Hallways Within

A little madness promised...

These are not my hands,

This cog and lever

In a Da Vinci render,

Scrabbling for the last supper.

I am walking in someone else's dream,

Another face

And another face

Hidden in hands.

Oh, her head hangs

On such a thin neck,

Whites of her eyes gone,

Housedress hanging

On such an ancient thing

That raises her hands

And screams.

Color, agressive and wrong,

Shades out harmony

In strokes of orange crayon

That melt in the plump hand

Of a mad child,

Dripping down the walls

Like spin-art and lies

And I cannot breathe this air,

Air that flicks its long fingers

And sets a shining mobile spinning

Above a cold, forgotten crib,

Faster and faster, flitting

And glinting like the knife in my hand.

Reviews

[Ern M. Yoshimoto]

i've had a few friends in the past who i could take to art galleries with and spend hours. there was one friend who could stand in front of a painting he liked for thirty minutes. he'd sometimes say something about it but mostly he was just quiet, drinking it in.
what i want to say is - i want to take you to a gallery! your words here are extremely articulate and is able to capture that transcendental feeling of seeing a magnificent work of art.

[Joli Dy]

I'm a lot like your friend. Thank you for leaving me much to think about and encouraging my pen.

[Coyote Poetry]

I believe I lost myself many moons ago. Easy to forget your face and your place. Dear Joli, I liked the twist of thoughts in the poetry. Maybe we need madness to be okay? Thank you dear poet for sharing the amazing poetry. I did enjoy.
Coyote

[Joli Dy]

Where shall we look for you then? Thank you for such a kind review; I'm very grateful.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

We all start out in the crib, and then some of us when we reach old age must be taken care of again as if we are infants...the coldness of the years as the pile up behind us, leaving little that makes sense ahead of us.
The metaphorical knife we carry, wishing in some way we could interrupt their pain for good.
j.

[Joli Dy]

Your review is so welcome. It's interesting to see how people read your words. You managed to surprise me today.

[Perdition]

Let's pretend you did catch that fly of menacing madness for a second....this is beyond review but the shell of it scraps at that mad altar of bleeding teeth and gums, strums its cracking sound of both relief and disbelief. I could list line after line, state that it ends exactly where it demands, something that makes me remember all too well things I'd rather not, but soothes and calms. Things are horrific here and calm as close to the Plath after Plath that slowly turned Plath without tape but it's just that deep and dark and beautiful at this depth to drum up such memories. Something in the "Air that flicks its long fingers And sets a shining mobile spinning". "Hallways WIthin"...hmmm? That fly in hand, very near indeed~

.

[Joli Dy]

Well, hello you! I've been sweating at that same fly for as long as I can remember. If I'm honest, I hope I never quite connect. We've become accustomed to our adversarial relationship. Just going to Tom and Jerry our way through the madhouse.

[Joli Dy]

Swatting at

[Perdition]

There is no better way to provoke it...I felt this one deeply dear Hatter~

[Eilis]

This is intense with the fear and confusion of dream/waking-dream/uncertain mind state. It makes me think of the yellow wallpaper and how the thread of sanity can be very thin.

My mother has Alzheimer’s and other forms of mental illness and cleaning out her home I discovered so many secrets that she’d been keeping that I’m not even sure she knows are secrets. It is haunting to see the unraveling of someone’s mind in a sort of paper trail and also through the way her memories move back and forth between times. And for her it’s all happening simultaneously because of the way her brain is presenting the memories.

Your poem made me think of these things because it often feels like this to face that blunt force of history swirling at you all at once. And not knowing what is the real or imagined or desired truth. It’s a haunting poem.

[Joli Dy]

That's a very generous review of something so painful for you. Thank you for your grace.