Commitment: A Memoir
I: Ressurection
They've watched me all day
To insure my misery.
This morning, the vampire in her
Nurse disguise
Sucked out my blood while I was
Half-asleep. I still have the bruise.
ICU -- and I do see you,
Watching me across the room
While the TV stares at us and we stare
At nothing.
One has begun to discuss the invasion
With friendly alien foes.
Andrew walks himself down the hall
And works out the last engineering problem
He worked on before coming back.
Mr. Johnson's clothes have not yet dried
From his vomiting earlier.
He waits in a pair of boxer shorts
While smoking a cigarette.
His penis falls out, and as we discuss sex --
It's all we do all day,
Discuss, that is --
The poor thing twitches and shivers,
Like bad memories.
Prozac, pussy, and pectorals are our Gods.
I want to get away from the doctor giving me drugs
That cause some folks to kill themselves.
I want to get back to the patio,
The walled-in patio, beneath the fenced-off sky,
And continue talking about little deaths.
After three hours' rest when they brought me in,
Strapped to a stretcher, covered in sheets,
I wanted to feel like someone who'd already died.
Like someone who's already died,
I shuffle back to bed. My eyes won't close.
On down the hall, I hear Ms. Tommie
Wailing her mother's name. Unlike me,
Her mother died last night.
Goddamn it, I tried to tell them --
Just after meds, I tried to tell them --
That all I wanted was a bit of rest,
A bit, a piece of death, the peace of sleep.
II: Observation
So used to having men's eyes look away,
I do not notice the eyes that fix on me
As I shuffle down the halls of ICU,
Expecting they watch me anyway
For signs of madness, or worse,
Some sign of change.
So I do not notice him watching me, or
His struggle to have me not notice him noticing me.
A hundred dark eyes like his have driven me here,
And pairs of folded arms, closed arms,
Closed minds, closed fists, and mostly closed-off hearts.
But these dark and open eyes stare
As if I were not really there, somehow,
Just a textbook case in a psychology class
With no real name, no face.
It could be the Prozac making this up.
It could be some drug in the food, the air,
The electrotherapy John talks about --
How shocking -- that took away his nature.
I open the door -- he's there again,
Helping Ms. Tommie back to her room.
She barely walks, the weight of the loss
Of her mother pressing down on her shoulders
Like time. I avoid his eyes and go for a snack,
Intending to go back to bed and forget
That love like mine, like hers, can put us here.
He stops me, a wall of football flesh,
His eyes looking my doctor's eyes should look.
That's where I get lost while he talks to me:
He knows I'm special, knows I'm smart,
He knows that things must truly be bad right now,
Or a man like me wouldn't be here tonight
And I won't be here for long, I'll be all right --
Given time, rest, and help, it'll be all right.
I watch him walk away, not knowing
That I have just mumbled a "thank you," unaware
That I am grateful he cares, only knowing
His eyes are the only things I know.
III: Reintegration
Surfacing, after two days in a bowl,
My transfer is finally approved.
Only two other people to talk to here,
Aside from the staff, who listen
But do not hear. The drug I'm on
Has me forget that I'm a child.
My orgasms have never been so good,
Like whales exploding in the dark of the sea.
When it comes to sex, I listen to Prozac now.
I'm jumpy, and not from moving to APU.
My knees are leaping like fish, my eyes
Have not stopped darting around the room,
The inmates I was too far down to see
Now showing up clearly, undisturbed
By murkiness, though they may be disturbed.
Though they may not understand, they eye
Me cautiously, like a predator.
They know they've lost me,
They know I've made it out.
When I see Edward grab his crotch
I know they want me to stay.
A school of techs escort me to APU.
In a daze, I listen but do not hear the rules
It's another world here: the TV blaring,
The patients chatting, and the smoke more dense.
I'm introduced and quickly forget the names.
The rest of the night, I avoid them all
And act the intruder I think I am.
These are not the faces I know,
The ones I love to distrust.
It's harder to walk here, harder to breathe --
Better to stay in my room and decompress.
Returned to the depths, I notice how quiet it is,
A hiss, like the breath of a lover on your neck.
IV: Repetition
6 AM. Each morning. The cuffs.
Glass rods, silver liquid. Then food.
