Journal

Intangible distractions prevent me from grasping my slipping sanity.
Within walls painted white as bones I glare at the speckled ceiling wondering-
when they will loose me from this involuntary bondage.
The nurses’ white heels click loudly, echoing down the haunted, hallow hallway-
as they bring me the magic elixir that keeps the demon inside.

The doctor attends me every morning.
I blearily gaze at him through eyes still heavy with fitted sleep.
Pondering his significance within my realm of reality-
my mind becomes the White Dot 1in the chaos of totality.
Bits of Freud and Jung hammer out of his subconscious weaseling their way into mine.
I see his mouth moving, but no audible words ever escape his dry, cracked lips.
There are those that hear music and voices from heaven, but God’s ear-
is mute to my cry of an answer from the heavenly sky.

His sub-zero stethoscope shivers my flesh-
as I quiver under the threadbare bedspread-
trying to break through this lethal haze in my head.

Like an automaton I lick and groom my salted wound.
As I dress and tread with the undead.
Around the May pole of madness-
that portends my deathbed.
I try to block out those more demented than I.
In this snake pit I die, hiss, and writhe like the rest-
to twist myself further toward incessant blackness.

The straps bind as I grind my teeth,
and draw thick blood from far beneath-
the screams that they unsheathe.
They go unheard and are not mine-
for I am already among the confined.
I am drowning in briny, black water I cannot tread.
The creature between my teeth masks only death’s head.
When I drift off into another bout of dreamless sleep-
I receive the last stab of venom from the fangs of the beast, and plummet finitely into the deep.
It seeped from the sovereign, secret snake-
who covets my essence like a trifle keepsake.

I gaze out my frosted window at the blood-veined Scarlet Maple majestically framed by a grey, shadowy sky murky with autumn’s freezing rain.

Who am I to say when it’s time to die?

The earth fades in the distance as the leaves turn from blood to gold-

Devolving then from gold to dust.

Before my eyes-

they fall cyclical in their flight.

Weaving through the diaphanous air like Luna moths

swirling heaven bound through misted clouds towards the beckoning moon.