The Asylum and the Aviary

Is this how it feels to be inside your head?

A song of hopeful strings

To drown out the screaming?

Screaming like you’re about to be swallowed

By the voices.

Like the cosmos that put you together left you

Abandoned,

Divorced your soul and pulled you by your sinews

to opposite ends of the

Universe.

Is your mind an asylum?

With rusty hinges and shattered glass

Are your walls stained with memories

Or are they long since painted?

Do the ghosts still wander these halls?

Or do they lie vacant?

Do the shadows around the corner

Pull at your collar

Demanding to be seen?

To be heard?

What would happen

If you offered an ear to listen?

Are your courtyards overgrown with rosemary

To hide the hollow bones?

Their stalks outstretched,

Concealing your frame.

Pray!

Are you warmed by their embrace?

Do the leaves cleanse your tears

And paint promises on your skin?

For the bones fed the soil and

Gave them life most forgiving.

It is only just they return

the favor.

Favors fulfilled by your groundskeeper-

Indebted to Mother Earth

And Father Time.

Funny how in such a harrowed place

So often demonized

You seem very much at peace.

Your mind is not a tenant, but a room.

A broom closet and

An aviary-

Tell me, what is your secret?

What is your secret?

What conjure?

What tincture?

What summoning

Or body of sacrifice did you consecrate

that lets you walk so calmly

And turned this soil into hallowed ground?