Blundelhöffer Syndrome

Some thoughts jump out complete when hatched –

like Blundelhöffer the Unmatched, that great

magician who, when he convinced a psychiatric

hospital to take him on as a physician quickly

donned his turquoise satin cape and waved

his wand with legendary grace to prod a falling

bloom of floral showers all throughout the place.

As petals dropped, as if from some unseen

divinity’s celestial towers, suddenly not only was

each patient’s room supplied with flowers, but

every patient had been lent through their enticing

scent precise equivalents of brilliant Blundelhöffer’s

powers! What feats this meant! What lovely havoc

this would wreak! Choked with strange emotions

heretofore unknown to them, from this point on

no one transformed by Blundelhöffer’s wand

could speak. Miraculous alacrity! Happy silence!

Thoughts quick to carry out a mission with which

you’d not known you had endowed them, rarely

disappoint. But other thoughts – here prematurely,

underdone and embryonic – will undertake to put

you out of joint, cause psychic violence. Three such

lurking interlopers came to me last night: turned

the fragile February moonlight into murk; two

grumbled in a snit, the third looked backward out

a window as if he had never heard of, seen nor

understood the function of it. Proto-notions

flaking off them left thick tracks across the floor.

Their effects? I can’t! – I can’t say more.

Blundelhöffer’s hospital’s attendants came today

to take my sorry self away. Careful of the thoughts

you’ve picked. They frequently afflict.

.