Mesmer’s Therapy
R.L.BAUMAN
For Valerie Jaeger
And [?]
Night. California Sierras under full moon. Cloudless sky with the Big Dipper in the northwest. Foreground: Ponderosa Pines, drive way with two cars, and a log cabin. Warm light emanating from cabin windows.
1. With Flesh
The doctor extends the pocket watch and begins swinging it back and forth before a young woman’s face. A washing machine drones in the kitchen. She leans back into in a reclined arm chair. In soporific tones he begins by guiding her to relax her entire body. After several minutes of this preparation, contact is made with her inner eye,
“Elisa,” he says, “you’ll pass now through the twelve night-time hours.” He grows quieter, almost whispering. “No feeling. No thought. No will.”
You stand before a mirror.
In the foreground, a candle flickers and burns.
Hypnotic lighting. Unavoidably
mesmerizing.
Focus your attention directly
upon your forehead.
Behind this
lies
the interest,
the cognition.
Now through the crown,
go deeper.
Watch,
more appears.
You know who
[you are.]
You know what
[this is.]
Your intention
is to see
to envision
describing the vision
is to speak.
With flesh
you’re going under.
2. The Gone
The blood never felt so good in her veins. It meant more. It was life. “find your vehicle,” The doctor’s voice could be heard. From minds intuitive layers she witnesses a boat and an underground river. As she boards, her nostrils are assailed by the rank and musty earth.
* * *
There are [the Gone]
The living returned to dust
The shadows of Hiroshima
The prayers in the concentration camps
The Gone sleep in vacant lots
Live in the personal histories of those
Lost to dementia
And on the lips of those we once kissed
They are the moisture.
The Gone dance to the whistle
and drum of North America
read the stars atop the pyramids
In the bombed out houses of Europe
Where they recite lines
From the old books of poetry
In the arms of a mother whose child has grown
The Gone is love
As the mechanism of a machine that kills
The Gone is the reason
Within the bell that rings
The Gone is the resonance
Under the empty dome
And behind the archway
The gone is the warmth
left behind by God
3. Pulls of Barley
Down the dark river she glides. An underworld moon lighting her way. To her left, she witnesses a field of barley; Buffalo grass in the wind. Upon this field, her eye finds the roaming shades of man. Ghosts. She, then, hears a young man’s voice.
* * *
On the banks of the Neckar
I sang a song for you.
One would think today it powerless,
for distance and time and disillusionment
should have washed the lyric away
buried it or simply made it hopeless.
Recall, Elisa, the rush of the lindens,
the rain drops that fell to the earth,
the impression of nature—
that sweet song of earth,
that brought me closer.
This song remains unchanged
not for you or me or memory
but for the trees, the Neckar
and the worn out stones
forever the same — the melody.
4. The Songs of Leo
“I miss him. I can hear him,” she whispers. She heaves a deep melancholic sigh, her body relaxes further into the sofa. The vision continues. She goes to the bow of the raft and witnesses her reflection in the inky black water.
Reservation is a watery thing
damp enough to extinguish
the fire of passion –
in anticipation of danger
I do a lip service, speak a mind
and wave loose ends without
stitching a thing
Without love, there’s no fate
Nothing to feed the future
His eyes wane
as that over used metaphor
of the silver pale twisted shell
sets nearer to the horizon
I’ll fight glittering waves
to keep my needs moving
I’ll drown my losses
by drinking the drinks
Whoever invited romance
into this psychedelic jungle
stands with me now, as I listen
in my voice, the echo
that drove Narcissus to pound his wits
and Pan off the mountain.
5. Prism (The Eye)
“I need to let him go,” she says. “Everything I do will only drive him closer to me. His face remains unmoved in my plea. He’s become a shadow of himself. He is a shadow” From ahead she can hear the crashing and churning of water. A waterfall comes into view. From its base, a veil of mist rises high overhead, covering the moon, and producing a rainbow.
RED
Empty handed
Siddhartha entered
Kamala’s grove.
“your lips are like fresh figs,”
He said;
and bought the first color
To the eye of love.
YELLOW
On leafy bowers
Helen confessed
“Two hearts it takes
to bless humanity.”
But the existed only together
so to bless themselves
they’d create a third
the birth of their child
Euphoria
BLUE
How quickly Cupid fled from Psyche
When she drew the knife
A coward can love
but from intimacy he will flee
Wingless, heavy, sobbing
she watched her lover fly;
and trial after trial
Venus’ impossible snares
she endured
until it was he,
who flew to her side.
VIOLET
In the underworld
The soul of the nile
Reflects faces in the dark.
Orpheus looked into the glass
And saw his wife Eurydice.
Moth-ridden memories
Fashioned his song,
Not to move men
But shades and shadows
Lyrics to reweave
What fate has unwound.”
GREEN
Some write verse
and suffer.
Komachi made one suitor
wait for one hundred nights.
He gave her ninety-nine;
and died on that final day.
A broken branch
can cling to the tree
year after year
“but for all of that,
she said at the grave post,
“my strong hope
is for the life to come.”
6. Light is Gathering Again
Each color came together creating pure light. This moved to every corner of her body. Sadness and anxiety were replaced with an oceanic warmth. The boat entered a day-time scene. Above a blue sierra mountains hang in majestic white clouds.
In the north the great wheel turns.
churning up the joys
of fantasy, joy and relinquishment
like a child on the island of story and remembrance
fires on the hill one by one light
it is the picture of fairy
Moon rises over wild hillsides
Ancestors journey over the plain
The ocean churning, efforflorecesne burning
Flickering in the illusions of maya
And the head
Playing in the dreams of Savitri
Mourning her love
Conversations mystics
with the dead
The Wheel turns in the North
It’s the same in the south
Where Burkland currents, teal, purple and red
Counter rotate in ribbons and bands
Umbilical cords to the sun
Magnetic forces
Becoming and unbecoming
Ever desiring
feeding, ever repairing
Then arriving suddenly
between the grasses
is the sunlight
for the people on the land
bouncing blade to blade
Waking, warming
and lengthening
and with secret agency strengthening
As the great wheel turns to morning
The night was not long,
The child says
and the day
is born.
Tobacco offerings now to the fire
The spirits forget their life
And move on
While the living remember
And use their hands to turn the wheel
Again.
7. The Star
Great images of coming and going abound in the clouds. Elisa witnesses a transformation of one image in particular, that of Leo.
I chiseled her name
upon my stone heart
and watched as it chipped
and fissured and fell apart
Therein blazed a flame
for health and humanity
it consumed
all of my doubt
all of my shame
And pulling out
that flaming heart within
I threw it into an ocean
and watched my metamorphosis begin.
8. With Mind
He is reborn. She withdraws a shining object from whence he drifted from space. Like a little sun, it glows with an unreal radiance. She speaks the word “pearl.” Thus the hypnotist gradually brings her back from the trance. “The ghost attached to you, Elisa,” he says radiating with warmth and friendliness, “has left you.”
Rickey Lee Bauman 