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under the dining hall’s

  fluorescent glare. A boy

  who lost his privileges for stripping

  outside the Vic entrance panhandles the ward.

  Bring me back a pack—voice cut in half

  by the ward door’s hermetic seal.

  Metal whisper. Bless him—

  when he begs, he doesn’t distinguish nurses

  from patients. No money till his mother visits

  next week. When he’s refused, he falls to the floor

  and weeps. It would be pathetic if he weren’t

  so genuine. Each of us has our own way of mourning

  our dignity. I won’t buy him cards because

  the crowds scare me. From the Starbucks across the street,

  I gaze at my new home shadowing

  the oaks’ orange and yellow awning

  and watch the clock, as afraid to be out

  as I’m scared to go back. The crying boy is soothed

  with a nicotine inhaler. I’m glad I stopped smoking and quit

  giving a shit about sports. It helps me here

  to need less. The Jays are contenders this year

  for the first time since my childhood, when I stood outside

  the SkyDome lot, ball in hand, chasing the players’ cars in hopes

  of a signature. At a red light, they might

  roll their window down and sign. I once caught Robbie Alomar,

  but he refused. In eighteen years you’ll just lose it

  in the nuthouse, he said and shut the nursing station window.

  I wait patiently. The nurse thinks I want

  a smoke. I ask for a pen. He slides the glass ajar

  and slips me a Bic, asks if I feel safe. I imagine

  he imagines I am writing Jack Torrance’s next novel.

  Hey, I’m a marginally famous poet. I’m a sensitive man.

  Don’t you recognize me? I say internally.

  The ward is another place where poetry

  makes nothing happen. The bat cracking a ball

  on the HD TV in the patients’ lounge

  kills me, insisting on life

  outside of here. I read once about a dying man

  who wanted nothing more

  than for people to read him the news.

  He still cared what happened in the world

  though he was not long for it.

  Meanwhile, I turn my face from the Toronto Star boxes

  outside Bond Street, the election and the Jays,

  even though, in both cases, our side is winning.

  I can’t identify with the our anymore.

  My only interest is the attempts.

  Steve tried to hang himself from the shower rod

  but not before taking pills and filling the tub.

  As he swung, he planned to commit harakiri.

  Claims to know the method well and proves it

  with a plastic butter knife, pantomiming

  a thrust inside his abdomen with a flick

  of his wrists. The rod broke before

  I could get the knife in. I flooded

  my whole apartment, he says

  and laughs. We all laugh. Frank tried

  in the ward. Double knotted three Glad sacks

  round his head and tied his hands behind a chair.

  Even if I changed my mind, I’d suffocate before

  I could tear off all the bags, he brags. I’m impressed

  with how well they thought it through

  and failed. Only ten percent succeed, says Sam.

  He was bored when he took his wife’s Valiums

  and drank a fifth of whiskey, listening

  to Irish folk songs, sipping and waiting.

  He describes the experience as rather peaceful.

  Lacking the kind of courage of these thoroughbred men,

  I took myself to the hospital instead. Steve says,

  Nothing makes you feel more like you’re not winning

  than failing at that. Tells me the way I did it, or rather didn’t,

  was brave, and my tears patter

  on my apple juice’s tinsel lid. When Elections Canada came

  to ensure our rights as citizens, it felt pretend.

  Last night, I watched the polls long enough

  to know the Conservatives had lost.

  Someone switched the channel to hear the baseball results.

  How grateful I was to the patient who wandered in, then

  sat at the decaying Steinway and banged out

  a mangled Moonlight Sonata.

  Ode to Zopiclone

  Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,

  And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul

  — John Keats, “To Sleep”

  Sedative Cyclone, come for me.

  Soul’s casket unhinged, squeaking at 3 a.m.

  Lullaby in the whirlwind.

  Not drifting off but drowning in you,

  so blue. Opaque Aegean in my veins.

  Side effects include short term memory

  gloss. More crowbar than key.

  You thieve time of events, pry dreams from sleep.

  Empty the night sea of water.

  Whale tank of dark matter.

  You taste of tin and Abaddon.

  A revolver dissolving beneath my tongue.

  Immune to caffeine, shuffle through a fog of re-gifted dreams.

  Reverse rear-view—objects further than they appear

  or I am further.

  Soft embalmer of noontide.

  You bind and agonize.

  I curse you all day, Sweet Anesthetist

  & by midnight crave your chalk-salt kiss.

