Mind Paralysis
by Odin Roark

Perhaps our alter ego spider
Spacewalking the ceiling’s moonscape of popcorn paint
Will spew its silent tether,
Another lure to temp our frozen stupor,
Perhaps draw out our insomniac-demon
For a tasty make-believe meal.

Such are the psychic games we play
While inhaling one’s scented candle
Of cedar and pine,
Trusting insentience will abate,
Allow judgment to gavel peaceful silence,
And end this fiendish sanity-court’s entrapment.

How long must our stub of a pencil
Remain idle beside its razorblade shavings?

How this tool loves to goad our uninspired eyes
To prod fingers into raising its sharpened point
Springboard some words into fanciful flight
Around our brain’s spacious dark side
Discover its illumined side in passing
And jettison some meaning
Into unexplored mind-space.

How patient the spider and pencil--
Waiting out a perceptive being’s limbo state,
Anxious to extend their oneness of simple purpose
Into our complexity of will.

But—

They know not the screaming parrot
In our cage of discontent
Convincing us of imitation’s voice
Those uninspired words spoken many times
Remaining valid for the masses

Unexpected—

An open window’s breeze
Gives arc to innocence rappelling down
Its web in undulating rhythmic motion,
Tempting once again
The pencil to rise above
The crinkled bed
Of whittled preparation.

Perhaps tonight?