The Mri

THE MRI October 17, 2003, circa 6:50am while blow-drying, my right arm collapsed, flopped to my side, dangling like a used penis. The CNS (Central Nervous System) failed to effect commands to the arm. Paralysis. Paralysis remained for 3hrs. CNS eventually regained majority control within a few hours; residual control returned over days. It was a Transient Ischemic Attack. A blood clot grid-locked in the brain, asphyxiated a nerve that sensates the right arm. The following functions failed: Signature Holding coins, soap bars Masturbation Turning door knobs Opening jars Keyboarding & mousing Buttoning a shirt Nose-picking Prostate assessing Tying a knot The device is a huge, powerful magnet. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Metal objects must be removed. People with metal pins in their body are questioned -- some can never go into the machine, nor near the machine. It is in a room within a larger room segregated to a small section of the hospital. I am asked if I have ever been a welder, or otherwise worked in a job whereby a small bit of metal could have been embedded in the eye, which could be ripped out of its jellied bed by the magnet. Pacemakers are forbidden. So I am in a thin cotton gown, laid on my back onto a narrow table. A prop is inserted under my knees. As I lay there I begin to feel a surge of anxiety. Plugs are inserted into my ears. Props are placed on either side of my head -- immobilizing it. I am positioned to a cross-haired bull's eye on my forehead. Anxiety rises. A cage is pulled down over my head. I can't swallow. My throat is dead dry -- anxiety pevails. I talk about it with one of the two technicians. I ask for water. She brings some. I lay there immobile; take two sips, take a deep breath and say "OK". The tray on which I lay slowly smoothly inserts me into the machine, into a featureless chamber. There is breathing space only. Panic is suppressed. My throat remains moist. I continue to swallow. Good. A woman's disembodied voice advises that a session will begin for a minute's duration. A thumping sound begins. There are no bodily sensations, just the thumping. The longest minute passes. The disembodied voice said I did good. It will be 3 or 4 more minutes before the next session begins. Then the voice says the next session will be 4 or 5 minutes duration. The tray nudges my body a few centimetres, then a new noise begins, and begins and begins and goes on goes on goes on goes on & on & on... There is a small mirror I can look into to see the two female technicians behind glass in another room fondling dials. More long minutes pass. A voice says another session of two minutes will begin. And a third unique pounding noise begins. This was endured. Endured. More long minutes pass. A voice announces another session 4 minutes long is about to commence. There were 4 beats of one pounding followed by 4 beats of a different level of pounding and so it’s repeated over and over again and again. At the end of the session, I twitched. I was seconds from pressing the panic button. I felt suffocated. The tray moved. I was withdrawn from the machine. I sat on the table for a few moments to regain my composure. My forehead was soaked. My thighs, which had been clenched together, were sweatwet. I got off the table and took more moments to look into the chamber where my body had been. I was rattled. My hands trembled, even as I civied-up to go home. I was rattled. That is the literal description. ... This is the poetic description:

I guarantee it in writing, sign my name, I, Clarence Wallace Keeler, in the 56th year of diminishing virility, hereby declare to be metal-free neither microchip nor nano-entity lurk subcutaneous; I am 100% human male, vulnerable to everything. Laid out on a tray I am inserted head-first and dry-throat anxious into the magnetic cylinder head-first up a techno logical vagina a bloodless lustless vagina I am a dildo for diagnosis by a bland gland Don't even dream of moving your eyeballs, they will blur the imaging. I'm instructed to be still to play dead to lay like an autopsy cadaver inside a bloodless vagina and comes the thrusting noise the rhythmic pounding pulse imaging my brain in molecular slices digitizing it into a multi-binary portrait Magnets compellingly attractive magnets line the bloodless vagina compellingly attractive as the bloody real illogical thing So I am inserted into the machine with the smooth grace of a dismissive gesture, yet its power to picture my brain excludes the weeping warm vaginas of the women I have known -for them the secretions of software that initiate poetry programs. The vagina of modern diagnostics penetrated my head's hardware cross-hairing a pixel of enormous consequence in a troublesome artery

ensuring the blood continues flooooowing into my imagination as I lay there immobile as a corpse, the scrapbook of my lovers paging in my head their vulvelour vaginas silking me milking me remains impenetrable to the mega-might of robo-cunt claustrophobia And I lay inside it stiff as a stiff, imaging the moist remains of my love life tent-poling the thin sheet covering me with a hard-on as insouciant as a middle finger salute.