The Walls Are All Mirrors

Fish in bright and weary colors

trapped in glass

drift in scheduled silence

feeding on each other.

The Walls are all Mirrors

We are voyagers, discoverers

of the not-known,

the unrecorded;

we have no map;

possibly we will reach haven,

heaven.

From down the hall she stares at me,

vacant eyes and violent face falling down towards modesty,

away from memory.

The walls are all mirrors here,

I am Hamlet in an O’Neill play;

family is everything.

Mother floats towards me from a mirror

motionless as a specter and silent

nothing moves from her but reflected blue waves

she waves and floats in her ocean,

She is a woman, and a Cancer

and at home most when drowning.

When I lived on the sand I burnt my feet

in the white hot gaze of the sun

mother or father would call from the shoreline

shouting Hold on tight! to anyone but me,

they would drown themselves in effigy

waiting for the moments to come.

Too pure for them all,

I burnt into the sand,

rising from myself into the sky.

I drift down the mirrored halls in white

drawing stares wherever I look

vile glances, veiled glances

glances full of sorrow or of woe,

confused and determined and tired,

always so tired.

The telephone has been ringing for some time now,

on one end I hear the static of the human voice

which should be saying

I was whirled and tossed into delicious dancing

just by hearing your precious voice

but there is only a phonetic drone

strung together in random patterns;

the receiver hangs from the gallows of the nightstand

as I lie crucified on my bed

I condense into clouds

and rain in resurrection,

going on beyond suicide

into

the static drone is now a steady wail

the receiver is no longer dead but screams in agony

as if its hanging were a torture.

I replace the receiver to strangle the voice

but it continues and in these walls someone is screaming

and tearing their hair like

blue and white lights from a blown Christmas bulb

and a radio in my mind just out of station

the glass across my arms like a river

stained by viscous fluids

pumped  by hand or machine,

coursing,

coursing.

The river ran past our house to the skies,

an escalator to infinity,

a river of Babel

and I was pulled free a moment too early,

I knew what lay at the mouth.

We moved that same day,

a house in the suburbs with red Kool-aid and He Men,

1984 and my family was Big Brother,

watching every toy, every boy and girl

calling, calling, every hour that same drone,

static meaninglessness.

Drifting past apathy into mirrors

where I stare in anger

white mirrors reflecting words, light

I alight on a branch flitting like a bird,

I am a swallow, raped and silent

watching with terror for an in-law,

someone who comes as a friend,

the state is my spouse, doctors its children,

jealous of everything I have,

sweating in white and mirrored halls to stab me once again

to bring on the opiate dreams of fevers, of terrors

I run only to become weary

She is staring at me again,

silver and white in the mirror

alone she is approached by smiling and familiar faces;

family is everything.