  To My Friends Who Did Not Visit Me in the Mental Hospital

  Re: symptoms

  Shimmers, halos, light bursts, static, afterimages, trails or palinopsia as it’s called. Sorry

  am I boring you?

  Re: the ward computer

  Spell-check corrects words incorrectly.

  Despite the visual affect

  reality-testing restrains.

  knight-time is thorough.

  Re: maybe you don’t understand

  You understand.

  I am here

  because I want to die.

  Re: please disregard

  I try to wash your absence off

  and my hands bleed. I won’t

  claim stigmata

  but it hurts.

  Re: the shower room

  There’s no bathtub in the shower room

  so you can’t drown.

  Other than the bathrooms, it’s the only place here without cameras.

  A wide nozzle hangs from the ceiling like a giant spider

  or god. Water goes everywhere.

  I feel like I’m a prize bovine, hosed down

  for the county fair. It’s difficult

  to keep my towel dry.

  Re: when are you coming?

  I confuse your reasons for not visiting with my pills.

  The pink tablets are your dog is sick.

  The blue azures for sleep

  are moving apartments this week.

  An orange capsule that I think is a placebo

  turns everything to shit.

  Re: when are you coming?

  You said:

  The electrician is coming.

  The Wi-Fi guy is coming.

  The plumber is coming.

  The Second Coming is coming.

  Flu season is coming

  and you’re very susceptible.

  Re: treatment

  I wait for doctors like you wait for
repairs.

  They see me between the hours

  of eight and five. When they arrive

  they wear hazmat suits

  on the inside.

  Re: thank you for the phone call

  Your voice stays in my brain

  long after you hang up. I’m here

  but I am not here. I am here.

  Re: (no subject)

  A faraway friend says I need to be grateful

  for what you can give. Forgiveness

  is where love and justice finally meet

  says Roy Cohn’s nurse. My nurse

  asks me to rate my ideation on a scale

  from one to ten. I fail.

  No one asks, but I rate my grace

  a five and a half.

  Re: objects

  Fair. I mean flare.

  Objects are fair.

  Re: thank you for the presence

  A puzzle, a razor, another puzzle

  dropped at the nursing station

  as you fled.

  When I find god,

  some universal truth

  oneness, understand

  paradise surrounds us,

  I will forgive all of you

  but your backside

  hurrying towards the exit.

  My backside

  knows your backside

  all too well now.

  Re: my visitors

  Those who came did nothing

  but listen to me say

  again and again, I’m afraid

  of everything, of nothing and

  there was nothing to fix.

  You would not have liked it.

  The electrician wasn’t coming.

  Re: maybe I’m being unflare

  My faraway friend says I’m keeping a list

  like Santa Claus or Peter.

  No. Like Schindler.

  No one is the prefect friend, I think, she said.

  Re: the prefect friend

  looks like me

  but is winged

  and hooded

  doesn’t mind me

  wanting to die

  holds my hand

  and leads me

  to that same tree

  where I nearly tried

  and feeds me pills

  one by one

  like peeled grapes

  if that is what I need

  keeps asking

  what do you need?

  walks with me

  into the courtyard

  where the walls

  are too high

  to see the sky-

  line and carries me

  into the sun.

  The fair, fair son.

  Circular Labyrinth

  … (T)he labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; and

  where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.

  — Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

  1.

  After 8 p.m. snack we slouch a dozen laps

  of corridor circling a cement meadow.

  A citadel defends against the horizon.

  Nothing in the centre of the centre. We pass

  the hall burned with Monets, circle

  the lily pond and drown, a little, each time.

  It’s too green! Hurts, a faraway hurt

  like the moment after burning oneself. Pain

  and the memory of pain. We talk around

  attempts till our pink pills spike. Pastel wounds

  bleed sleep for the night. For our safety

  we can’t be trusted with thread. A symptom,

  delusion of protagonists, lost. Soon, the hero

  will find us and we’ll, at last, be slain.

  2.

  Ativan, at last, gabapentin. PRN. Tim Hortons.

  Breakfast. Klonopin. Nurses station queue.

  Smokes. Lunch. PRN. Snack time. Slowly unravelling

  tinsel lids. Ideation on a scale from one to ten.

  Anxiety on a scale from one to ten. Privileges

  revoked. Nicotine inhalers. A visitor cancels.

  Computer queue. Googled side effects. Quiet

  hours. Conspiracies re: lizard people.

