| You cannot enter this room without the knowledge | | | | For the briefest time I am once again a young girl, |
| of pain. | | | | Full of hope, joy, laughter, and desire. |
| No, not book knowledge - that kind won't do. | | | | The colors spring to live, unbidden; |
| You must have experienced the pain - like a necklace | | | | The canvas creates itself, like some vast jungle |
| of thorns, | | | | Propagating leaves, plants, and trees, |
| On which is strung the pierced roses of joy. | | | | From some great dark center of the world. |
| Listen to the pulsing of the clock in the distance, | | | | As I paint, the pain is slowly transformed |
| Pounding out notes like a metronome, | | | | Into the colors of the canvas; the story |
| Ticking off pieces of your life that fall away, | | | | Unfolds in a rush of beauty that strives to run |
| Like a withered leg, discarded at last. | | | | Past the pain that will come crashing forth |
| Watch through the window as light and dark collide | | | | When the vision ceases, and I fall back to reality: |
| Like some ancient gods fighting for supremacy, | | | | To the bed where I lay, a cripple; whose limbs have |
| One winning, the other running away in fear; | | | | Failed, but whose heart beats as before; |
| Until the cycle reverses and the other is ascendant. | | | | Lusting after life and beauty with every beat. |
| Pain, pain is the constant companion of this room, | | | | Death, death will come at last, sweet death to end |
| Red billowing, blood-filled arteries, pulsating | | | | this pain, |
| With death-in-life, running to complete the gods' | | | | And relinquish my soul to those brute gods who dwell |
| sacrifice, | | | | in the |
| And I the object of that sacrifice, pierced with pain. | | | | Jungles of my canvas, beckoning me with their small |
| Paint the vision now, while the metronome keeps | | | | howls |
| time, | | | | Like monkeys staring from beneath the leaves. |
| The flowers, leaves, trees, bursting forth with | | | | I paint; I wait; I listen to the metronome counting out |
| obscene life, | | | | The hours till death take me. The light fades, and |
| While in my mind's eye, skulls run across the canvas | | | | slowly |
| Pursued by deformed skeletons, grinning a reminder | | | | Darkness envelops the room like the womb of some |
| of death. | | | | great brown Mother,holding a necklace of roses, to |
| And while painting, the pulsing of the clock stops, | | | | welcome me home at last. |
| The pain recedes, my mind clears; time is still. | | | | |