For many years now, I have concluded my notes on a patient’s session by
composing a poem. Sometimes, the poem is a fragment of the patient’s
actual words. Sometimes, the poem distills a much longer narrative into
its elemental meaning. Other times, the poem is composed of words that
the patient never actually spoke, but that I imagine she wanted to
speak were her internal censor not burying feelings beneath thick
layers of emotional batting.
The Percocet
It feels so good
It feels so good
It feels so good
The Percocet
It feels so good
How will I ever stop it?
At Brown, I studied with two poets, Edwin Honig and James Schevill.They regularly excited me to the exquisite and infinite possibilities of literature. After graduating, I focused on becoming a poet and musician and was as taken aback as anyone when my professional peregrinations resulted in my becoming a psychologist. I took just one undergraduate psychology course at Brown.
But it should not be surprising that psychotherapy patients summon the
language of poetry.The psychotherapist and the poet feel compelled to
listen to their own inchoate murmurings and those of others with a
sensitivity uncalled for in the everyday world. This is how they call
forth their healing powers. They must be hospitable to what is most
disturbing, most desperate, and most arresting about the human
condition.
NEW YEAR'S EVE
Our son died back in August
On New Year’s Eve
We got call after call
From friends and family
Wishing us a good year
Wishing us a better year
Fuck ’em all, and their good wishes
Not one of them was my son
When I first began conceiving these poems, I believed I was playing a passive role, one akin to a ventriloquist’s dummy, channeling and articulating the patient’s truest, purest voice, the one that yearns to be spoken and heard. But over time the process began to seem more complicated, somewhat more mysterious and elusive, and not quite so easy to pin down.
Today, the voices of professors Honig and Schevill continue to
reverberate in my mind and soul, and it is without question the direct
result of their inspiration that, decades later, I still listen for the
poetry that nests, sometimes surreptitiously, in the province of my
patients’ tender, tumbling narratives.
SONG
I dreamt I awoke
To a beautiful song
That I could not sing
It went,
Where am I going?
How will I get there?
Brad Sachs lives and works in Columbia, Maryland. Reach him at www.drbradsachs.com
Illustration by Daniel Zender
