Poems from"...The Back Bay to the Back Ward..."

Cigarette on Psychiatric Ward



“Can I have a light?”

What was that sudden spark in her eyes?
that flame
from cloudy, dormant pupils,
when I lit her cigarette?

The sudden driving ambition
to inhale,
the sunken chest’s almost boastful expansion.
The smoke filling the yawning cavity.
A woman of substance...
until she exhaled.

©1998, Douglas Holder



On the Ward: An Old Harvard Man



And there you were
dumbfounded, walking the ward--
after spraying John Harvard’s statue
a crimson red
The Japanese tourist
snapping your picture
as if you were part of the attraction.

Carted away from the scene
a yearly performance
by a fifty-year-old
sweating
in a soiled tweed jacket
smiling sheepishly
with the rotting stumps of teeth
an omen of your insides.
Still
demanding an explanation
for your expulsion
from these, effete ivied walls
waiting to register in the Spring
as your skin literally
crawls.

---Doug Holder



Lost Girl on the Psychiatric Ward

Standing in the middle of the ward
a thin scrim of sweat
glistens on her nascent mustache
apologizing to the thin air
her hands on her hips--
disgust for the phantoms.

She is on guard
for the vulpine machinations
of the silent, incessant voices
chattering in her cortex
a murderous Greek Chorus
slapping at the hollows
of her skull.


Grabbing A Young Attendant

Did she think she could grab him,
pull the flushed cheeks to her breasts
run her hands through his tight golden curls
and demand the time back/

We had to pry her from him
she luxuriated in his unadulterated scent
the firm, confident shake
of a straight, unbeaten body.

What did she have left but to scream
above the muffle of medication
for a refund of years.

To be dragged away,
from what she remembers was once in reach,
for him to smile
in boyish incomprehension.