THE FINAL DIAGNOSIS

 
The Final Diagnosis
"Basically all patients come to psychiatrists with
'one common problem: the sense of helplessness, the
fear and inner conviction of being unable to "cope"
and to change things.'" Dr. Hilde Bruch in "Learning
Psychotherapy".

Hallucination
When the priest hears voices, the penitent
hail him prophet, spread their clothes
for his feet, when I hear voices
they hail me legend, took my clothes
exchange it for the uniform of a penitent-
iary!

Delusion
I'm a Van Gogh who does not
cut off his ear. My "Sunflowers" master
piece:A last supper portrait not graced
by the cord of a Mona Lisa
smile, hybrid colours and mutant lines.
Like Van Gogh I have a butterfly
mind, flitting, fragile, yet most beautiful
when set against the backdrop of a "Starry
Night".

Paranoia
I am fearful of some things, the woman
who is a shadow of her cosmetics, the man
who has two shadows, the Pandora box
of my cupboard where the skeleton of my
hope is kept, the mannequins who spy on me
through the binoculars of the glass window.
I'm glad I do not have claustrophobia,
agoraphobia, acrophobia.

Investigations
Temperature chart:x-----x-----x-----x
the secret places of buried treasures
I go to each day on the tightrope
of a fevered mind. EEG: The runes shamans
inscribe in my file to tag the demons
they cannot exorcise. Laboratory Reports: Names
borrowed from a terrorist manifesto, numbers thrown
up by the Russian Roulette. All these cannot
diagnose mental illness, only the doctor can
and he wears a stethoscope he does not
listen with.

Diagnosis
They say I am 'schizophrenic', I think 'life
is a skit, the soul frenetic', yes, I believe
that's the final diagnosis. 

SEEKING ASYLUM

 
SEEKING ASYLUM

"I have Schizophrenia and I am treated like
a pariah. I hope I have Alzeimer so that I
can forget the bad, the ugly and the painful."
xxx, a patient.

I
have been
i
n
t
e
r
n
e
d
And now I am in a cell I am not
nucleus of, my crime, "Teenage
graffiti on the wall of an adult
mind!" says the police of my mime.

Hallucinations
I see hobbits, aliens, flying Harrys and UFOs,
dinosaurs and dungeon dragons. No one believes
me, I see the smiles beneath their smiles. Suddenly
Hollywood makes movies of them, everybody raves,
"A tribute to the imagination, the temple
of the mind...." But that is where I worship too!

Portrait
They show me my pictures. Chest X-Ray, a white
dove trapped in a black bird cage. MRI
of brain, a plate of negatives, I am black
moon casting white shadows, the darkroom unmade
me. This is box camera technology that
under exposes my colours, prints my portrait
in post-mortem black and white.

Moon-dial
My clock is a moon-dial, it chronographs
the stolen hours, the short hand counts hours
amputated by drugs, the long numbers the shock
hours spent in the convulsive eye of an
electrical storm.

stigma
i learn a new word
stigma is not botanic
the term is social

Sin
Today I think about sin, the unseen
and the seen. I know my own seen
is as many as the leaves of a deciduous
tree, each leaf the serpent of my right
mind seducing the eves of my left
days. And I know that the difference
between my seen and your unseen
is the thickness of a fig-leaf
I don't care to wear. 

Your Joy Is My Joy,Multiplied

A BROKEN CHINA

 


A BROKEN CHINA

I have a thread / round each wrist /
which I know I can unstitch / anytime I
wish. / Hands freed, thumb crossed, /fingers
restless as wings, / I have become that
crow / roosting in my dreams.
From the poem 'notes for a suicide' by
Felix Cheong

My marriage was a match
that unmade me, my husband
has Malaria of the mind.
But I will make my own
escape, fly away, like Icarus
from this medieval maze
of the Minotaur. My husband
is no myth and you will
never know him until you break
the code of my silence
and decipher the writing
on the war and the Braille
copy of it on the paper
of my flesh. Read then,
with your fingers the abrasions,
bruises, contusions, dislocations,
ecchymosis, fractures, gashes,
haematomas, indurations, wounds.
My husband is two nations
warring within one continent,
the divided, the split,
the cleaved. Sometimes he's the potter
I'm the Ming vase shaped
on the wheel of his fury.
Most times he is the bull
in the shop of my ceramic heart.
Twentieth floor high but I believe
I can fly. It is midnight
and there is no sun to melt
the wax of my wings
but does it really matter
when I'm already a bruised
b
a
t
t
e
r
e
d


b
r
o
k
e
n


c
h
i
n
a
?

(Art Work: "Paper Batik", wax and water colour,
entitled 'A Broken China', 2i August 2006 ) 

TRILOGY, PHOENIX IN PARADISE

(This is a trilogy, water colour and wax on paper,
two paintings, photographed and then superimposed,
created for Naomi Chin, Glasgow, 13, August, 2006)

PARKINSON'S DISEASE IN HAIKUS

 


Parkinson's Disease In Haikus

"I'm Petrushka's doll. My face a mask,
my gait, a shuffling ape's, my posture bent.
My clumsy hands ignore the brain's intent.
The pilot seat is vacant in my brains.
I barely live, in chains."
Marj Koshky (1923-2001) Australian poet who suffered from
Parkinson's Disease.(Here are 7 haikus, each preceded by
a short desciption of a characteristic feature of Parkinson's
Disease.)


