WAITING TO TALK TO THE RADIOLOGIST

WAITING TO TALK TO THE RADIOLOGIST

Waiting to talk to the radiologist at the Burr Cancer Wing

in Kingston Ontario by a fortified lake of grey round houses.

Homogenized labyrinth of anonymous posters in the halls

of undecorated functional duplicate rooms doubling arithmetically

as moonlight incommensurables. Where the hell am I?

I ask for directions from sympathetic lighthouses eager

to guide me like Rubrich’s cubes deeper into my bafflement

pharmaceutically emotionally isotopically induced.

I want to carry my own road sign protest placard

wherever I go from now on like a cross I’m willing to bear

in the name of knowing where where where am I going.

Cancer Clinic Burr Wing Level l. The doctor will see

you earlier. Wait here please. Fill out these forms.

Cold black plastic vinyl chairs with people sitting in them

sporadically like the last of their teeth in an ass’s jawbone.

Sad foggy faraway look on everyone’s faces and a few

like me trying to face the whole situation a bit too cheerfully.

Dr. Phain. Great name. Epiphany. Sends two interns

in advance like Rosenbrendancrantz and Guildenhilda

to interview me too mechanically inquisitively

to make me feel they’re not so much interested

in interviewing me as a symptom they read about

in their medical texts who suddenly incarnated

as the skeleton of Pygmalion who is answering

them in his bones like bamboo windchimes of what

they want to hear until the doctor gets here and makes

everthing muggy and clear as musical chairs on a merry go round

and round and round and round as a jinxed plaid prayerwheel.

I’m in a hostage situation with Munich syndrome centred

on the radiologist explaining to me the half life of the patient

as all the U-238 in the room slowly turns to dead lead

base metal iron pyrite stoned philosopher’s fool’s gold

disenchanting him of the false dawn of the false hope

he’s going to live more than another six months of this.

Everybody writes that down like check mark quill feathers

dipped in the ink pots of little boxes little blue boxes on forms.

Meantime I stare out the window at northern Lake Ontario

gusting deep midnight Prussian blue with angry white caps

cantering out of suffrage instead of galloping with gusto

through a Tom Thomson painting of a bleak northern lake

as over on the further shore dozens of windmills, windmills, windmills

tall as the war of the worlds bouquet and spread

like wildflowers along the borders of mournful grass leafless elms

and some sad woman always walking off into nowhere

as a sundog light burst breaks through the clouds

it halos in the encircling sky as a sign of the fact

I’m not going to conquer anything like Constantine in the name

of a sign like this no matter how alluringly beautiful and soothing

it is through the dirty grime of the grey cancer clinic windows.

I have my prescription renewed for thrush, 100 more \

4 milligram pills of apo-dexamethasone and an ointment that will help

soften the scales in the crack of my ass like moonlight in a niche

of silver. Rosenbrendancrantz takes a look. Says. It’s got

nothing to do with me. You better see your GP.

Must be nice to be an expert that doesn’t help without permission.

PATRICK WHITE