Hat Stand
An oak seed was planted by my ancestors,
Pulled from the earth by mother nature,
Mowed down by my grand father,
And brought by my Dad for my Mum to carve
Into a hat stand with 3 legs, 3 brain stems
And one spine.
Each night, I remove my cap
(My thinking cap)
And rest it on one of the oak brain-stems
Next to the others that people,
Soon to be patients,
Have given me
In exchange for my time.
The spine is ash and it is here that my thoughts collect.
My thoughts are ash and are my hats’ cracked vertebrae.
The back bone is designed with a desire for pressure;
Pressure that would buckle other structures,
But my Mum carved this
So it bends.
My first free hat came from a fellow,
I forget his name, but remember his distain
For any drink in a bottle
with no percentage on the label.
His sombrero unbalanced my hat stand at first.
I didn’t notice until I raised a hand coated in salt
Holding a lime and tequila for my thirst
From here, I see him searching for why
His wife walked out with a guy
From the bar he was used to drinking in.
He found the answer in a bottle of Jose Cuervo
But not until he had upturned every inch of the living room
And the children in their bedrooms.
That’s why tequila isn’t as bitter as the lime.
The third hat of mine, a trilby, wasn’t handed but landed
With pin point precision having cleared the consulting room
From the arm of a suave man in a pinstripe suit.
Name: Classified
Occupation: Classified
You could say he worked for the service of each majesty in the land
And I was astounded at his dedication to getting around.
Suffice to say, when his pants landed round his ankles
There was proof, both in the swell and smell,
That this man had been servicing Pussy Galore.
Now, whenever I have chance to find my hand placed
On a Money Penny my thinking cap reminds me of that gent’s battered trilby.
Far from inspiring, he frightens me with how tertiary syphilis can light up the brain with meningitis, general paresis, tabesdorsalis, dementia and seizure leading to coma and death.
These are the symptoms he keeps under his hat.
These are the sights blinding my thinking cap.
These are the hats my hat stand stands there to bear.
Whatever professor asked me 5 years ago
Why I decided to be a doctor;
The interviewer who begged for the reply
“Because I want to help people”
If he’d asked me why I wanted to be a medical student
I’d have said “to learn how to help people”.
Not this.
Not this…
Thing
This medicine
Whatever this thing is
We’re dishing out
Should be equal
Or different
Or better
Because with each year I’m spending gathering hats
I’m forgetting what it is to be a person,
To bend backwards
Making strangers patients and keeping patients strangers
Accepting their gifts, but not giving too much
Keeping my thinking cap on my head
And trying to adjust that of others.
A shoe box sits beside my hatstand’s three strong legs
Because it’s heavier than lead on the hat pegs.
Having been a space ship from which galaxies scatter;
Having been shelter, of canvas, for happy campers
Hiding from the bears in the forest;
Having been a racing car screeching the streets of Monaco
Outstripping the rest;
Having been a sled, a snail shell, a shield, a castle;
Having been all these things,
This box is no toy
But a promise
To a boy
Of life outside a ward.
Of life worth getting better for.
Of life worth enduring this torment.
I promised a brave little boy
An astronaut’s helmet
When he came out of his operation.
It lies,still, waiting at the foot of my hat stand
In it’s last imagined incarnation,
Whilst he lies in a coffin
An age plus 6 feet away
From the stars he played at scattering.
An oak seed was planted by my ancestors,
Pulled from the earth by mother nature,
Mowed down by my grand father,
And brought by my Dad for my Mum to carve
Into a hat stand with 3 legs, 3 brain stems
And one spine.
A spine designed to withstand great pressure
My hat stands spine’s there
To bear the adults self-afflictions
But I’m tripping
Over this shoe box.