick up
a newspaper and
begin to read.
I imagine that
one day he
once loved her
and now that
his body hates
him, he can’t
think of anything
else. (But I
could be wrong.)
XXII (Television Nightscape Underneath)
Half-Synopsis
The hoarders hoarding their children sank. Babies in babies and baby mamas made the contortionist scenario. The boys bleed away or stay and fight on the couchbed, beginning to think they’re out of their league. The mothers and wives are all blond and have big lips. There are multiple gates to hell, the whole world round.
Survivors come in all sizes. There are shoes at the bottom of the lake, damp sand sinking them to the floor, or they’d float otherwise. Sing along with the rat kids and finger yourself clean. (Waves of new metal wash over this one place, keeping the bad thoughts out.) The nighttime isn’t any better.
The girls put up with pictures. A rant or rave comes quick and stabs them in the gut they used to have. Hair is tooled and fabulous, except when wet (when the hair covers their eyes so they can’t see us but we can see them). Critique is cruel when it isn’t productive. The Critique of Judgment is a parallel paradox of will.
These sweets are a cruel joke to me. A mental breakdown over sorbet. This is what pressure is when making excuses. We all make excuses for our lower moments and never the higher ones. The expectation is always high, we’re people, we do. A raspberry falls to the floor and we miss the end of the world, totally.
New parents with new babies fight and are tired and fight and sleep. Other kids try to help, but fail because they are kids. There are minivans and lawns. Women drop babies they did not know they carried in their pants. A miracle done up in horror tropes. This is reality, no, really.
Hoard vs. Collect
I collect objects and hoard disease.
I Was a Teenage Mom
And I thought
that pulling out
would
be enough:
It makes love feel better.
Inferno As Infotainment (sort-of)
Reached a pulverized
peninsula in puffed luck
and Christian drawl
the north volcano
busts the rot of
the earth like a belch
after too many beers:
the sick picture of
so many screaming souls
I Will Survive (In Time) And Then I Will Die
Prime-time has a glare to it
that practices being like day
even though it’s happy being night.
No one knows what the
lovers do. The ones that lay
in bed and watch things together.
The curses do not bring peace,
even when they are public and
known. No passion in compassion,
it’s such a passive action.
The TV is electricity
and sparks like an unknown
phenomena, and slacks
just the same.
Karaoke Parenthetical
(“She used to roar with laughter, out loud.
She had a laugh like a beefsteak.
She loved beef.”)
The Girls Have All Gone Mad
And they’re all
somebody’s daughters.
Sisterly excuses refused.
Dreaming of girl twins (rare)
and half a brother.
“My...”
Not to even consider
the natural way to
do it.
The boys break things
over their heads
and pull their pants down
to show that
they’re boys.
A silent scream,
so as not to
frighten the dog:
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
And the picture, thus,
stays silent, too,
as a kind of justice:
the kind that’s only
fairly fair.
What It’s Like To Eat Sugar
A song that sounds
so sweet and leaves
you tired, with a
headache,
buckled on your bed
with such a high
ransom, like rent
for like living things.
Parental Bloat-Down
I would never want
the pain
of childbirth
or the inevitable
pain
of the child itself
as it stares at you
and asks if
it is going
to ever die.
I Didn’t Know I Was Supposed To Know All Of This
1 + 1 = 2
1 x 1 = 1
2 + 2 = 4
4 - 1 = 3
(And there’s more,
much more
I didn’t know I was supposed to know.)
XXIII (Potassium Memory #n)
by throat
by horror
by time
by hook
by ways and means
by the torture sweet
by counting to ten
by being still
by holding on
by spitting up
by death’s day enemy
by dreaming of sugarcubes and water
by swallowing
by so little left to swallow
by both sides, lying
by better sooners
by george
by lunging for breath
by the block of self in each of us
by one way to go mad
by days making dragonflies
by nouns and adverbs
by for later
by now, for now
XXIV (This is the Part Where You Get Older)
There always exists, in our most trivial thoughts, a basic Why? to which there is no answer. This can come on from any simple thing, an image of a bird flying, the sound of a crashing wave, a clock turning to one. You lay in bed and wonder why you are not moving. You sleep and dream as if you are awake and you awake and think about why you dreamt the things you did. You use language as a lapsed skin and think that’s good enough. It isn’t, not really. It can, for a time, keep life from breaking against you, or to formulate reasons as to why, but it always breaks and in breaking leaves you broken. But in breaking, in being broken, you put yourself together again, there is no why for that, the reason is truffled to nature. Fulfillments aren’t spoken but are spread out beyond language. If I were to say What would you say if I gave you everything you wanted? What would you say to me? Would you call me a charlatan? Would you scoff and simply turn away? Would you get excited? Would you cry?
