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 prevails. 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
f l o o o o o w i n g
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.