Coffee is a new drug they only deal me here.
The lumpy grits. Going down smooth as juice.
Drowned in a cowherd's worth of margarine.
The Scrabble game kept us up too late again.
This morning's group session is moved to ten.
They switched my drugs -- I'm ready for death
Once again, or just a lot of naps, strung together
To give some illusion of eternity. I nearly
Fall asleep while Charlie talks about the talks
That he and the Devil have had last night,
About how we die, then we return,
And how that pisses the old red fucker off
Because the only Hell there is is here
On Earth. I think he's in league with the Devil 'cause
He always wins at Scrabble.
Penny's head still hurts, that fine Asian brow
I've never seen smooth, eternally wrinkling
Like crumpled rice paper. She hears some voices
Now and then, though not the Devil --
He only like Charlie, she say.
He don't like me, she say, or else
My fuckin' head wouldn't hurt so goddamn much.
She'll later sleep for the day and be reborn
As the woman who did six laps round the pool
Last night, the tiny body lithe and thin,
So much so even I could say, Wow.
We now bring up how well Tommy has done --
Three days of Trauma, he comes out new,
The same short balding man, but now,
He doesn't like sleeping...reminds him of death,
He says, still grinning, the smile
Already becoming stiff. He'll leave us soon.
And you there, sitting in the high-backed chair
With your devilish demeanor and professional nose,
You say I'm on the same drug he is,
The one that caused this splendid rebirth.
A few days of Trauma, reliving the past,
And I can relive the present. What fun.
We do it all over again till we die.
V: Disintegration
Its shortened name is TRT --
"Trauma Resolving Therapy," it's called,
The fancy term for pain regained.
It's a darkened room, a chair in the center,
A plastic baseball bat by the wall,
And an Earth mother woman with the voice of a child
Who tells us we've no shame at all.
No shame, she means, save what we've been given --
"They fuck you up, your mom and dad,"
As the famous poet said.
It finally came out, last night, in confession,
Or rather, in group, though they're both the same thing:
It's my father, all right, my father who did this,
My father who left me with no name at all.
"Now, this is your father," the Earth mother murmurs,
A large pudgy digit stabbed out at the chair.
"Now, I want you to tell him whatever you need to,
Just tell him what's made you hate him so."
And I do -- eyes closed, my arms hanging down.
She tells me to tell him, "I'm angry with you,"
And yet I'm not angry -- he's been dead too long,
And all I can see is the man in the coffin
Whose chest I laid my head upon and screamed.
But now she says, "Hit him" -- she gives me the bat,
A long dented object that looks like a belt...
But a belt's made for hitting, and this is a bat --
And suddenly I'm on him, driving him downward
The way he drove me down,
The chair that I'm hitting soft as a stomach,
A back or a buttock the belt may break.
This chair is no longer a chair that I'm hitting,
He's here now, my father, he's under this bat!
The ball bat cracks downward, hitting the hated,
The hater, the hateable,
Dead and the dying,
And the dead who won't finally
Die, die, die, you miserable bastard,
You son of a bitch,
Lie down, goddamn you,
Go lie down and die!
Someone who shouted, "I'm angry with you"
Now shouts, "I hate you! I hate you!"
Over again, the hatred not stopping,
The ball bat not stopping,
The pain in these arms and these wrists
And this heart, this bare, bruised heart, never stopping,
Again and again and again and again --
And it stops.
My eyes are open now --
He's fled into the corner, cowering,
Much like a twelve year old, six year old child
Once did, quite often, the legs lifted high
To protect from the blows of the busted bat,
Of the belt.
VI: Reality
I'm finally back in sanity again.
They release me, though they call it "discharging" --
Discharge, as if I were vomitted back to the world.
The power's turned off in my apartment --
The phone was long since gone --
And the car, untouched for three weeks, will barely start.
DMV insists on keeping my plates,
So I must buy another car
And find some way to drive to find one, too.
The mail, three weeks behind, piles up
On the dusty kitchen table that the roaches
Have finally taken over and made their home.
That night, I fall asleep at 6PM,
Wake up as late as possible,
Swallow double my meds,
And pray for my new sanity to start.
It never does.
And never has.
� 2002 Tony Whitt
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