I think of Barthes’ idea of Agony:
The psychotic lives in the terror of breakdown (against which the various psychoses are merely defenses). But “the clinical fear of breakdown is the fear of of a breakdown which has already been expererienced (primitive agony) . . . and there are moments when a patient needs to be told that the breakdown, fear of whih is wrecking his life, has already occurred.” Similarly, it seems, for the lover’s anxiety: it is the fear of a mourning which has already occurred, at the very origin of love, from the moment when I first “ravished.” Someone would have to be able to tell me: “Don’t be anxious anymore - you’ve already lost him/her.”
These are the kinds of things you think about as you get older. Anxiety, while is there depending on your personality (I know plenty of anxious children, always wondering Why?) but as enough time passes, there is a way of being that isn’t always. The thought: I cannot give you what I thought I was giving you. A kind of undoing being done to you as you sleep, as if I were tying your shoeslaces together so you would trip upon waking. Falling as a festering motion, the break happens in heaps while you bleed.
How does one continue? Do you just fly? Just show me who to desire. The being for waiting for wanting isn’t desire, but I don’t know what else to call it. The heart is the image organ, first and foremost, and we cut it out of paper. Paper disintegrates, like a heart.
As I get older, and the body does double, I find the erroneous decisions of the long complaint come true. On the other hand, I have regards to happiness. The older I get, the more settled you become. And then there is a rash change and I get older still, but that’s what living likes to blossom as. There is music there, coming in from the back, moving you forward. The dance, coupled as the merit meaning. Linear is specific, condemning what is called static (a painting lasts longer than two hours, if you want it, without music).
(The melancholy version of the pleasure obstacle: my life can collapse, some things left in place, others dissolved in the splintered tubing of the veins. I have thoughts of all the places I have lived, the very structure of them, from the unfinished house at birth to the studio apartment I occupy now. These memories fight for prominence with one another, for the one thing they have in common.)
The power of structures: the old house, left in ruins.
XXV (And Things Are Getting Better)
The doctors wake me in the morning, apologizing.
The good news: my numbers have normalized to their satisfaction.
The better news: I will be put on solid foods beginning at lunch.
I smile wide and say that that is good news. I can’t say that I have much of an appetite and it hurts to swallow jello, but I’m happy for the chance at least.
My favorite doctor, Courtney, asks me what kinds of food I think I would be able to eat. I say that smooth foods should work best. I have an obscene craving for yogurt, I can taste it now.
She checks my lungs and pulse, my feet. She asks if there’s anything that they can do for me. I tell them they’ve been doing great, that I’m just happy things are looking up.
She also tells me that I will only be getting my blood drawn once a day, at night. I say that that’s damn well and good, as the nurses have been having hell trying to get anything out of these veins, I’m so spent.
The doctors all laugh that kind of laugh that’s polite, but sounds sincere.
They all wish me well for the day, telling me I’ll be getting Lispro insulin before each meal now, along with the Lantus in the morning. They will be taking me off the insulin drip, and the general IV soon, depending on how I react to the solids.
I thank them and turn my attention to the TV, where a very ugly woman is showing two babbling others how to use a beet for blush on an awkward looking 17 year old girl who tries to smile, but it’s so forced, and the beet does nothing for her.
XXVI (Psych Interview #2)
Q: How long would you say you spend in the obscurity of zones?
A: Why not. Every day, more or less, less on the weekdays.
Q: How do you embrace the far end of the room?
A: Via a hurt, the distance makes me sinister. I forget about the room and focus on the end. The plateau of ponds and a war I’m not a part of.
Q: Why is that?
A: It’s when I’m walking home and pitted against a vengeance left alone. Then I enter a room and it’s whole again, the door is shut, and you can get a beer there or a drink of whiskey.
Q: How often do you do that?
