The Day Brushes It's Curtains Aside

to a dark stage. I lie there awake in my prison bunk, in the eye-catching silence of prison night. I study the moon out my grilled window. I figure this and that, not out, just figure, figuring more, the inner I go, through illimitable tunnels, roaring great, myself back back back. I lie still, listening to water drops clink and pap pap pap in the shower stall next to my cell. In that airy place we call the heart, I move like a magician in the colorful stage lights of my moods, my bright dreams, and blue light circles a tear on my cheek, and lips with her name. From flowers in my hands her face appears. In cards she is the queen. These are tricks and I am the magician. Tomorrow morning I will crawl out of bed knowing I cannot escape the chains they've wrapped around me. I will crawl out of bed tomorrow, as though I had stepped out of a box on stage. It was no illusion, when the sword plunged into the box, I smiled at the crowd, as it went deeper and deeper into my heart.