Windows of the Mind

by

Robert Leyland

Shattered fragments of light lying scattered in the sink

When I broke the window in my mind, to be kind,

To my hellish, singular thoughts and acts of deepening obscenity.

The gnarled man raised his hand to photograph my self-image,

Of spawn and shadows in the dark,

While children played in the park, covered with infected grief.

On rides they sat, squealing, deafening squeals of joy

In high tethered pitches to shatter and scatter

The window in my mind.

People feeling free to stare at my ruined self.

The nakedness of its blind truths and the humiliations

That I have endured at the hands of centurions.

They pass by from curiosity, a quick glance at the things

Those syphilitic whores never had the balls to do.

Or they just stop by to stone me,

Bludgeon me and bone me.

The shattered frames of glass and splintered frames of bone.

This is my home.

Silent sympathies are spoken over my rotted carcass of a mind.

A strange hallucinatory earth.

Battered images and tattered remnants of clothing blow,

In a holocaustic wind,

Causing the windows to rattle and tell tattle-tales

Of wrongful acts committed and of the desiccation of my life.

A fairground in a child's mind

A tragedy not too far behind

For him to see

What one poetic motion

Means to me.

An endless devotion

No one ever showed to him.

In the mind's eye of a man

On the corner

Eating his sandwich

Dripping mustard

On his chin,

It's just a summer's day in New York City.

The endless fathoms beckon me near

With their endless buried mysteries.

Sun glistens from the multitudinous,

Lapping waves.

Each contains a soul of their own.

Drowned sailor's spirits

Risen to the crests of the living world

To drag down,

With seaweed fingers,

Children who stray too far.