A: Depending on the macho gallery, the general pick up, I rebuild them breathing toxic fumes and target practice. It allows me the dreamlike quality of sleep.
Q: And others?
A: No one. The idea of beauty quickly deferred.
Q: Are you afraid of falling asleep?
A: I am afraid of not waking up.
Q: How many created figures do you judge on a daily basis?
A: There are forty-two, all wrapped up inside of my gall bladder. They sometimes come out as a still-birth in the middle of autumn. The outside figures aren’t judged, per se, but experienced and pondered upon during winter.
Q: Why winter?
A: Fatigue, vague vision, and I don’t like going out in winter, so it keeps me company.
Q: And in summer?
A: Breakups and agreements are hashed out over the phone.
Q: Tell me about your father.
A: A large man of 58. An atheist. Politically, he thrives on the enormity of the network made constant, but considers independent. He falls asleep. He enjoys candy and buying things for people.
Q: Do you want to mate?
A: No, not at all. That is like saying my right arm is missing.
Q: . . .
A: You can murder someone by never speaking to them for the rest of your life.
Q: Can you steal the bunch?
A: Wherever the house is, the man will crumble it with noise and hover over the rubble.
Q: What mode of heat do you transfer your feelings?
A: The scar is a constant state, and rises with each new sun - there are pirated tracks inside me. The sensible shoes. An hour later, I can’t get it out of my mind. I jettison the feeling as stealing.
Q: Is your chosen version of culture mandatory?
A: No.
Q: Is it halted, or staggering?
A: No.
Q: Does it resemble final containment?
A: Sometimes.
Q: How so?
A: The chief legal problem with sustaining such a maneuver is that the innocent corrupt. They shout and settle into position, or stumble around trying to broach the subject. As one who leads the destroyed generation, there are books in red. We can market that. In humans, the devices of whereabouts handles the bulk material well. Under what duress does recapitulation come into being? Why not medicate on an apparatus of personality, there are more than one you being out on the street, no? We’re all so close to being the same person, we settle on exaggeration as a testament to the one thing we have left. The retrieval can be an effect unto yourself. How to you present the body so infrequently as to be, in essence, a replacement for one another? How do you figure out what organs your body can bend without, and still be a being? How do you get taffy to fit?
Q: What do you think?
A: I asked you a question.
XXVII (The Problems With Numbers)
The doctors come back the following morning:
We’re concerned about your fever last night.
It’s true. I had a fever last night. I was given a tylenol to reduce it. I could barely swallow the pill. Three vials of blood was also taken around the same time.
We’ve also noticed some of your numbers have gone back up, so we’re going to get you a CT Scan later this afternoon. We need you to not eat until then. You’ll stay on the IV until dinner.
They say that they have schedule the scan for 4 PM this afternoon. The idea of it offers up emptiness on a plate. It is about as satisfying as the running eggs on the plate in front of me.
Do you have any questions?
I don’t. I’ve had so few questions this week, there are so many questions. Each day brings a new one, but I cannot form the words to elicit an answer that would be right. I do what I am told here, let them watch me, and figure it is for the best.
Okay. Well, let us know if you need anything. Someone will be in this afternoon to take you downstairs.
They leave and I pick at my hash-browns absentmindedly.
I sit there and sip my morning tea. It’s Liptons but I enjoy the warmth. The fugue state I know, all known, is waiting for something and thinking. Thinking letting time go by, until the end state, over and over, but it’s a new one all the time. Thinking of being by the water instead of 5th Avenue. I’ve learned how to be idle and not to worry about it, a sense of patience that patients know well. The man next to me has not learned this, but I think it would make him less cranky. This is, quite simply, how it is done here. Passing the time by counting. The problem with counting, is it goes on for so long that you lose track of where you are, where you are going, things rigid on a track that goes on past the horizon. Trying to find the horizon in a room without windows is difficult, there is no horizon to go past, only the walls in front of you. But you push past them, by counting, and you end up somewhere else entirely.
It’s this place, see, where you are patient and cordial and say please and thank you. It is the place where waiting waits for you, summoned there by some other want. The terrible specter of an answer that you might not want to hear, so you plug your ears with tissue and close your eyes and count to ten, multiple times over, moving your fingers over the blankets with each metronomed beat.
