The Hospital

the only boots are doomboots wasting walking, cool mist of openspace–flowcurrent airsheets of all points blowing and weaving–across my clammy skin sheen twirling with the intimation of umbrage is hatching the escapist joinery of my eyelashes, my arms atrophic but feeling the sensation of digging and the allure of labor, an indifference so overwhelming as to be physical, in a hard bed with a pillow full of cylindrical plastic beads with my flimsy clothes all against the coarseness of the bedclothes are twisting around my body constricting–not dangerously but with discomfort nagging–my calves with my cuffs and my spine with the jacket and shirt untuckingly rotating in opposite directions, euphemistically white night, pregnancy of whitecloud, on my knees in the gritty sediment covering the platform outside the transport on the side of a very broad main thoroughfare and asphalt sprawling and I am clutching the post of a sign reading <> with hunger and fear and with perpetual panic constricting my skin crippling me to the concrete so far from home afloat in this fog, in every blink in every breath every look and creak of the street trees is a mock execution, distant barking dog, rolling onto my back in the sand covering the platform, the imprint of my synsacrum dragging through my slacks across the sand dragging me from the platform, seeing not quite seeing an intuitive fog of the entirety all at once though it must be through scanning and exploration that the entirety the catascape is understandable or filing it in the catalog of experiential one by oneness in the fog is illumination with a peculiar texture and pattern glowing and eyes parchingly squinting to the edges featheringly of each vectorial mark–because they are markings familiar to typography though not of inherent meaning of conventionality but diacritical echoes empty of propulsion lying in a quadragescrim of exocytoticbillows–composing the imprint or specification of rhythms and impressions but not the content and not the follicular flesh of the ultimate manifestation, the liminexurban horizon is shingles veeing and apostrophizing through evergreen feathers, a horizon of occlusion that from without is finite and from within is inescapably expansive and racing relatively in consistent infinitude, silhouettes against the wall behind the platform are loading me onto the openwork wire bench of a pumpcar and allowing my head lightly onto Nadia’s skirt lap her fingers working to brush the dust sand chalk from my jacket and trousers and resting over my eyelids, the silhouettes are climbing aboard the pumpcar downstream from the transport and stopblock and working its walkingbeam and guiding sphere casters with a joystick through arabesques of omnidirectional track–blackout click engagement rotation leverpump resting click engagement creaking rotation leverpump bloodrush blacksnowfall click engagement nausea starcloud resting black leverpump coasting through cool air freewheeling click engagement–over asphalt swath traversing derelict sidewalks buildings far from each other and flat in affect onto a great symmetrical lawn and ersatz garden of dirt on axis with Cherdyn hospital, pain is thickening, chalk in the topstitching puckerings of cuff seams, the riverine smell settling in the valley from stagnant oxbows below stifling natural and foreign the pungency of drowning or dumping floating bloating bobbing into the flow downstream Kama to Volga home in palustrine decay, exilirating, the exhiliration of exile, the air is slowing into a cushioning membrane against a building threshold sealing stillness and softly hushing speech is echoing in dull suffocation coming to stationary in an enclosure brightly fluorescent oscillation through my eyelids, I am here inside inside my guilty blood I am deserving, thin oilstranding hair laces falling in my eyes, I am awaiting the axe, metal teeth on my throat, the bed is luxurious and stiff with taut clothes and vulcanic undergarments and crisp prismatic edges in the austere outpatient room, only Nadia and I are close enough to hear the tender sound of stitches popping in my iceblue jacket against the strain of my sad bodily inertia, Nadia nodding, a gash in the wall daylighting through the sheetrock splitting curling puckering lips of fibrous wallcovering around seductive blackness of the wall cavity, a decal of a partial equilateral red triangle on the window is dusting a vague stationary shadow on the floor, the awareness of being in a wheelchair but of nothing else, the awareness of being on a gurney doubled over, shadows of silhouettes are gathering on the wall in the corridor, the grass and nettle hairshirt of the unfurling incarcehedron, it is impossible to see over the horizon, a pattern of dirtmounds is rising from voids in the concrete in preparation for flower beds, silhouettes under the wallflower gaze of two nurses are dropping the siderail of the gurney and gesturing then pushing me rolling onto a slightly lower bed, the rolling of grit on the facets of my molars of chewing my own tooth chips and the sand from the platform occupying the undersheet under thin blanket with my tongue in exploration of my gumlines and the absences of tooth for the sensation of a small stone–larger than sand and smaller than a pebble–one after the other in continuous spoilage emerging from my mouth, glaring night in the hospital is reflections on every surface–tiles stainless steel terrazzo lino cornea window glass inward incidentally to brightness between conspiratorial shadows in the hallway–each with its own distortion each with its varietal of integral incidence synthesizing into a comprehensive picture of every angle of space in a continuous