1.Facies:Fixity of facial expression, somewhat
staring, immobile.

hieroglyph of wrinkles
face of a sphinx full of dark
pyramid secrets

2.Tremors: Rhythmic tremors most pronounced
in the hands, frequency of 4-5 per second.

tremors of fingers
the sleight of hand faster
than slide of mind

3.Freezing Phenomenon: Feet transiently glued to
the ground.

once a flitting bee
now a dinosaur stuck deep
in a mangrove swamp

4. Bradykinesia: Slowness of movements.


not a leap, each step
a moon walk, never reaching
the heart's space station

5.Festinating Gait: Quick shuffles at an accelerating pace
as if to catch up with the body's center of gravity.

chasing own shadow
it's caught when moon eclipses
the sum of his fears

6.Rigidity: Stiffness of musculature.

when rigid limbs move
rusty cogwheels are singing
mechanical songs

7.Dementia: Dementia afflicts up to 1/4 of all
patients with Parkinson's Disease.

the pool beneath chair
not sign of second childhood
reeks of more than age

(Painting:Wax and water colour on paper,
digital collage,entitled "Flying In Paradise"
August, 2006.) 

MOON OF MY HEART

 

"...my living is like chasing
after my own shadow,
I catch it only when the moon
of my heart eclipses
the sum of my minds..." 

THE PATIENT ANSWERS

  

THE PATIENT ANSWERS

THE PATIENT ANSWERS

“We learn the social map / fast. Beneath the ordinary chat, / jokes, kindnesses, we’re scavengers, / gnawing at each other’s histories / for scraps of hope.”
From “Knowing Our Place” by Carole Satyamurti


House Officer, “Tell me, what is the pain like?”

Yes, I will tell you, I will tell
you, I will paint it, sometimes
it is a black hole
in the canvas of a midnight
sky, sometimes a fresh carpet
of snow unmarked by animal
tracks. Sometimes an abstract
explosion of Mesopotamia colours,
cubist images of fallen soldiers,
poisoned oases, in the war-torn
canvas of my desert heart!


Oncologist, “The primary is in the lung. The secondaries are in the liver.”

But the pain is the greater
cancer, it spreads not into adjacent
organs but metastasizes by jumping
across chasms, from body to mind,
the secondaries in the psyche
causing the greater distress.


Nursing Sister, “Good night!”

What’s so good when the silence
at night is a gramophone loudspeaking
my pains, its slow hours the needle
stuck in the groove of my long-
playing record?


Visitor,”Here’s an Agatha Christie, to keep you occupied…”

But I’m occupied, counting
my pain. Every unit of pain
is the many digits of fresh
pain multiplied by the power
of the remembered pains.
The numerator of its waxing
is an astronomy number.
The denominator of its waning
is the logarithm of morphine.


Church member, “God does hear your cries of pain..”

Do you not hear them too?
The sigh of a hospital-pale
bouquet as it sheds tears
of petals. The high strung
weeping of morphine as it travels
a plastic route from bottle
to body. The sobbing of the cardiac
monitor as the screen numbers
the minutes of a fluttering
heart. The groans of the trolley
wheeling in the many last
suppers……………………………


Pastor, “I will pray for you, God will surely heal…”

I wish you could submerge
me in the disturbed waters
of the pool at Bethesda,
prove God true or that even
an erect man can drown
when the water is an inch
of platitudes…….
.

WHISPERS OF SILENCE

 
old men playing chess
games are won and lost
without the creasing of brows

in tousled garden
where tall lalang runs amok
petite bonsai blooms

last call to board plane
at the back of jostling crowd
nun without luggage 

A SABBATH

 
an armchair cradle
a ceiling fan lullaby
the milk of a poem 

THE QUIET HEART

 
dark clouds in the sky
the washing on laundry line
is unflappable

footprints run away
waves scamper to horizon
driftwood, unmoving

in the crowded park
enjoying the strange quiet
man without cell phone 

PEACE THAT PASSES UNDERSTANDING

 

man kneels in chapel
sudden breeze snuffs out candle
shadows disappear

in quiet waters
perfectly poised on surface
the statue insect

watching live football
old man fingers rosary
counting nearer goals 

I N F I N I T Y

 
Infinity

You cannot multiply, add
to or subtract
from Him. The science
of mathematics cannot help us
reach Him but the abacus
of love compute otherwise. Take
His love for you and divide
it by your love
for Him, the answer is that
which makes Infinity the calculable
distance from your seat
of unbelief to His Throne
on the Cross. 

F A I T H

 

Walking on water
requires sinews of faith
that can be developed
only through the daily exercise
of walking the second
mile! 

C A M E L

 
Try threading your life
through the eye
of a needle, you discover
you need to be single-
standed, unknotted! 

H I G H-K U

 

the highest mountain
you can climb lies in your heart
everest of self 

DAVID VERSUS GOLIATH

 

A strategy that is not out-
dated, fight fire with fire,
the bigger doused
by the smaller, like the forest
fire kindled by an untamed
tongue snuffed out by the tongue
of fire so small it sits
on my head without singeing
my hair. 

PILLAR OF FIRE

 

When it is night, you imagine
every star to be a pillar
of fire. When it is day, the column
of cloud is mistaken
for a mirage. 

SUMMON A GENIE

 

Religion is like a lamp,
some of us rub a lamp
to summon a genie, others
trim a lamp to await
the bridegroom.