Counting is just music, after all. And it keeps you sane as you begin to go mad.
XXVIII (A Scanner, Warmly)
Slowly rolling through
the hallways, going down
to where the view is of
inside your body.
Parked to the
side, waiting for
the technician to
tell you what is
about to happen.
I bend and stretch
my sunken knees,
as if insisting
the push was always
this way.
This stretcher is
a retainer for rest,
and these tests
make me tired.
The technician comes,
tells me about the IV,
the one with the dye
and how when I
am being scanned
I will feel warm.
It is cold
in this basement.
I am wheeled
into the scanning room.
They lower the stretcher
so I can scoot off easier
which I do and am led
over to another table
where I am to lay
down again, feet forward.
I am told to
raise my arms
behind my head.
I am hooked up
to another IV
the one with the dye
which has flooded
the veins of the
dying before me.
The light in this
room is like
everywhere else
in this building
only brighter.
I am strung through
the doughnut, I feel
the warm, the machine
tells me to take a
deep breath and
exhale.
I am brought back
out, rest a static
second or two
and go back in.
The machine tells
me to take another
breath. I do and
my breath is warm.
I look over to my
arm and feel but
cannot see, the IV
leaking all over
my arm. It feels
wet and warm
and terribly wrong.
By the third time
through, the leak
feels like I’m
bleeding all over
the place, but I’m
not, and I want
someone to take
a photograph, so
I can look at it later
just to confirm that
I wasn’t.
The procedure is now
over, and the technician
comes back in to
unhook the miserable
IV and then to
help me move from one
stretcher to the other.
I’m wheeled out into the
outside room, parked
in the corner, a straight
ahead view of a man
sitting at a computer
and another one talking
on the phone.
I lay there waiting
for my escort back
to my other bed.
It feels like being
left in the car while
your mom runs into
the mall to pick out
the best fitting
disease for you.
My mother had made
it her routine to call
me every day at 7:30.
It is now 7:45. My
frustration starts to
get to me, and I start
to squirm, putting
myself into positions
that make my ass hurt,
there’s so little cushion
to this thing.
The thing about procedures
is that they never tell you
the outcome until much
later, so you’re left waiting
and wondering and wishing
for the best.
And when I get back to
my own bed, I imagine a
situation of distortion and
lapse, and call my mother
knowing she would be
wondering where I was.
XXIX (Friday, September 24th, 2010 - Birthday Visitations)
I am 32 today.
I am 32 and spending the day in a hospital bed.
I would rather be somewhere outside, eating a good meal at a sidewalk cafe with friends, laughing, spelling things out loud, the feeling of true enclosure, of being safe. Climbing green stairs to the other place where drinks are spilled and as the night goes on, finding ways to keep from sputtering out and saying the truth, for one night only.
Instead, a man walks into my room telling me that the Mount Sinai hospitality department wishes me a happy birthday, and hands me a small teddy bear, wearing a t-shirt that says just as much.
I spend my time watching court cases on TV. Nothing of note to report, but I’m not thinking about justice. A lunch of macaroni and cheese sits there developing completely inhuman skin. I imagine what is going on outside of this room, but I don’t get past the nurses station. There is nothing known in imagining. It’s difficult to imagine a whole world beyond you.
The woman who brings me my lunch tells me that I’m getting an extra cup of sugar-free ice cream, because it is my birthday and I can’t have any cake. The nurse who brings in my insulin says that she’s giving me a little more to counter the additional carbs. She sticks me in the arm, quickly, and says “Happy Birthday” with a slight giggle.
I am a sixteen year old girl waiting by the phone. I move it closer to me, so if and when it does ring I’ll be able to grab it without having to maneuver my IVs.
My doctor comes in and says she has made me some appointments, and that while she was doing that, she kept repeating my birthdate to the offices, until she realized that it was today.
So a very happy birthday!
Sometime later, my mother calls. She wishes me a very happy birthday and asks if anyone is going to come and visit? I tell her, yes, my supervisor from work is going to stop by and bring me a new pair of pants and underwear, since I had shit all over mine. She had been asking all week if she could bring me anything, and I kept saying no. Until the actual need arose.
I tell her that nobody else really knows I’m here, so there’d be no reason for them to come.
