Vacationing in a Hospital

The unnamed character in this long poem is trying to follow what is happening in his mind after the accident, after he fell to the ground unconscious when trying to get back up after tying up his shoe. He is entirely locked up in his own self and he is even seeing himself from outside himself, he is the watcher, and the watchee is there lying on the sidewalk and then later on suffering on a hospital bed.

The trauma is deep and brutal, and he may have lost his own mind at some time in this descent into pain, the worst pain being that he was no longer the master of himself, and yet he fought for some revival, some responsibility, for some modesty if not bashfulness. Suffering from being unable to hide, and passing water became an ordeal and he had to do it in spite of all.

This unnamed character is trying to follow the strings that are within his reach, trying to re-emerge from this deep traumatic cesspool in which he is some kind of floating half-rotten piece of wood that is losing its substance, impregnated with muddy water as it is. He pulls these strings. They resist. Yet he has to get out of the soup in which he is dissolving.

In his post-traumatic pain and corrugation, he tries not to get lost in translation as if he would be transmuted into some vaporous smog in a lightless empty void, floating fleshlessly and mindlessly. Some recollections resonate in his brain, torturing his desire to just pass away with the challenge to stand up and howl at his fear, his angst, his apprehensive revulsion. Going down the road feeling bad in the midnight hour when pushing the Dreadful Gate open.

Dr. Jacque COULARDEAU

Acknowledging Introduction

Je dédie ce poème à tous ceux qui m’ont permis de me relever du sol le jour de Thanksgiving, Jeudi 22 novembre 2018. Au plus bas dans mon errance mentale, le troisième jour, un Samaritain, qui devait être bon, me releva et me rendit l’espoir que je pourrais encore marcher malgré l’abandon dans lequel je me réfugiais. Le sixième jour et la sixième nuit virent une aggravation brutale de la situation qui fut prise en main par le même…