Mesmer’s Therapy
R.L.BAUMAN
Night. California Sierras under full moon. Cloudless sky; Big Dipper in the northwest. Foreground: Ponderosa pines, drive way with two cars, and a log house. 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 dance to the whistle
and the drum of North America.
They read the stars and augur oracles
at stone circles and pyramids.
In the bombed out houses of Europe
they recite lines from the books of poetry.
In the arms of the mother whose child has grown
The Gone is love
As the mechanism of a machine that kills
The Gone is the reason
The bell is struck upon the New Year;
The resonance under the empty dome.
Behind the archway
in the holy of holies,
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.
His eyes wane as that over used metaphor
of the silver pale twisted shell
sets nearer to the horizon.
Whoever invited romance
into dance of reflected light
stands with me now, as I listen to
in my voice, the echo
that drove Narcissus to pound his wits
and Pan off the mountain.
5. Prism (The Eye)
“Without love, there’s no fate” she says. “I bound him to me. In the underworld, his face remains unmoved. 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, producing a rainbow.
* * *
RED
Empty handed
Siddhartha entered
Kamala’s grove.
“Your lips are like fresh figs,”
He said;
and brought the first color
To the Eye of Love.
YELLOW
On leafy bowers
Helen confessed,
“Two hearts it takes
to bless humanity.”
To bless themselves
they’d create a third
the birth of their son
Euphorion.
BLUE
How quickly Cupid fled from Psyche
when she drew the knife on him.
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.
She was given ninety-nine;
But he 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 an emanation of white 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 majestic white clouds.
* * *
In the north the Great Wheel turns,
churning up the births of children.
The moon sets over wild hills,
while ancestors journey over the plain.
Tobacco offerings flare up in a blue fire
The spirits forget their past life.
The living remember to wake
to use their hands to turn
the Great Wheel again.
An ocean now burning,
florescent bacteria yearning
to become man.
The purest desire of Savitri
born into their hearts:
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
The day is born.
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.
In the vacancy of where he used to be, she finds a symbol. 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 that was attached to you, Elisa,” he says, radiating warmth and friendliness, “has now left you.”
Rickey Lee Bauman 