She tells me she loves me, and that I’m sounding much better than I have. I say that everyone here is being really nice to me, and I feel like I’m getting good care all around. I complain a bit about the mid-night blood draws, but that’s about my only complaint. And the constant jello. I hate green jello.
She tells me that they’re really excited to come and visit and not to worry about keeping them entertained. (My mother and sister were planning a weekend visit before I was admitted, so the timing actually works out well enough). They won’t feel bad if I don’t do everything that they had planned, my getting better is the most important thing.
I hang up feeling happy and then settle in to watch CNN.
Later that afternoon, my supervisor from work shows up carrying a large bag. She starts to walk right past me and then stops, realizing the bearded clamshell in the bed is me.
Oh! I didn’t recognize you!
She sits down in the chair next to my bed, and I can tell a look of concern draws over her face, but she’s trying to keep it from showing. She hands me the bag, saying that it’s from everyone in the office, and it’s a present. Inside are a pair of pants, boxers and a bunch of magazines. I tell her how grateful I am, and that it’s been difficult watching so much TV all the time, and I like TV. I’m glad for The New Yorker since my copy is currently sitting in my mailbox.
We talk a bit about what’s been going on here, and I explain the various aspects of the conditions I’m in. She pulls out a document from HR and tries to explain how disability works at work, and we both get confused. I say that it sounds like it won’t really be anything I’ll need to worry about. She nods and raises her eyebrows.
I ask about how work has been going in my absence and she speaks vaguely about it.
My team of doctors come in to tell me about my current situation, about upcoming appointments. My non-hospital doctor shows up at the same time to ask about the endocrinologist I will be seeing, she wants me to see someone specific who shows up as well and we’re introduced. The hospital doctor tells her who she made an appointment with and she concurs that she will be just as good, she didn’t realize she was still part of the hospital.
They leave us alone again. I tell my guest how the man next to me has been real grumpy, especially at night.
She takes a phone call from her son. She’ll need to attend to something and needs to go. I thank her for the visit and gifts and tell her I will keep her absolutely up to date on my progress. I don’t plan on going back to work for another week, in order to adapt my hospital life to the real one.
I am on my bed and I turn up the volume to the TV. I glaze my eyes over the screen, and cannot even tell what it is I’m watching. After an hour of this, I notice someone come through the door carrying giant balloons and a bouquet of flowers.
It’s Jonny, a good friend from high school who lives here now in Brooklyn. He tells me that my mother had called a mutual friend who then contacted him and, well, he couldn’t let me be alone on my birthday. He hands me a card, which is actually two cards (a birthday one, a get well soon one) that he glued together. He forged the signatures of our entire group of friends who were all worried and wanted to send their regards, but he had no time to acquire the actual signatures.
We talk about how each of us has been doing. I’ve been so tired talking about myself, I’m much more interested in his stories, living in a way vicariously through them. I’m reminded of when I was moveable, and how days usually change, unlike here in bed.
He spends a good amount of time describing new meals he’s been cooking up. I start to salivate at the thought. I ask about duck.
No, no duck lately.
Dinner arrives, and he tells me that he’ll let me eat my dinner in peace (he needs to go bowling). I tell him to give my thanks to everybody he signed the card for who he’ll be bowling with. He tells me how his newish girlfriend is scared of bowling, she’s so bad.
She’s worse than you!
I laugh and thank him for coming, and how it was really great of him. He says it was no problem, that it was his pleasure.
He leaves and I start in on my macaroni and cheese. The phone rings, and since the phone is so close, I answer it on the first ring.
It’s Carmel, another old friend from high school - the mutual one - who says Wow, what a way to celebrate your birthday! She explains that my mom called her worried that I would be alone today, and to see if she could get a hold of Jonny to make a visit. She rarely calls Jonny, so when she called him he knew instinctively that something was up.
She asks me how I am feeling, how I’m holding up. She says So there’s gonna have to be some major lifestyle changes, huh?
I say, yeah, probably.
I ask her about her son, her boyfriend. The rest of her family. Everyone is doing great, really great. She tells me about her on/off relationship woes and how they’ve been pretty much straightened out, in a permanent fix.
I hear some commotion in the background and she says she needs to go to fix dinner. I ask what she’s cooking. Moroccan. She says that when I’m home for Christmas I’ll have to come over for some, she’s gotten real good at cooking it.
