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The Mind is an Inscrutable Ocean
by Alexandra Piccioni The mind is an inscrutable ocean Populated by creatures lurking deep Some with triumphant, shimmering scales Others are hideous, blood on their teeth The waves are slippery, shadows on ice Bowing and scraping, magician’s prestige And the truth? is harsh and heavy sediment Layered under the marvelous deep Gray character filters through the water A game of reflections, inspections, dissections A therapist’s pen will plunge and record Each lovely, quiet, carnivorous specimen Like the metaphorical elephant Each blind man knows only what he can touch Smooth and cylindrical, rough and expansive The ocean is dark; no light can survive it No justification, no firm explanation, Never complete understanding gleaned We each carry inscrutable oceans Dense, opaque basins in our heads Yet we stand as though on the grimy sand Creatures under the bursts of starlight Wondering what lies within Charcoal Armories Wear me, wear me, spare me the smearing from nights with the charcoal we sketched those old guns. War had begun. In the museum, we touched, sparked like powder and traced those wax figures, and sketched those old guns. Eroding each other Wear me, I said Wear me and smear me, combust me, entrust me, your comrade in arms. I knew sketches fade to faint, cryptic markings, uniform cuneiform, trace of a ghost. Heedless I drained you, waned you to wax, thus painted perfection eluded us both. Your coward’s retreat submerged me in charcoal they call it my shame, my smearing, my mark, so be it, I prayed now laden with arms. Migraines The cut light that blares through the Redwood trees is deafening To a child with headaches Like glare from dry snow Send me to bed Flat, foggy Carmel There is peace There is the peace like ravens perching like manors on moors Before, light gnashed at me through a prism And spun into ribbons of ballerinas So I seized my head and shouted, PLEASE! Send me to dark, to silence, to bed…. the darkness eases me now It whispers, “hush, weary Daughter of Snow Daughter of Redwoods, Daughter of Light,” a Father to soothe me I think of my Father in foggy Carmel a Shade by the sea with coin-less eyes and I wonder, how will he pay his fee? |
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