sequence out the open door into the hallway and turning down the hallway the elevator cab and a staircase with mintgloss paintdrip relief down and integrating the vomitory and the forgotten lobby and vestibule and the soil strewage on the apron of doomstruggle and the autos the curb the silhouettes the synthetic possibilities of my survival through each room each space passing across me and my haunting Nadia my companion my vessel, negligible deviation in the quality of light–the diminishment from some exterior celestial phenomenon or mechanics–is allowing my pupils to open to the possibility of a fluorescent smudge leaking through the gash in the sheetrock wall and imprinting on the coy paper backface, auric photogram of a figure that is nonexistent that is lost that is apart from, static white sound is tapering and oscillating into a glottal buzzing voice–through thick neck skin and collar–is speaking through an intercom concealingly in the light fixtures <>, Nadia is not reacting to the voice, I cannot lie still though paralytic fighting under prickling paresthesia of the blanket of hot dark air, in my languishing is vaguely whispering hoarsely for the energy of movement, the transport inert against a hydraulic stopblock, iris rhizomes are lying scattershot amidst the dirt and concrete sprouting from their papery rinds with cleavage of flesh and swords of green desperation into moisture percolating up from the concrete and osmosing lime where they are kissing, the thinness of a long northern twilight sifting over my collapse on the transport platform, a lenticular opalescent pebble riversmooth and milktooth is sledding down the depression of my pillow from my lips–Anna the extemporaneous Cassandra the visions are fleeting I am listening for you decaying into bone on stone–the field, virgin soils, cracking resonating through universal panoramas, intravenous difficulties in my yellow and purple pardine arm crooks, in Nadia’s eyes is escape down the pensive well of suicide, bleeding to death is not the worst way, Nadia’s comfort in suicide is radiant and contagious, funereal, rhizomatic, <>, the soilsound is mostly soft surpisingly yet liquidly–though I am suffering from dehydration from the journey–all falling and continuing inertially where the skin on the side of my impacting is the crust of the earth the soil of my body and the liquid is the falling falling through spatial molten liquid of stone core that is not knowing that it is ceasing its plummeting but moving without acceleration against the true vacuum of darkness, the flower beds are springing forth flowerless curlings of hostas in dull arrangements of clumps and other rhizomatic shoots and grasses that are not demanding attendance are not demanding the sun–a man in dark blue coveralls is trimming ensiform leaves down to 7 to 10 centimeters, ensuring the rhizomes are airdrying, brushing away debris without disturbing their patina of clinging undercoat soil, ignoring them in a cool dark place, coating them for curing in sulfur powder for fungus prevention, carefully wrapping each rhizome in newspaper reminiscingly, reanimation of story fragments about events whose importance is becoming more and more and more dubious, placing in a box in a cool dry place, the box is dark, periodic palpation for rot softness, ignoring–the soil is absorbing my impact, the official cartographic radii are inflecting the forgetfulness and erasure of exile back toward home with fresh feedback loops that the consciousness is unsettlingly lingering at the origin point of the journey–the body is out ahead is waiting, though not wanting the consciousness to arrive here where the prison of silence is developing open across the landscape waiting for the snapping shut of its seams and welding of its vertices, the sturdy long bone the only horizontal long bone the marrowless and solid long bone the most highest fracturing frequency long bone, the body is allowing itself graceful sacrificial expiration that the consciousness is free from rejoining from smothering from starvation from silencing–the folds in our apartment its energy is still vibrating, the largest room with a single bed in all of the ADA at approximately 18 square meters with an armchair a blue paintstripe around the room at chairrail elevation at the horizon of my bedriding, <> is buzzing filling the bright air, whispering to the nurse in shadows on the corridor wall Nadia is stepping out with our paperwork–the writ of exile my <> and my sentencing certificate is stating the parameters of my probationary oversight, frequency of in person visits and questioning by local agents–to the Cherdyn municipal ADAemone, the absent lining of the jacket, money for coffee in the welt pocket, am I seeing the moon spinning, me spinning rushing air through my jacket sleeves, no lock on the casement window shut and paint and paint caking entombingly, working at levering the window with my shoulder expanding gashes of fibrous paint along the seam of the window and frame, wind in the trees is constant is not idyllic, fragmentation of the red triangle, the confirmation of the radius exile is in the silence through the open window, in continuous looping I am in my hospital bed I am falling from the window slipping from Nadia’s grip my arms leaving the sleeves of the light jacket stitching is popping in intimate brittleness, at the window cracking open cool damp daymist in the empty room the voice of Anna’s skeleton birdclean and breezebleach in gently falling of slender beak bone and vestigial pelvis crumbling over stone fulcrums in softening scree sonnet, consonance is stealing my soul from my tongue, the only clicking is shoes, the only clicking shoes are