I say I’d like that very much.
We say goodbye, and I hang up, leaving my hand on the receiver for a bit. The hard plastic feels warm, the room feels warm, and I find myself drifting off to sleep, the comfort is a unfolding meaningful trance.
I’m awoken by two nurses, all but screaming at one another about the state of the room. The older one is pushing things around, moving chairs, appalled at how my neighbor is keeping his space. I check the time. 11:40 PM.
I mean, filthy goddamn pig! I never know what they think they’re doing!
She’s pushing the blood pressure monitor over by me, and I expect her to take mine, but she stops and looks up at my balloons.
Oh, honey! Is today your birthday?
I tell her yes, yes it is. Not exactly the one I was expecting, but yes it is.
Well, at least you’re having one, right?
She smiles at me, with a kind of motherly smile that points a sharp contrast to my previous impression of her. She looks down at my bag, where I had put the flowers Jonny had brought.
What you doing keeping those flowers out of water? Such beautiful flowers! Let me bring you a vase...
I had never been one for taking care of plants or things in general.
She comes back with a vase half full of water. She takes the flowers out of the bag and unwraps them. She asks the other nurse for a pair of scissors to unbunch them for the vase. She sets them on my table.
Now there’s some beautiful flowers for you!
I thank her for her trouble. She says it’s no trouble.
Before she leaves, standing by the door, she asks me if I would like the lights turned off.
I tell her yes, please.
XXX (Saturday - They Say I’ll Be Going Home)
They tell me
I’ll be going
home today.
I ask them if
I can get these
IVs out of me.,
they’re so awkward
and make me
scared that I will
rip them out at night.
They say someone
will be in in a
minute.
The depth of the
room shrinks and
becomes a door.
An hour later,
a woman from
the cafeteria
comes in to take
my dinner, breakfast
lunch and dinner
order.
No one will be
coming to take
the IVs out.
It’s Saturday,
so there’s nothing
on TV.
I watch multiple
programs about Hell.
A new weekend
doctor comes in
to tell me that
my CT scan has
shown fluid in my
lungs, pneumonia,
and says that they’ll
be putting me on
an IV of antibiotics.
I ask if it’s serious.
She says that they’re
being cautious, given
the week I’ve had.
She also says
that she will be
calling in some
surgeons to take
a look at the scan
as it shows what
seems to be cysts
somewhere down
in the abdomen.
She says she will
be back once she
gets a response
and not to worry.
I worry out until
concealing myself
under the blankets.
I fall asleep and
don’t wake up
until my dinner
(pot roast and
potatoes) arrives
and so does a
new nurse
with a syringe
and a smile.
XXXI (Sunday Morning Still)
Copious amounts of time, still leaving well enough alone. Always be prepared to live where you don’t want to, but don’t let that stop you. The textures of morning sticking beneath the blanket. I’m tired of formulating sentences in my mind. Of tempting them out when asked. What steams out in the pure light of will. No such thing as a reason sandwich. The lower lip is the pleasure craft central. I knock on wood and try lugging it. Shirtless and awake, a couple of scars and sticky tape. Why do you fight? To reward and fight and be the better man. You have to learn to go backwards all the time. Fingers so small you can’t grab at anything, just flail and faint. The hardened compulsion of orange. I need to talk to you in private. Medicine as metaphor. To fully support the memory in slow motion. Kindness as a kind of kindling. You wake in the middle of the night and cannot name names of the things you adore so. Tempered fever like the sun in eclipse. The appropriate counterpoint should come soon enough. Don’t miss this opportunity.
