there is that fragility, fetal
alcohol, father and mother wasted
empties stacked up for target practice
some odd curve ball to DNA, cracked codes
the bones bigger, eyes wide
cleft smile sometimes
the lucidity of the gifted
young child wanting silence
screams as if vampire genes
seek necromancy
dervish in the brain
these men savants escaped
the nest of cuckoos
Fairview shut down with Inquisition
lore, cages, beatings, children of waifs
incorrigible women, gagged, those prompted
by convictions, or defiance
riotous freedom, people netted
up, Shanghaied into this den
of ill repute, scraggly psychiatry
the abusive, learned men and women
shuttered from humanity
things like Down syndrome,
FAS, mild retardation, defiance,
pica, fragile x, the sometimes
discarded special ones, mommy
and daddy needing a break
in that place in Oregon
frozen heart careerists
the bureaucracy of bedlam
these fraternity and sorority
graduates, like Mengele
the Eichmann of little men
women who collected data
sprayed boys with power hoses
pushed pills in revolutionary mouths
some twist of birth fate
CP, the oxygen cut at birth
the canal dark, some whetted
creativity limited only by
physical pushing, locomotion
these put in wards, chicken wire
embedded sunrises, early to bed
early to rise, lobotomies when
unanswerable, recklessly reticent
the fate held by men and women
starched collars, brains siloed
some rotting inside, a gene meant
for punishment, experimentation
while souls languish
locked down, hosed off, veins bulging
the weight of disgust from fellow
species the worst of the drugs
how do we see guys like Clint Eastwood
who told adults with disabilities
Make My Day, screw all of that ADA
for my Carmel castle
is there some screw loose in half
of humanity, shunning their own
inevitability, or the ones etched
in parents, or siblings
they still enjoy the lock and key
minds flooded with electrical blue
twisted shocks, they are the mad ones
leaders at church, the middle class
suburbanite, clean nails, some
deviant drink, dream, locked away
in morose madness as SANE
in the eyes of the republic
but babbling is secret language
shaman sequences
gifts tied to birds, the sequence
of time lifting quantum fields
this alleyway into folding
universes where the SANE are
left as planetary dust
these gifted ones, locked up
by us collectively, they, the gods
of universes
only they see heavens, only they
can speak of planets in spectrums
unimaginable, only they
will rise to be alive
risen by their minds
we call insane.
**********************
Fairview, Oregon — Institutional Madness
Photos of the state’s “insane” facility ***
Fairview — ** A Film
Forced sterilizations! **
Ken Kesey: NYT obit:
As Mr. Kesey explained, his discovery of Chief Broom, despite not knowing anything about American Indians, gave him a character from whose point of view he could depict a schizophrenic state of mind and at the same time describe objectively the battle of wills between two other key characters, the new inmate Randle Patrick McMurphy, who undertook to fight the system, and the tyrannical Big Nurse, Miss Ratched, who ended up lobotomizing McMurphy. Chief Broom’s unstable mental state and Mr. Kesey’s imagining of it, presumably with the help of hallucinogenic drugs, also allowed the author to elevate the hospital into what he saw as a metaphor of repressive America, which Chief Broom called the Combine.
Mr. Kesey would ”write like mad under the drugs,” as Mr. Wolfe put it, and then cut what he saw was ”junk” after he came down.
”Cuckoo’s Nest” was published by Viking Press in early 1962 to enthusiastic reviews. Time magazine call it ”a roar of protest against middlebrow society’s Rules and the invisible Rulers who enforce them.” Stage and screen rights were acquired by the actor Kirk Douglas, who the following year returned to Broadway after a long absence to play McMurphy in an adaptation by Dale Wasserman that ran for 82 performances at the Cort Theater during the 1963-64 season. The play was revived professionally in slightly different form in 1970, with William Devane playing the part of McMurphy, and again in 2001, with Gary Sinise in the part.
Even more successful was the film version, which was released in 1975 and the following year won five Oscars, for best picture; best director, Milos Forman; best actor, Jack Nicholson as McMurphy; best actress, Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched; and best screen adaptation, Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman.
But Mr. Kesey was not happy with the production. He disapproved of the script, thought Mr. Nicholson wrong for the part of McMurphy and believed that the producers, Michael Douglas and Saul Zaentz, had not lived up to the handshake deal he insisted he had made with them. He sued them for 5 percent of the movie’s gross and $800,000 in punitive damages and eventually agreed on a settlement. But he still refused to watch the film.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Disability History Week–**
http://www.mentalhealthportland.org/?tag=fairview-training-center