nightmare
.
.
following
stone floors upwards
branching out inward
please
please
let me rest
inside the warm stone home
where a nightmare once took me
where the home was an asylum
where a woman on a stretcher
covered over with a white sheet
toppled off
the stretcher could not hold her strength
or her terror
torment
she fell and opened
like a shell cracked for a pearl
but this sheet
this sheet revealed such monsters
a face with no features
only a hole
a hole that i could see
from a safe distance
on the same off white marble floor
i could see into the hole
her hole
not black and dark
but-somehow showing such depth
somehow showing the thousands of worlds of going down
into a hole incapable of measurement
her skull
no forehead
only a hole
in where her life was not
how is she alive?
i was frozen in my feet
my eyes unable to move
from her depth hole of enormous torment
of an outsider in the world
of a woman who never knew the sun
who was born in here
in the stone
where she never left
never moved
never even saw
outside of the eyes that were not there
so many
so so many
not holes
but lives
forever lost in asylums
still standing
not a sad marble coldness
no stone holding in any screams
but rather
a warm stained rug
and a life of cigarettes and food and drink
laughter and screams
where only rare occasions
led some of these women to awareness
that we
those who could speak and see each other
were sitting in chairs beside her
she may have asked for a cigarette
an offshoot of awareness nonetheless
and then
now
then
my mind travels to the burning arms
of other women
on the all female unit
i was on for most of my time in the hospital
brigham
and i now see this woman
who was then long ago
my present age now
but then
25 years ago
she seemed twice my present age now
her brown thin hair falling out
her eyes black with no nutrition to hold them in
and her arms
burned
over and over
gauzed only to medicate
til pus stuck like glue
this was another tear
another open port hole
into the burns of cigarette holes
her asking for a cigarette
was far different from the other womans
who never spoke to anyone
who lived in her own world of deep schizophrenia
laughing and screaming
coughing and smoking
rocking back and forth
in the large chair
never sad
happy or anything
just
just
?
how can i know?
but we all lived together
and oddly the 2 women
i speak of
carried the same name:
sandy
like a beach
into the sun
see the waves enclose my sadness
these women have a sun somewhere
but i never knew where
i never knew most of the people
i lived with for years
yet became deeply close with olthers
not so much unlike things
outside
here
not in the hospital
but-yet-
VERY different
ghosts hear the worlds
i only know in life
but somehow they speak
not to me
but to the many women i never knew there
monsters came alive
as ghosts that are never seen
ghosts travel the halls
and still look for a home
to remain
til footsteps leave their trail
finally
opening the door
to the sun.
..
ok-i am loopy and speaking-as always -without thinking.
sorry if this is crazier than usual
feeling very haunted tonight.
.....