MIND ECHOES


It is dark inside, within a single cube of liquid living onyx, in there. Deeper still, look through the eyes into the depth, further, through the maddening mud of primial ooze, past the wall of rem, into the veil of secrets. There, into the center cut, this place that is a hypnotic tunnel of twisted shapes, into a coal matrix of unimaginable terror, joy, pathos and final, as the black chameleon of odd mazes and forms and faces. It is . . ."The Mind."

It is dark inside. Pad in hand she listens, terrified, exuberant and confused. Sure of her own genius, yet lost, no road maps here. No easy journey reaching into the core shadows and tring to grab onto an enigma, clutching the air, so lost of something that can neither be touched, seen, not loved. Unless a mad women, who knows tears of blood, grief, sorrow, her sisters and brothers, which within her turmoil, she sees, feels that she might comprehend. For help, or hell and damnation awaits her charges, which twitch through crazed and wild eyes in her direction for a simply glimpse of hope for her to just stop it. Make the black carousel of thought stop. Please they beg of her, and she does, sometimes, and her heart implodes when she fails.

It is dark inside, there, so very dark, the wraiths at times are in control. The inmates holding the keys to the asylum. Until who, until she, sitting across the table from them in her city penthouse cell, tapping a stiletto heel, and talks. A fearless goddess of unanswerable answers, she peers through the orbs of a seer. Or is she a charlatan peering into the world of pitch, of tar and flames and insanity, where open mind surgery with out a cut, a stitch, bloodless, is enacted from her cerebellum and creative mind and bravado, mixed within a whirlwind power and terror trip. Unless she fails, then there is blood everywhere, mostly from the tip of a flaming hand gun barrel and a self inflicted gunshot.

It is dark inside. Why? Why must the artist be held for ransom? Their creativity a spear driven between their frontal lobes? You want this passion, this sin, pay for it with every waking moment of your life. You need to place images on white parchment? Do it with your blood. You actually care and feel in a dehumanized planet? Then let passion tear and rip your nerves and heart from your cadaver within its careless way and then we will see who holds what cards. For the women that fixes me, calms insanity is an illusion and I have to believe she is what she promises. We, them, us. We must trust that we can make it late at night when every demon in hells prison breaks Hades apart and B and E's through our window panes holding razors to our brains, the ones she promised that she could fix.

It is dark inside, as I wield a knife she promised me was not there. . .Well it is and I believed, and my god, this women, this black technician actually chose to repair us, both of me. Lies whispered that she could reconstruct the dam and be there, as we create and roam within the unknown waters of our art, talent and dreams, fantasies and our feral driven passions that we do love.

It is dark inside. What gall, what eminence, what ego. Thank god for her bravery to think she can see us, the scrolls on the wall are evident as she delves into and assimilates out madness of the crayola world of the artist she call friends, patients and lovers. Brass Balls Baby Banging. I know she sees, she has to hear, someone must cry for us, weep and take the time to peel away the onion skin of agony that engulfs us that make us pretty. I am fragile. I am broken. I am human. And I am alive.

It is dark inside, her words as flames help me see, to be sane that way. For this I empty the chambers of my thirty-eight and laugh at those copper smiles leering back at me. I return to poems, paint and spirits and tender thoughts of love. My mind again. How fickle. How beautiful. How she holds it so tenderly within her swaddled wings, a white swan resting, for we drain her of her power. Do you feel her feathers? Her down? How she protects us. How for a moment, even I, even you, feels safe, and more, as the gold watch second hand moves as a pendulum now, "Sleep the metronome whispers, sleep my child, rest, laze in and within the protection of my power and when you wake in the morning you will be fine."