Schizophrenic Girl

Chamber choir 4444 or 6666

Text: X. L Kennedy
Duration: 10′
Published by Donemus
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Schizophrenic Girl

Having crept out this far,
So close your breath casts moisture on the pane,
Your eyes blank lenses opening part way
To the dead moonmoth fixed on pins of rain,
Why hover
A swimmer not quite surfaced, inches down
Fluttering water, making up her mind
To breathe, or drown?

All autumn, earth locked deeper in her slant
Back from the level sunlight, you, you wouldn’t quit
That strait-backed chair we’d dress you in, you’d sit,
Petrified fire, casting a glare,
Refuse to swallow, to concede
There were such things as spoons. And so we’d feed
You through a vein
Smashed into like a lake we’d icefish in –
Can no one goad
You forth into the unsteady hearthlight of the sane?

Already, yawning child
At a dull drawn-out adult affair,
You whimper for permission to retire
To your room where black
T-squared shadows lie, vacuity
A sheet drawn halfway back.

If you’d just cry. Involved
Around some fixed point we can’t see, you whirl
In a perpetual free-fall.
Turn back. We cannot stand
To see transformed to stone what had been hand,
What had been mind smoothed to a bright steel ball.