boots, pistachio hospital anklesocks with poor elastic and traction soles are twisting against the taut bedclothes, my body is carrier of a pattern of movements that my mind is not carrying that is untethering this room from hinterland Daemone and from Ursus and from this celestial involution and it is clearly a hospital room–the type of cabinets, the fittings on the wall, the banality and distress of the wallcovering, the thick door ajar with a doorstop, the sensation of a long corridor, the siderails on my bed–but it is loose from circulatory peripatetic corridor enfillade and ensuite geography with introversion of vacuolation, running and not knowing the route, windows at the end of corridors are revealing fragments of suburban outcroppings and plastucco strewing adrift in nettles and asphalt and youthful foliage, light from the ceiling is rebounding is reuptaking into the soft folds of wallcovering texture is seeping into the bedclothes is meeting bounding surfaces and is never meeting a boundary of this single cosmologic chamber within an expanding perturbative vacuum, recalling something imminent, into the distance beyond where Nadia is able to see are mounting murderous pacts, rifle axes orbiting the point between the protuberant vertebrae at the base of my neck, perpetually fogshrouding, two men in dark blue coveralls with weary eyes are climbing down out of the ceiling through a flush accesspanel at the end of a long terminal corridor are carrying long rifles are wearing kepis approaching the room, each sharp reverberant noise is marking tempo in my uncontrollable wriggling in the bed, the soil is incapable of informing, a swollen glow is pervading everything is luminous in the sail of my bedclothes, clicking, is snapping, the intimation of letterforms in dryblood rust ink diaphanous coalescing on the coy paper backface of sheetrock through the gash in the wall, a nurse is passing, the nurse is rolling me onto my back, the top of Nadia’s head is returning below where she is weaving from the road edging the town and across the autopark is weaving a braid across her scalp stories below in the moony daylight, sweating through thin dress shirt, the shirt is cold, shivering convulsions, thin merciful blanket, the jacket hem is riding up my back burrowing down into the bed the collar is twisting around my neck the metal zipper on my throat, far less pistachio or stillwater enamel tile and far more wallcovering, Nadia taking my hand while she is sleeping so that I am waking her when I am stealing to the window, an off red auto is squealing up the aching–glandaceous, castaneous, spadiceous, brunneous, fuscous, phaeophyll, testaceous, fulvous, lurid, musteline–corridor is passing with a man in the open boot steading the aim of a longrifle against his knee, only the sky–beneath obscuration of the triangle decal, my peeling triangle decal–is visible from the bed, Nadia over me pulling her chair close to the bedside, I ending I am giving up all the cyclical notebooks of my fleshly voice into Nadia’s fortitude and the persistence of her warbling whisper, Nadia is sleeping in a vinyl chair with broad arms her hopeful face softening the divisive crease between the hill of her chin and her slightly pursing parting lips, the focus of my feet pushing off from the wall is loosing the jacket from Nadia’s hands — It is My Only Shirt — a too tall man in dark blue coveralls screeding the impression of my body from the soil heap below the window, whispering whimpering my innocence and longing into the soil, within my blood my bones are fracturing, a silhouette face under kepi bill his biceps agonizing in my armpits and hands clasping themselves across my chest pulsing a grating splintering moist distant mastication and the strong nurse rushing swinging my feet carrying me toward the wall to the open empty window the autodropoff porte cochere aching great luminous testaceous letters <> onto a gurney leaving the man in dark blue coveralls beyond the glass doors, I am not falling, diversion of my shallowing respiration into the pneumatic cavities of my long bones, bouyant in the damp air, the parabolic pencil of my falling, I am slumping in the open window folding over the vertexal sill throwing my leg over tilting axis of vernal white night my equilibrium is yielding to the moisture in the air and soft shoe Nadia is clutching the scruff of my thin jacket, falling is knowing that I am not being shot I will not die of fright but weak collision I am the weak, the ground drops away beyond the autopark and the lawn of nettles, falling half ballistically on radii equidistant from Nadia’s airclutching hands and my sweaty anklesock footsheen on the wall below the window, falling from Nadia–the directrix–the motherbird face blur cannot be certain of its precision, cutting my thin dressshirt the only shirt of this foreign place with surgical scissors my exile shirt from its right front hem up across my chest through the placket and around my left arm stopping at my left shoulder exposing my bird chest and the mercifully bloodless open wound, the jagged crosssection of solid bone, the lineage of my marrowlessness is following the Sauropod to the chicken to the human sinus, the panorama of dirtmounds is empty on the hospital grounds up to the edge of town–the leadingedge of asphalt–a figure in a black hiplength coat is receding behind a kiosk and a distantly passing auto fraying the horizon the stiff bill of a dark blue kepi fingertipping and disappearing in conjunction with the tip of a shovel and soil raining speaking through the foreign earth into my mound the almost singular but delicately distinct pattering of Nadia crying from the high open window, I am a sinner