We’re all Roommates in a House Called Madness
It takes an eclipse
to make the subtle and sublime visible,
to turn everything upside-down
for a single moment.
As the light diminishes
so too do fluorescent colors
taste like Platonic solids
and letters like flavored numbers.
As the corona appears
so too do thoughts become
increasingly transparent,
kneaded by hands and artifice
other than my own.
As the darkness comes
“Eureka” voices explode inside my head
like benthic storms
and vomit meaning-making phonemes
onto watercolor papers
and oil canvases.
After one clap of thunder
the waters course upwards and inwards
and after another they’ll reverse,
flowing downwards and outwards again.
I watch from a safe distance,
hands and legs cuffed as to resist
disturbing the natural flow.
With the stars afloat
the Muse gently sews my self
into fluffy pillows, happy endings
and to bean stalks sprouting
up into choose-your-own adventure worlds
but when they’re gone
her hot-tempered regress
rips me from the embroidery
and I’m left dangling from the
silvery-white clouds by a few threads–
cast down like a purpled misfit
that does not belong.
How does one escape
the ups and downs,
the ins and outs,
the back and forth
which steered my parents here
and illumines the way for my children?
On my way home
I stumble over a burning stone,
remembering ourselves
trapped within the four corners
of this black-and-white prison
tied up with maudlin blues.
Perhaps the only thing real
in the light of this day,
freer than a windswept pharos
with its fatalistic warnings,
is the painful struggle to choose.
