11-12-2018, 02:44 AM
Odysseus in a Mental Hospital
"Louise holds a handful of rain tempting you to defy it"
B. D.
On psychotropic drugs,
fat as Achilles' anger,
would P. even want me,
faithful as she
is, I am broken.
Circe and Calypso couldn't tame me,
maddened by their labors,
the breasted man in Hades saw
this life clearly than my
eyes and mind or Lyra tongue
could . . . Watch these movies.
We watch movies till bedtime,
and listen to tales of a cerebral prophet,
something like an oracle,
that through the mind of a daemon,
whose life and death are read written without words,
tells our lives are a cave
and blinded, like I blinded that poor fool,
only we see dreams splattered
like my companions' brains upon the wall,
that I were to think P. only a vision
still young—though I know she's true,
nor do these stories seduce me.
Some skinny dunce plays his music
to us from a tiny box, in claims
too to be visions.
What I could do to his box
and his head, I'm told to keep to myself.
But if I never come,
P.'s long faith be her vain,
then would I be as strong and faithless as her?
I am a master of my enemy,
the ocean, the rock hard waters of my walk;
they say, my long walk home.
These visions in sound, they wish to simple me.
Could they be mine? These Eastern wisdom
springing a Western trap?
In a place like this,
what can I know?
"Louise holds a handful of rain tempting you to defy it"
B. D.
On psychotropic drugs,
fat as Achilles' anger,
would P. even want me,
faithful as she
is, I am broken.
Circe and Calypso couldn't tame me,
maddened by their labors,
the breasted man in Hades saw
this life clearly than my
eyes and mind or Lyra tongue
could . . . Watch these movies.
We watch movies till bedtime,
and listen to tales of a cerebral prophet,
something like an oracle,
that through the mind of a daemon,
whose life and death are read written without words,
tells our lives are a cave
and blinded, like I blinded that poor fool,
only we see dreams splattered
like my companions' brains upon the wall,
that I were to think P. only a vision
still young—though I know she's true,
nor do these stories seduce me.
Some skinny dunce plays his music
to us from a tiny box, in claims
too to be visions.
What I could do to his box
and his head, I'm told to keep to myself.
But if I never come,
P.'s long faith be her vain,
then would I be as strong and faithless as her?
I am a master of my enemy,
the ocean, the rock hard waters of my walk;
they say, my long walk home.
These visions in sound, they wish to simple me.
Could they be mine? These Eastern wisdom
springing a Western trap?
In a place like this,
what can I know?