Imagine a language that works
Try to steal the right book quickly
I don’t want to accidentally blurt it out
Sirens bite the body of you and take the fucker out
Let’s talk about something else now for awhile
Somewhere in that upscale deli a portable vow
The inclined beat pressed pinto bean
I cannot reach to change the bulbs so I sit in the dark
Things like the cruel ransack of reality
The wind raises questions like former ghosts
I wait and write in my head and wait for meals and company
I imagine a train wreck in the middle of the Pacific
A bodega cancer can still be quite the pickle
The prism passage of a mount of language
Before dawn you’re pulling your children and shouting
I draw every letter that doesn’t work
Two cups of tea and a pot to piss in
The brutality of the barely visible
These petals are drooping and revealing something different
The concrete of the subway like tombstones
Why not charge there will be no charge today
English is always bought and sold
Morning so long ago it rains afternoon into puddles of night
I never learned how to count carbs
The butter flavor of shaking my hands with a spoon
I’m not gonna lie this is going to hurt
Do you want me to help you clean up
Outdoors it’s night and a special light
Headlights through the wipe of the face
I haven’t had a true bowel movement all week
Sweat-soaked gowns all fogged up permanently
I want to take a shower without plastic bags on my arms
Between infinite cups and the plastic tray
It’s not denial in the scale of the city
The phlegm that you are not
The small bubble never bursting yet
My nose in a pool of hot water
This alphabetized index of emotions
This hospital door never closes and there’s always light
I wonder about the wisdom of sharp edges
The red meaning works against yawning
How and how many parallel young girls gone
Modernism never happened
I am glad that the furniture at home isn’t plastic
The roof of my head is burned out and blistered
Find the counsel of old dreams with each new nurse
I am learning a language and living in it
The end of the tape dissolves and sticks to me
I am subletting this conversation with white wine
I don’t hear voices muttering the future tense height
Another cup of apple juice in the middle of the night
Nine stories up the second tallest dream in town
I drift back asleep as we approach open umbrellas
I’ve lost so many pounds of flesh as to be crisis
Smell the piss in the air next to you
By the canvas you can tell the time by now
The secret is in finding just where to leave the spaces
Find you folded around the flowers curtly
Cooking infants in olive oil and butter with roux for later
A fuck you like a bowel full of prunes
I’m done and have had enormously enough of it
It’s still Sunday today and tomorrow it’s Monday but today it’s Sunday, still.
XXXII (Monday - Release Papers)
The Mount Sinai Hospital
One Gustave L. Levy Place
New York, NY 10029
PATIENT DISCHARGE PLAN AND REFERRAL FORM
POKARNEY, GREGORY
MRN - 2914590 M 9/24/1978
V - 4612191 9/20/2010
BARNA, ERIC 02628
N09W
DISCHARGE DATE: 9-27-10
DISCHARGE TIME: 16:30
SERVICE/SPECIALITY/PHYSICIAN: Medicine
DISPOSITION: HOME
DIAGNOSES: (AS EXPLAINED TO PATIENT/PATIENT SURROGATE): DKA
YOUR DIET IS: Regular
YOUR ACTIVITY IS: As Tolerated
| TO BE FOLLOWED | NAME | PHONE | LOCATION | DATE | TIME |
| CLINIC/MSH FACILITY: |
|
|
|
|
|
| PHYSICIAN |
| see Med rec |
|
|
|
| OTHER |
|
|
|
|
|
| OTHER |
|
|
|
|
|
I HAVE RECEIVED THE ABOVE INFORMATION:____________________DATE:________
After Hospital Medication List for POKARNEY, GREGORY MRN: 2914590 DOB: 9/24/1978 (32y)
PATIENT COPY
BRING THIS TO ALL FOLLOW-UP APPOINTMENTS
Current Medication List
This is the list of ALL the medications you should take at home as of 09/27/2010 18:25:14
| Medication | Strength | How to Take | New or Changed Reason |
| 1) CITALOPRAM | 10MG | 1 TABLET by mouth DAILY | NEW depression |
| 2) ESOMEPRAZOLE | 40MG | CAP by mouth DAILY | NEW ?gerd? |
| 3) INSULIN GLARGINE (100 UNITS-ML) | 20 UNITS | subcutaneous (beneath the skin) every morning | NEW basal insulin |
| 4) INSULIN LISPRO INJ (100 UNITS-ML) | 6 UNITS | subcutaneous (beneath the skin) LUNCH | NEW prandial insulin |
| 5) INSULIN LISPRO INJ (100 UNITS-ML) | 6 UNITS | subcutaneous (beneath the skin) DINNER | NEW prandial insulin |
| 6) INSULIN LISPRO INJ (100 UNITS-ML) | 6 UNITS | subcutaneous (beneath the skin) BREAKFAST | NEW prandial insulin |
| 7) LEVOFLOXACIN (LEVAQUIN) | 500 MG | 1 TABLET by mouth DAILY | NEW pneumonia |
After Hospital Medication List for POKARNEY, GREGORY MRN: 2914590 DOB: 9/24/1978 (32y)
PATIENT COPY
DISCONTINUED or STOPPED Medications
Stop taking these medications unless instructed otherwise by your outpatient provider.
