Behind the Georgian Marble Walls

Behind the Georgian Marble Walls
PART I

He watches himself arrive at the brass double
doors, failing against the force of chthonic
submersion. He is distracted, but barely, by the
smiles of his doormen in Victorian Squire top hats
and white lambskin gloves.

His anxious eyes darken. Each guest enters as if in
a trance through the same heavy, brass double
doors.

Gleaming with prosperity, the ladies and gentlemen
glide with grandeur across the marble floors of the
Pantheonic lobby.

They stare into the oculus of the dome with eyes as
wide as the Black Sea while delicate rays of light
shower the center rotunda.

He observes – from his subterranean gloom – as
they follow each beam of light cascading into the
grand ballroom.

PART II

They are captivated with the opulence of the
Sainte-Chappelle crystalline jewels that hang from
the ballroom's chandelier.

Each jewel emits a full spectrum of glowing light
that permeates the ballroom and
lands self-righteously against the staggering
eclipse of the Georgian marble walls. He had
become painfully au fait with those walls
imprisoning his soul with a battered and begrimed
sense of hopelessness, like the prison walls of
Elmina’s Ghanaian Castle.
Suddenly and inexplicably, his thoughts polarize
toward his ancestors.

PART III

Stuck in the quotidian rhythm of confinement – he
watches himself – trudging against the gravity of
arsenian quicksand.
The formerly polished, iron bars of his servitude
slowly begin to oxidize. Now grungy metal rods
with prickly-chipped paint threaten to lacerate him
more.

The once radiant skin around his eyes form
colonies of crimson pebbles as his isolation
continues.

PART IV

There was once a time in this place he felt at one
with himself. Now with every moment spent behind
the Georgian marble walls his well-being begins to
fracture like the once great Pangea.

PART V

His spirit-self aches as his lifeless body wanders
aimlessly – and listens to the echoing of shackles
through the corridors of an unexamined life.

PART VI

Hunkered down in a mesh-executive- swivel, he
sinks deeper into chambered disillusion. Overcome
by the scent of white oak and embalming fluid, his
youthful, soulless, and supine body rests.

He wonders if his soul might wander in Purgatory,
an alternate reality mirroring the confinement of
those Georgian marble walls.
But the endless harmonies of the hymn “Be Still My
Soul” falls sharply against his ears like a blade on
flesh.

Amidst the loss of his senses, he perceives a
narrow aperture of light from the tunnel of the
Oculus.

He listens to the faint sounds of flowing water and
the patter, babble, pong of bamboo as they sing the
healing melodies of the Odoshi fountain.

PART VII

Past all of the smiling faces, the doffed top hats,
and pirouettes of light reflecting from the Sainte-
Chappelle jewels – he gazes unblinkingly through a
shard of frosted glass, and catches a glimpse of an
unformed purpose struggling to take shape ...