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1. EXAM

Anyone who needs to see a doctor, please

stand in this line. Anyone who needs to hear

a doctor, please stand in this other line.

 

If you wish to feel a doctor without otherwise

engaging, remain calm, the doctor is with you.

If you dream of doctors, please wait outside

 

until your name is almost called. If you dream

you're a bird, please wait inside until your call

is named. If you believe the word Doctor

 

is a verb, run away, run away. If you believe

doctors live in white houses over white lawns

in neighborhoods of sky, please form two lines:

 

one on this side of the fountain,

one on this side of the fountain.

 

Anyone newly born or elderly, please keep to

the middle of the group. If you don't know why

you're here, think no one sees you, that you can

hide by falling into line,

                    you have already been seen.

 

2. THE NEEDS OF THE MANY

On the days when we wept—

and they were many—we did it

over the sound of a television

or radio, or the many engines

of the sky. It was rarely so quiet

we could hear just our sadness,

the smallness of it

that is merely the sound of wind

and water between the many pages

of the lungs. Many afternoons

we left the house still crying

and drove to a café or the movies,

or back to the hospital where we sat

dumb under the many eyes

of Paul Klee. There were many

umbrellas, days when it refused

to rain, cups of tea ignored. We

washed them all in the sink,

dry eyed. It's been a while,

we're cried out. We collect pauses

and have taken to reading actual

books again. We go through them

like yellow lights, like tunnels

or reunions, we forget which;

the older you are the more similes,

the more pangs per hour. Indeed,

this is how we break one hour into

many, how healing wounds time

in return. And though we know

there will always be crying to do,

just as there's always that song,

always a leaf somewhere in the car,

this may be the only sweetness left,

to have a few griefs we cherish

against the others, which are many.

 

3. TEN ALTERNATIVES TO DIAGNOSIS

1. Tell lies while jumping rope

 

2. Sleep on a queen-sized photograph of an orchestra

 

3. Read your resume to a dog

 

4. Descend stairs in place

 

5. Fill your pockets with seawater & walk into a quarry

 

6. Pay someone to gift-wrap the rest of your money

 

7. Have your mail forwarded to an orphanage

 

8. Learn to read Braille with your cheek

 

9. Applaud the progress of shadows

 

10. Set your watch to the hour of your birth & remove the battery

 

—Brendan Constantine

© 2016 Brendan Constantine, from the book Dementia, My Darling (Red Hen Press). Used with

permission.