loving the shrill torquing stridence of the faraway bone drill is escalating and multiplying its chorus on reverberant stainless steel–that poor fluorescently luminous sister of the cicada nymph drilling its hole into the earth sleeping to the imaginal cicada drilling its song tymbally through the twilight through the open window alluring, speaking with the soil and with the grit tonguing chewingly probing its grain pushing aside a concavity for gasping without turning my head but whispering into the aeration that is not listening is transmitting deeper toward the heavier and the greater silence, down downward under underneathly, cursory irrigation of the wound, two men in dark blue coveralls are absconding with the banister from the stair outside the nurses’ station, pain in lieu of fear — Can You Not Simply Unbutton The Shirt — the city wind is blowing into the clammy sheets into my thin hair, <>, the sonority of the voice is full and round collecting the timbre of wood doors in metal frames and the concealment of morgue walltile and the sweatdamp hair of the grayly fearful and the dust shufflingly across the dull floor sonorously without my body upon my body from without falling on my skin and augering my earway, the strong nurse is not reacing to the voice, the sweat saturation smudging thumbgrease softsound of coarse fabric across the panicsheen of my soaky feverscent skin the inside of my arm softsounding against my ribs soaking through the tunic, an aloof face of gaunt avian tenderness in pale puzzlement in my reflection in the chrome napkin dispenser, falling is not but impacting is but resistance to the desire of flight, the minor surgery of setting my clavicle a performance in a bemusingly waking state tissuedull from the realization that I am a survivor of my attempt I am not realizing only conscious of the inherentness of my autonomous electricity inclusive of two surgeons with an electric bone reamer excavating for fasteners and vibration through my skeleton shivering the flesh away from my bones, loosening eyes alone in the static air of the hospital room leaden yet buoyant astigmatism of the interior fluid within its shell pooling and tugging toward the floor, on a path of broken bones, Nadia a face is spreading out with soft skin and thin hair occluding the ceiling persistently loomingly moon illusory with corona of fraught hair, the intravenous drip is nauseating molten lead ocean washing my eyes my esophagus my skin thickening dull plumbago sheen in the borrowing of fluorescence from the entire virid hospital, no threshold, lying in the soil broken, the strong nurse standing behind Nadia is braiding Nadia’s hair is not looking at her skillful fingers but both are looking at me and whispering, a silhouette in the hallway, heavy monolithic dim in the power to the hospital failing only soupy outsidelight dividing all surfaces into their own and special light through fibrous wallcovering lips into the gash on a vague red letter–U or a large lowercase n in the rotation of haphazard drywall installation–on raw brown paper, distant kerosene engine and stacatto strobe blindness and flat depth of fluorescence, the bare faces of two surgeons in silhouette against the articulation of a ghastly lamp are leaning in from each side not toward my face toward my chest and I am seeing into the symmetry of their nightside ears, from within a crater in the mattress sheets pleating up sheer the riverine smell is so far from the coast stagnating even in the sunless whiteness is pulling down into the concavity of heaviness and pain in my shoulder and bruising along my flank and ribs, <>, Nadia over me tucking the laceup hospital tunic into my slacks without lifing me–on the front waistband only–her tender hands keying over the delicate concentric lozenge repitition of the thin fabric and brushing down across my slacks blooming with soilstreaks dusting over the sheet brushing the soil into the cup of her hand, the crater in the bed an inflection of the controlray from the globular centerpoint to the center of black gravity that is continuously pulling me never ceasing falling with the paralysis of no context, only one position of my body is bearable–lying on the side oppositve the split clavicle–a nurse is rolling me onto my back and prodding the sutures and proud bone with a short wand — is This The Pain — the invisible fracturing of many bones in the swaddling of muscle and blood are going without treatment in light of the compound conspicuousness of my outcropping clavicle–my first bone, my last bone, my attitudinal horizon–is receiving a crude alloy splint and stapling of the wound pressing the cinching metal lips of the staplegun against the metal within my body bearing down against the fragile wound, Nadia picking soil granules from the sebaceous gluetrap of my scalp sliding the fragments possibly confusing with coagulating blood along the rails of my thin hair–the color of a dead tree–until it is free between her fingertips and holding it before my eyes to show me the prize of her extraction too close to focus I am gesturing to hold the scab or clod further from my eyes centering on it loose from me and flicking into the corner or dusting onto the topsheet, upsloping in the obliquity of the room to Nadia nodding high away in the chair, blood into soft soil, a weight inside my body and additional thickness to my blood of dehydration and panic is pulling me down against the firm mattress is leaden into my fingertips, I am alive, I am in exile, Nadia with a loosefray of braid is leaving on the concrete path with a handbill about a room in the private home of an immovable geezer, Nadia is standing over me and I am slipping down away from her,