On the off-beat

The False Decree --an open verse ramble by John R. Evanetski

“I see this old man, he’s watching life pass,
hoping to squeeze a smile out of his ass”

Prolog: It was April 1994, I recall, when I agreed to drive Uncle Max home from his most recent 120 day “visit” at the State of Washington Treatment Center for Behavioral Disorders, near Seattle. I didn’t mind. To me, he was neither dangerous, nor crazy. He did exaggerate a hell of a lot, I thought.
“I’m a victim, sonny. Look at them! There the ones who are sick,” Max protested, pointing to the doctors and staff, leaving the Center for the day, white lab coats slung over arm or shoulder, talking and laughing.
“They look happy Max;” I said. At that, Max scowled a scornful grin through those chapped lips and tobacco-stained teeth, turned his aged face my way and said.
“Let me tell ’ya what the hell they do to ya’ in there, sonny.. Then ya’ be laughin’ out yer’ ass.“ Max snorted.

It didn’t take much to get Max going. So, he starts like this:

….it was time for more coffee. I'm not sure where the day would take me, probably to submit to another involuntary commitment at the local brain-drainer. Yea, it went down just like before..….Ya’ know, I’m getting that “vu j’ia de” feeling all over again……ready…….remember….er last time… when, I was hallucin….all…. strapped on that gurney like a sack of sh…….then they shoved that tub up my….

I was forced to admit to a stress-driven fit,
a flawed mental processes mistakenly identified,
but-quickly justified by Dr. HSN Habib
Aribarhubarb, MD, one of those questionably-educated,
not-professionally-dedicated, definitely-under motivated,
Middle Eastern mind-bending brain-drainers who,
with his scrawled John Hancock sealed my fate
for the next three-mounts to a state-run, no-money-for-fun
stalag for a test-and-rest, did he Habib-Arib, in a move
like a Turkish whirling-dervish, spin-around and beat-feet,
fast-and-neat to a small rurally-rustic north woods backwater
cow-town, to take post at an average-pay cash booty for
a no-sweat cakewalk diagnostic duty, thereby violating a
previous sworn oath to restore educational loan amounts
granted him from government accounts by willingly giving
his medical best to heal their sores, open their clogged pores,
and unlock the doors to a life of rewarding chores for the
inner-city nervous, whom confined through no fault of their
own inhabited those over-populated spaces owned by
over-copulated foreign races packed into tenements amid
the feted slums, the diseased bums, the hardened criminal
scums, and the post-leaning lot of street-walking dumb-dumbs,
to prove Habib did falsely decree, without shame. What a bastard….

“Max, we’re home,” I breath with a sigh. “Thanks a lot, sonny” Max replies in sincerity, like always. He tips his hat, turns his backside full my way, and “Did ya’ get a good laugh out of that, sonny. See, ya’ next time around“ Max smiles. I‘m sure I will.

Epilog: Uncle Max was like a father to Sonny. Without fail he was only one in the family to offer his emotionally trouble nephew a ride home form Sonny’s various commitments for multiple-personality disorder at the State of Washington Treatment….”