We’re all rommmates in a house called madness: Drawing and Poem

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.

 

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