Surveillance
Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2016 12:04 pm
Every nurse had a favourite kind of patient
and mine was neurotic middle-aged women,
who needed no prompting to pour out their problems
of drink and drugs and dead-eyed marriage.
What I most dreaded were the eggheads, the boffins
engaged in research on behalf of the government;
cloaked in secrecy, imagined to be
the listeners in, the state’s ears and eyes,
whose gig was about to be privatised
and re-branded with a name
that began and ended with a Q.
That’s what outsourcing can do for you.
There was always one to take up a bed,
sometimes they’d overlap, beat a path to our door
with anxiety states, panic attacks, a prelude
to meltdown and cataract, couldn’t look
at you straight, always minding their back,
such a weight on their shoulders they yearned
to unpack, then they’d pull down shutters
and cite the Official Secrets Act.
It was always like that, typical was Bruce,
stressed he might lose the job that he hated
and the consequent financial crisis;
locked out of the marriage bed, a child
diagnosed with Asperger’s and the noise
of torture from the upstairs flat, a piano’s drone,
the screech of a cat, a popping balloon
which hunted him down from room to room.
His redacted face would glisten with sweat
and grow lichen-dark; an ear would cock
and tune itself in to the boos and hisses
emanating from lights and electric switches.
At work he’d crawl into hiding places,
beneath a desk or bench, around a toilet seat,
then curl into a foetal state, unmeasured
and untargeted, no more accountable than an ape.
Bruce never saw the funny side
that those entrusted with state security
couldn’t manage to locate their own employee.
No sense of humour, no joie de vivre,
and none of them ever spoke to each other,
just a glance, a nod as they queued for meds
and they always kept their heads bowed down
before the camera at the top of the stairs.
If we happened to catch them unawares,
they’d be writing down stuff and none of us
liked to look what was written,
we imagined that it was just a symptom
of an obsessive compulsive disorder.
We should’ve known better.
I only put two and two together
when a manager from the local Trust
presented us with a lengthy report
which stated that we weren’t robust enough;
an inefficient waste of resources,
and in the current climate, blah, blah, market forces,
our existence could no longer be supported.
Our caseloads and our premises
would be taken by the Home Treatment team.
Then I recalled, for the first time in ever so long,
the boffins had all recovered and gone.
When Home Treatment prepared to pay them visits
they found the addresses they’d given fictitious.
and mine was neurotic middle-aged women,
who needed no prompting to pour out their problems
of drink and drugs and dead-eyed marriage.
What I most dreaded were the eggheads, the boffins
engaged in research on behalf of the government;
cloaked in secrecy, imagined to be
the listeners in, the state’s ears and eyes,
whose gig was about to be privatised
and re-branded with a name
that began and ended with a Q.
That’s what outsourcing can do for you.
There was always one to take up a bed,
sometimes they’d overlap, beat a path to our door
with anxiety states, panic attacks, a prelude
to meltdown and cataract, couldn’t look
at you straight, always minding their back,
such a weight on their shoulders they yearned
to unpack, then they’d pull down shutters
and cite the Official Secrets Act.
It was always like that, typical was Bruce,
stressed he might lose the job that he hated
and the consequent financial crisis;
locked out of the marriage bed, a child
diagnosed with Asperger’s and the noise
of torture from the upstairs flat, a piano’s drone,
the screech of a cat, a popping balloon
which hunted him down from room to room.
His redacted face would glisten with sweat
and grow lichen-dark; an ear would cock
and tune itself in to the boos and hisses
emanating from lights and electric switches.
At work he’d crawl into hiding places,
beneath a desk or bench, around a toilet seat,
then curl into a foetal state, unmeasured
and untargeted, no more accountable than an ape.
Bruce never saw the funny side
that those entrusted with state security
couldn’t manage to locate their own employee.
No sense of humour, no joie de vivre,
and none of them ever spoke to each other,
just a glance, a nod as they queued for meds
and they always kept their heads bowed down
before the camera at the top of the stairs.
If we happened to catch them unawares,
they’d be writing down stuff and none of us
liked to look what was written,
we imagined that it was just a symptom
of an obsessive compulsive disorder.
We should’ve known better.
I only put two and two together
when a manager from the local Trust
presented us with a lengthy report
which stated that we weren’t robust enough;
an inefficient waste of resources,
and in the current climate, blah, blah, market forces,
our existence could no longer be supported.
Our caseloads and our premises
would be taken by the Home Treatment team.
Then I recalled, for the first time in ever so long,
the boffins had all recovered and gone.
When Home Treatment prepared to pay them visits
they found the addresses they’d given fictitious.
