Tales From The White Room (Poetry)

Awaking in this too-white cubist dream
thoughts bounce along arrowed light
from wall to wall reflected back
and forth and back and forth
unsure which way to fly
they fail to find true North
locate the who in who I am
the inner voice who calls my name
is somewhere else — out there alone
searching for our missing history.

The window is too high — too small
and mean for morning to squeeze anything
but a token brightness in
so sun can’t quite reach me except
for the stray exploring finger laid against
an arctic ceiling so divorced
from sense or feeling it remains aloof
unsympathetic — the lid that clamps
tight down on vision’s need to see
alternative realities to being diagnosed as
                                vaguely sane.

This is a square unflinching room
dumb with all its many agonies
stacked in layers while the shadows move
to smother out each hint of bright
recall that visits — stirs the brain
frail associations fade again — die their death
that creeps so slow — a frozen cruelty
kind as snow — this igloo claiming kill or cure
for ghosts who haunt along with me
clinging to madness desperately.