  Chopin. PRN. Harlequins. Gideons. The lilies

  considered. Klonopin. HD TV. Blue Jays.

  Yellow leaves. Ballots cast. Results. Moments

  stretched. Safety plan. Activities. Someone

  in restraints. In-patient Elevator. ECT. Unseen at

  breakfast, soon forgotten (PRN), more or less.

  3.

  More or less, we escaped, at last, by way

  of untruth. Carved ideation with plastic knives.

  All those hours whittled could have been

  spent turning inhalers to shivs: opposite,

  depending on perspective, of self-defence.

  We puffed. Silent kazoos sealing our lips.

  Released at last. Turns out, the outside is more corridors

  called streets. We return to the Starbucks

  in which we spent our passes, discuss the way

  nothing has changed more. I search my pocket

  for smokes, find the stone-totem a friend gave is gone.

  Inside, I held to the thought: it works if I believe

  or not. Out here, lost also and free, more or less.

  After 8 p.m. snack we slouch a dozen laps.

  The Chestnut Tree Café

  Under the spreading chestnut tree

  I sold you and you sold me:

  There lie they, and here lie we

  Under the spreading chestnut tree

  — George Orwell, 1984

  Sad hour selected from the day

  to go to the Starbucks. My name

  on the sign-out sheet feels forged.

  The nurse hands out our cigarettes

  and asks, Do you feel safe?

  She’s shielded by glass and mirtazapine.

  Outside, we light up. This is still

  my favourite season, I say, as we shuffle

  through the fallen yellow leaves

  under the spreading chestnut tree.

  The barista’s glued kindness kills.

  How can someone smile at a time

  like ours, however … especially, fake.

  Living, or not, is a personal preference.

  It ought to be my right to take my life,

  you say, over a spiced pumpkin latte.

  I nod but double think, I too

  would have called the cops

  even though, in principle, I agree.

  I sold you and you sold me.

  We’re both out now, because we learned

  to whittle ideation down to a five.

  Ignorance is strength, I guess, boredom,

  progress, and so on. The trees are leafless

  but glare blue. The barista wears a red hat.

  We return here though we’re free.

  On passes for life, we reminisce

  about the antics of the other patients.

  But reflect, to us, they have already died.

  Here lie they, and here lie we.

  The literati of the ward, we thought

  our Orwellian allusions smart.

  No one in this Chestnut Tree Café

  chain store is listening or, if they are,

  cares. We’re free to protes
t … what, Big Life?

  Still, you escaped with your integrity.

  If I followed through with my plan

  that night on Hanlan’s Point, you would

  not have called anyone, but let me be

  under the spreading chestnut tree.

  Self-Parenting

  Your teeth, you freak, are corkscrewed and blue

  as the antifreeze that’s milk to you. I try

  to lactate toxins from my paternal breast.

  La Leche League has no advice for me.

  I’m smoking and drinking to feed you

  while you scream like a wrecking crew.

  Single-minded as men set on ruin,

  tired as babies by day’s end.

  You enjoy annoying, asking, Are we there yet?

  And, Which tools, which tools? I quit shaving

  on Father’s Day, when you made me

  a necklace of blades from my Mach3.

  One day, tiny Leviathan,

  I’ll steal your nose with a fishhook

  and tie down your tongue. Gobble you

  all up when the messiah comes.

  You fear my ancestors’ tales,

  want to hear your favourite fable.

  Sit on my lap, my little jack-o’-lantern,

  I’ll tell you the bedtime story once more:

  I’m unsure, which one of us offers

  the ride across the river,

  and who is foolish enough to ask,

  Are we there yet? After

  the scorpion stings the frog, he says,

  Don’t you see what you’ve done?

  You can’t help, scary, scared one, our nature.

  And then they both sank as one.

  Noonday Yahweh

  Not God but a swastika

  — Sylvia Plath, “Daddy”

  You speak my name from behind

  a dark bush. But on closer look,

  a thick short moustache. Hard to tell,

  the little tramp or Mein Kampf?

  One never sees your face.

  Something black and burly

  following me. Your cartoon nimbus

  gives me hope. You’re coming!—

  in a whirlwind. I don’t care

  what is said. Just take me

  somewhere ordinary,

  a Kansas of the mind, I pray

  to your iconic stache—

  bristles my hair like a spider

  crawled in there. I do not see you

  in a bush. Not in a tree. Not in a car!

  You let me be! I went to shul

  and found the Führer. I prayed