Asylum

 

Claudio Mufarrege's "The Arrow Shot"

You bind me

But your walls, your halls they cannot hold me

Body broken but the spirit

Rise, swimming in the deep

Recesses of the forgotten—

Mind: sole reality of prison

You forget, but this soul knows,

It reaches through your gray decay

And in the darkness spring forth wings

To flight, unknown, and I am nothing and no one

But here I am,

These halls

Are mine.

* Photography by Claudio Mufarrege, from her gorgeous photos and interview I conducted with her, as featured on One Stop Poetry.

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Decaying in Orbit

We are drifting

You and I

I can see it in your eye

This sifting

Chasm lengthens

And the shadowed fens

Are growing.

That smile you once held for me

My smile

Is now a vacant stare

We look to one another

But there’s nothing there

Just silence

In the space

That once beheld our laughter.

Older, wiser

Colder

The child slithers from us

And so do we

These shadows lengthen

As we pull apart.

Still we look

Captive to memory

Unable to let go

But unable to remain

We are gripped and we are broken

And I am decaying in orbit

Around the very stars

That made my

Universe.

Forgotten Tower

Black waters dripping from a lonely tower,

The watch fires long since died.

Crumbling bricks betray its tale—

Its friends have long since passed it by.

Grasses overgrown, it stands secluded,

Cut off from the world beyond—

Weeping as a child in the bitter night.

A stray mouse prods the rotting mass—

The tower crumbles down.

Another vivid memory

Has faded into dark.

Betray not my Way

Never may

I sing of Day

When I have gone astray.

The Night

Gives many such a fright

Yet it is no haunting blight.

Such a sight!—

I hope to write

Of such delight,

Excite in disarray

Neither madness nor decay—

Betray not my Way.