The Mind Healer Asks About My Dreams

My drugged gray matter grips my hand,

commands me to understand.

Disjointed murmurs spill from my lips,

like a paint can pouring

it's oily tincture.

**

There is a courtyard drenched in olive hues,

before my childhood manor stands,

no gentle breeze whispered here, only pleas.

**

Howling cries from claw-like wooded fingers reach

towards a sickly foggy sky.

Beseeching to be saved from this numbing world.

**

A rhythm of skittering

across the light sage roof,

a tinny clang rings out,

a mad lichen-draped griffin

standing ready to unfurl.

**

Why is he there? The shadow interpreter coaxed.

To protect his charges

or to keep guard

of this scarred yard,

**

The answer is as shadowed

as the long dark hall.

**

Yet, I do see me.

I am the matron in heart's red,

I turn my head,

To the dead,

On tiptoes, sinking into

a carpet of

moist mossy weeds.

**

There are rustles of a father and children,

Playing in the background,

Unraveling the death like whining,

A haunting tease of what never was.

**

It now plays like a record

in this courtyard of the dead,

I want to direct my mini-horses

To cease that untouchable vision before me.

**

My fountain of tears

has frozen into ghostly tree branches.

There is no wanting of the untenable quest;

it should be smudged out.

**

Bells of young girls

swirl and twirl,

Chanting,

"free by degree, free by degree,

don't you agree, don't you agree?"

**

I shake my angel-shaped veiled head,

With a twitch of my whiskers,

And a shivering soft purr,

"I'd rather be in bed than dead,

instead,

the veil for sands

has sealed my eyes shut for good,

and now has led me to this ghostly spread."

Image source: https://www.studiointernational.com/leonora-carrington-the-celtic-surrealist

This was written in a Ekphrastic class about surrealist female artist.