<The Patient Report>
Charles A. Perrone
Avoiding
Palliative Care
This
guardian assigned to me,
whom
I do consider to be a pal,
suggested
that I complete a lap
around
these elliptical gardens
(an
unusual installation for this institution,
hardly
a palace, or apt place for a paladin
capable
of re-scaling challenging palisades)
During
my trek around the grand green track,
I
suffered a palette-reducing lapse of memory,
which
affected a certain vertebra in a bad way,
years
later causing a wan palsy in my right arm,
thus
the left arm is the only arm left for my use,
and
the palpitations in my chest are beginning
to
become worrisome as my mind prompts me
to
think and to emit palpably suspicious palaver
.
Ten-lines of
Assistance:
Call them what
you will—
handlers,
healers, advisors, guardians, guides,
coaches, helpers,
nurses, counsellors, trainers—
all those who
come here to aid me
in this, my
five-part rehabilitation:
to hear with
clarity, reducing racket;
to see more
clearly these surroundings;
to smell what
fell sans suspecting rats;
to taste the
sweetness of victory over falls;
to touch the
finishing line with all ten digits.
Hierarchy
of Help
The daily staff are ready and
heady, much obliged.
The weekly counselors are
sufficiently engaged too.
But the monthly specialist is a
psycho-something therapist
who definitely has the most
distinctive suggestions for me.
I am told to take charge of a table
in the available eatery:
tell the busboys that you will
clear the table and wipe down;
tell those who set up that you will
aptly populate the table
with knives and forks and spoons
and napkins and plates;
tell the waitresses that you will
take food and drink orders;
tell the manager that you will
decide who will get to feast
and who will be forced to watch as
what will unfold does so.
Staff
Recommendation
Once
again staff provided me with a creative prompt.
"Revive
that character you invented last time around.
Tell
us about some quirky habit of his that resonates."
Where
to begin? ... His boxes, his banker's
boxes, yes!
Some
neighbor had discarded some plain filing boxes,
and
he took them to his secret hideout for processing.
Their
unadorned surfaces were all simply unbearable.
Covering
them would have to be something original.
He
decided to become a mailbox thief to acquire material.
Envelopes
that might have mailing labels, bumper stickers,
decals,
adhesive advertisements, anything he could paste.
After
a number of weeks, the co-mission was accomplished.
Each
square inch of blank cardboard plastered with variety.
Now
I must decide what to say if staff
ask me how I came
to
know about his desires, thievery, art, and whereabouts.
Most Recent Visit
The latest overseer decided to
tell me
to gather memories of papers that
may
have been adorning my desktop when
...
There were far too many to recall
them all
but the suggestion proved fruitful
when ...
I remembered an out-of-the-blue
piece of mail
from a long-lost classmate who
ascended and
sent to my address a simple blank
postcard
with nothing on the front but my
data in bold
and nothing on the back but a
tiny-print name
reminding me of unpaid bills and
unopened
letters and some public-utility
announcements
that had been posted menacingly on
the door
and covers of magazines I had
pilfered nearby
including one sporting a cover
photo of a sign
of round shape with bright red
circular edges
and a prohibitive slash across the
emptiness
of the all-white sign maybe
signifying when...
Checking in on
Patient X
These handlers I
have been assigned
are expecting me
to pay attention
to attend to their
invocations of
"if"
or much better said
what if and I natch
cannot fail to agree
absolutely not to
flee
for flight would be
frowned upon by
those few wingless
overseers I must
endure in such dire
straits or straight
up
fire time set ups
... say what?...
What the Bi-Weekly
Counselor Told Me
Forget the flints
flaunted by ne'er-do-well neighbors
not hip to modern
ways to ignite the night and knells
needed to
illuminate the path past plain pine boxes
and limited access to plenitude.
Favor keeping the
mind in mind
and also hailing
hindsight as it may move us
toward more
forward-looking friends.
Recurrences
Once
a year the friendly attendants
are
kind enough to allow some seasonal cheer
to permit half a dozen simple gifts
like
the cracked ash tray from some hotel in the Alps
or
the plastic comb with the name of a sports club
a
paper shopping bag full of smaller sandwich bags
discarded
yoga mat to be re-purposed
and
an abacus left behind by former neighbors
so
tired of the reigning used-car mentality
Co-nun-drum
My
therapist suggests I give air and wings
to
my feelings and dreams in my writing
My
literary advisor suggested I never use
flighty
therapy sessions as creative springboards
My
trusted accountant suggested that both
therapy
and remunerated literature classes
were
superfluous and unsustainable expenses
My
suggestion manager said she could no longer
work
under these conditions free of charge...
I'm
still figuring out what to make of this taste
of
freedom
This sort of confinement does
have its consequences.
I, for one, tend to lose
track of time and of timing the
beginnings and the endings of
four or five seasons on
the wall calendar they have
so kindly ceded to me for
reasons likely related to
mind control and abatement
of temporal miscalculations
regarding local outcomes.
But I digress and am no
closer to redressing grievance
filed on behalf of watchmaker
whom I addressed over
the years in an unfavorable
and second-handed mode.
The hour hand, for its part,
remained all independent.
Monitored Leisure
What I most like about this
particular institution
is the nicely appointed
outside recreational space
where I can sit back just to
gaze at the lemon tree
and regard each of its so
abundant pieces of fruit
with different sizes and
varying shades of yellow
all connected by branches of
bitter super sap that
leads me to the word and the
weight of sapience
—great vowel shift as it
were notwithstanding—
and before I can actually
work out the meanings
of that suggestibility the
two assigned guardians
come to fetch me in order to
return me dutifully
to the room they have been
making me inhabit
which is windowless with two
detail-filled walls
that I will be politely
asked to continue to ponder
until our next recess beyond
the building's doors
Staff
The doctors agree that
the best course of action
would be for me to mimic
myself
For auto-mimicry is guarantee
to produce a familiar feeling
A far cry from and no
danger of
reeling due to the impact
of mammoth surprises
carrying the freight and
weight
of unencumbered alterity,
otherness,
and whatever else might lurk outside the domain
CC Me
The
courteous courtesans now under retention
attending
to my case in this countryside retention
have
come up with different words to refer to me
and
to my state of being who I currently am or pretend to be
In
terms of hammers they have resorted to the sledge
as
for situation they simply aver that I'm clearly over the edge
Next
Patient Report
My former therapist believed that the means of
communication
are meaningful and symbolic and worthy of our
attention and
that her penchant for Freudian methods was
totally justified
so the interpretation of one's dreams is
usefully undertaken
in conjunction with newer science affirming a
few advantages
of completing REM sleep cycles and their
oneiric content ...
I complained that whenever a truly welcome
dream was about
to conclude in satisfying fashion the damn
phone would ring.
Her suggestion to mute the device or unplug it
upon retiring
was moot since we had a single-setting
metal-bell ringer unit hard-wired into the floor outlet at the bottom of the
wall ...
Yeah, this was way back in the day, and years
later some newer
models with clips facilitated disconnect and
one could silence
the sleeker instruments with the flip of a
switch but still
one had to remember to take preventive steps at
bedtime
or cover the phone with a pillow to muffle
sound while
keeping a small cushion handy to cover exposed
ears and ...
Mobile phones? Cell phones? and all their
conveniences?
Clearly irrelevant. All this took place before
their inventions.
The story was recorded on a mechanical
answering machine
discovered and revived by the next-generation
analyst who
has determined to sift through the amassed
symbols and signals
to sort them all out nicely and to complete the
call as dialed.
And how has lettered time affected your patient
patient report?
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