I want You for My Candy Man Caramel
I mean Camera Man
I want Your One Eye for Mine
All Mine
before the ball gets rolling
I want You to drive with Me
in Your Big Rich Car
I want You to walk with Me
through the smelly corridor
to My Place
so You know You’re in The Right Place
The Place of Its own dis-stink-tion
Oh, You can take Your Camera out all right
just don’t aim it at My Face
just get The Incoming Hall
show The Interior on Its way — The Way
to My Living Gallery
complete with Hall of Fame and Identity Room
–
I want You as Dr Drosselmeyer
with a black patch
with Me as Your Director
with You as The Player
of Me Your Instrument
carry Your Instrument
to The Second Floor
and ring the buzzer
see if They let Us in
shall I show You My Hall of Fame?
the only section with any natural light
over here to the left with sun
actual sun — if They haven’t got it locked
We can see The Anonymous Work
of Former Patients and My Brother’s Mural
on an Eastern window a close-up
of The North End of Our Island
with the full moon above a fishing boat
across from It is My Maple Leaf Map
of Quebec with Its South-Western Boundary
explained to a man with no name
as The Region of Poetic Lie-Sense
You can zoom in on that My Man and aim
above to the ceiling where You’ll find
ceiling tiles gaily painted and unsigned
One of them
is Mine
more ice cream
You know what? I painted once
there an ice cream sundae
The Fire Alarm was The Cherry On Top
somebody painted a wall over It
and nobody knows why
but it’s sunny down that Hall of Fame
at least it’s sunny
The Man With No Name
has a place to go before They lock Him
out of there
–
into The Cloister I’ll eagerly take You
before We get to The Inner Sanctum
(well We have no choice with The Cloister
It houses The Inner Sanctum where My Identity lurks)
–
now steady That Hand as I show You
images of My Past Present Future
(We’ll ignore The Observation Desk
just look straight ahead)
on the wall before You
across from You as You enter
The Light-less Cloister
is The Image of Mother and Child
playing with dough
I call this My Foundation
under It I was interviewed once
as to why I was Present and now
The Furniture has changed
the table and two chairs of The Assessment have been replaced
by a settee
My Past Life with My Mother — My Mother’s Dream
where no one was present but Ourselves
is replaced
–
on the adjacent wall to the right
of My Past
hangs My Present My Gift
My Dream observed by You My Lover
where I sit in ruffled white
at the age of fourteen
distracted by a dark kitten
above My Left Shoulder
I am couched in a rattan chair
thrown with exotic fabric
picture book upon My Open Lap
tiger rug at Black Stockinged Feet
My Present My Game My Fantasy
and Yours hangs upon This Wall to be walked past
A Wall once housing a big white bulletin board
displaying patients’ “levels”
now moved down the Hall of Bedrooms
–
The Bedrooms have no sun either
–
hold Your Camera down down
We do not need to go Down There
The Sleep I’ve had in Those Rooms
has been therapeutic sleep
monitored
lied about
The Dreams There were of black globs
I was a gelatinous black cloud of quivering coal
until I heard an alarm somewhere
rising
out into the hall I leapt to save The Life
as only I could of A Man I see linked to Me
for My Sanity when I’m There
–
enough of The Past – let’s talk
to A Woman named Lorraine
for Whom all that glitters IS gold
Whose art is the lyric of colour
with seeds made into flowers
“Hi Dr Blair what are You doing with that camera?”
She would ask
I would ask
“Lorraine could I see Your earring collection?”
and I would arrange Them for You only You
to show You My Annual Cycle of Life for Aliens
I would find the felt-blue crystal shapes
for winter at three o’clock
the double raindrops for spring at six
the fireworks for summer at nine and for fall
the pumpkin shells at midnight
I would put one four-leaf clover in the middle
and hand You the mate for good luck
for We must always have a bit o’green
–
Lorraine has a lipstick collection too
forty in all since We gave Her four new ones
for Christmas
and You know She grows a beard a goatee
and I told You how picking The Colours
became a test for Me:
what’s a true red
a true pink
a true orange and a real brown?
–
I’ll take You now
by Your Left Hand over to The Desk
where The Image of My Future glares
out from the eyes of A Dark Haired Child
in white with blue satin sash holding
a basket of cherries She stops Us
at the door to The Medication Room
from Her Left Finger Tips dangle two heart-shaped cherries
within the glistening bivalves I see
My Self and My Other Half
The Poison and The Remedy
being told ordered to take take take but
THIS is My Future
THIS is My God in Your Face
–
and for You just You I will touch
Your Face and turn Your Head away
toward The Therapeutic Quiet Room
where They put Me
by force of Code White Team
including one black doctor
(after I attempted to secure Lorraine’s Expression
in a vault on The Administration Floor)
They locked Me in That Room
where I lay on a mattress
doing all I could do
looking around and around
to the writing on the wall
I saw A Star drawn at My Head
and The Word C-O-M-P-A-S-S-I-O-N
along My Right and I knew then
I’d been tricked and found
God put Me in that Inner Sanctum
to find My True Self
My Identity
in The Writing On The Wall
but I was still alive
so I could finally say
“I Am A Star and My Message
My Tag Line is COMPASSION”
God laughed cruelly at Me There
on That Mattress God — My Own God-Damned God
howled through Me at the irony
and off I stripped My Golden Tee
to show anything that happened to be underneath
–
come now let Me show You
yes We’ll go in There — They’ll let Us
They can’t “handle” Me anymore
We’ll go into that cubicle
behind waist-high louvred windows
I’ll show You just where I sat
in a black bra and You can see My Back
The Sky is on My Back
You can zoom in and I’ll name
the three-dimensional mole The Sun
and You can shoot Me lying down
while I cover My Face with My Hands
–
Joanna Gilman Hyde 