Jailkeeper
by Odin Roark

Bars surround his inner-man
confining a clouded mind in obscurity.

Like moon and stars hidden
by incessant storm patterns,
inner light of dreams
remains his only solace.

Endless delusional fog
divides reality into subject and object,
self and others,
existence,
non existence,
birth,
death,
discriminations positing
wrongful views, and…

And…

oh, so crushing,
is his isolation,
where heart and mind,
succumb to self-imprisonment,
pain felt,
suffered,
grasped,
yet void of meaning,
eluding essence,
forever galloping
its echoes inside
incarcerated chambers of mind,
like a nesting doll
without end.

Survival space diminishes,
groveling about the floor
becomes not a journey of hope,
but an avoidance of the vice-like impediment,
its barrier becoming thicker with time,
reducing its wall to wall stretch
into but a ground-zero cowering exposure.

As old age, sickness and hopelessness
expels its dank breath of death,
desperation seeps in.

He seizes the jailkeeper,
pulling the apparition between the bars
finally exposing its hooded visage
as an epiphany,
as… nescience.

Through the bars,
knowing not why the acceptance,
he embraces the self-mockery.

Ignorance vanishes

With enlightenment’s dim presence growing brighter,
he peers beyond his window,
beholding the moon and stars
void of tempest cover
finding himself in a fountainhead
of golden leaves.

With tenuous caution,
he ventures to lean down,
finding each leaf with a message,
meanings for him alone.