| Stopped Medication | Reason |
| INSULIN GLARGINE (LANTUS) | dose too high |
| ZOLPIDEM (AMBIEN) | can restart at pcp discretion as outpt |
POKARNEY, GREGORY MRN: 2914590 DOB: 9/24/1978 (32y)
PATIENT COPY
Follow-up appointments
| Specialty/Clinic | Location/Address | Provider | Date | Time |
| FPA Endocrinology | 5E. 98th St. 11th Floor | WEINSTEIN, BARRIE | 10/1/10 | 4:00pm |
| Internal Medicine Associates | Center for Advanced Medicine, 17 E. 102nd St 7th floor | COPLIT, LISA | 10/7/10 | 2:80pm |
Discharge Special Instructions
Please follow-up with psychiatry. Please record finger sticks when wake up in morning (before eating) and before each meal. Please record values and bring to appointment with endocrinology. Please also record how much insulin you give (including correction scale) for each finger stick. Call MD for FS > 400.
Epilogue (As The World Whirls Around You, You Smile And Molly Bloom The Facts Of The Case, Which You Find To Be The Best Of All Possible Worlds)
Yes: I’m out.
I walk out
of the hospital
onto 5th Avenue.
There is a light
drizzle, but I don’t
care. I wouldn’t
care if it were
pouring out.
I’m out.
What being is
-- is not being,
what was.
These senses
all but make
an object --- as courted
to the street corner.
I hail a cab
to go 10 blocks.
Inside the pharmacy,
I push a cart-basket
around, picking up
a few things on my
way to the counter.
I hand them
my prescriptions and
tell them I will wait.
If I were
tired I’d fall
apart.
This light, camera,
feels like
the hospital.
People are watching
me and my arms,
rife with tape
and bandages.
But I don’t care,
my arms are free
in their own bondage.
I call my mother,
who answers with
a delighted yelp.
You’re out!
I tell her the plan
for the rest of my
life. She tells me
I sound like I’m
taking the whole
thing well, the right
way to take it.
I wander around
talking to her
about her upcoming
visit, tell her where
to make dinner
reservations while
I search the aisles
for dinner, for breakfast
for all the meals
until my groceries
get delivered, proper.
My prescriptions are
ready. I pay for every-
thing and sign my
name where I’m
asked to.
I take the train home
standing with my
bags of medications
and milk. I watch
the other riders
and am overcome
with seeing people,
the girl reading, the
couple cuddling,
the older woman
looking stern through
tight thin glasses.
A small kid
in a stroller
smiles and waves
at me.
I wave back, and
the kid claps her
hands and then
covers her mouth,
her eyes so piercing
for something so small,
like a syringe that
sinks you still.
I get off the train
and walk the short
blocks to my apartment,
smelling the street
and thinking it smells
like cupcakes
and newspaper.
I watch kids
on scoots
swirl in circles
in the lamplight
outside of the
bodega -- the one
I never go in.
Two couples are
walking, one of
which stops to
have a row, the man
saying something
about money.
A blind woman
in sunglasses
is being led by
her husband, who
holds her hand
so gently it hurts.
There is so much
life on this street.
On my way up
to my apartment
I think how I had
been thinking for
the past few days
how I had forgotten
to lock my door
when I left with
the paramedics.
I wondered if the
medics didn’t notice,
or care, that I would
leave my apartment
so open to intrusion.
I turn the doorknob.
The door opens handily,
my apartment a dark
cold chute. There is
no sign of intrusion.
My plant that hangs
over my stove is
on its last leaf.
I take it all as a sign,
to leave things open:
Yes to be open to
be Yes to be willing
and open armed and
love like music Yes and
I won’t mistake my mistakes
for loss Yes and bad reception
won’t stop me from saying
Yes I love you Yes I know
I’ve said that before and Yes
I meant every word Yes and
I will be alive and Yes
in love and Yes so open
and Yes the time has come
to be Yes all that gets finalized
in the never closing
Yes I will Yes I am Yes
