The Fun House
Mother Crow: Issue 3 (November 5, 2022)
Mother Crow The Fun House.wav(Listen along for the full sensory experience)
Welcome to...
“The Wide-eyed Walnuts”
A Wide-eyed Explanation
The words were never the point.
I didn't write them to make sense to anyone other than me.
They are the burdens of my mind,
of my adolescence,
of the affairs that threw me down
rabbit holes of despair,
of my social demise;
of my gibberish,
written to reimagine myself
as a wise old owl
inside a cracked nut
or a rose
in a no-wonder land.
Waste Pasted Porn Pies
You rubbed my jelly to keep it warm,
saying all that you could to
blind me like a newborn.
Now the stooge
spirals inside of me;
I can’t seem to forget their old fling and every god damn thing
they did.
I am hidden
beneath the bedding,
where the wise old crows who sing at me, sing:
Holding you back,
We are
holding you back.
Taking you back,
We are
taking you back
to the bakery of those frosted days
where their lies were decorated
sweetened with a fantasy glaze.
The stooge became my booby trap.
Center stage started to crack,
quiver,
fumble,
then
collapse.
Ruminations
consumed.
“Fuck you, sleep!"
I am
but beneath
the doom.
Pitter Backtracking
She’s a paranoia stricken, type-A squirrel.
Her temperature is dropping in a wise dome’s whirl.
She heats the freeze, and at the same time, spins
hot thoughts into a web of ice
cold wind.
Sir Topham Hat
whistles at
the flies walking by,
surging in a saunter 'round a rotting mind’s eye
like a lost train’s engine
seeking extra wheels,
she sighs,
traction.
Her spokes creak and leak,
tires peel
track
backwards
to the darkest corners of her head.
and if time has told a story,
she will just say
what she once said.
<> Hall of Mirrors <>
A call to arms against a stranger, my reflection deflects my skin. Unsavor,
I see
He and She, but not I,
the maddening monsters within.
Untitled
i see me in a mirror as though I’m new every time.
she never knows I am her
ultimate sight
awaiting
all my forms
jumping into a new life,
a new home.
Habitat-tat-tat,
grow old,
flap flap,
wrap up your sap and sing hotter than that.
Cuz we are birds
from all the dino scat.
Ashes mate with mud and horns;
our spirit animals masturbate
between life and death
cycling
birth with each new success,
damned to pass the test
to be free
in our minds
restricted
by bodies
intertwined.
Everything becomes
Me
You
We
All
always one but also
two, three, or a hundred and some.
We dance together and unite units
(the ones that drive us)
with our bodies to survive us
before we go
POOF!
Moon Message Under a Shroom Canopy
She follows the sound of a wet winged fancy.
He gives in to the no-reply.
Behind all masked faith
(in beat, in dark eyes)
he saw the world sitting on her shoulder,
and therefore,
couldn’t hold her.
He steals the wheel steering her night
while she dances to the shadows of his fury.
With stale beauty stirring,
temperament fluttering
temporarily,
hungrily
tearing away
as a mental case to be observed.
So she sips a new magic
to alter Habit’s habit,
and The Moon arises to say,
larger than sight,
“You Have Been Bruised
By Only A Small Sum Of Your Journey.
You Reflect Yourself As A Storm-Struck Kite,
Busted.
And That’s Not the Mirror’s Fault.
It’s A Self-Loathing, Self-Assault.
You Siphon Air In A Rush, Worrying.
You Hunt Yourself Down;
It’s Time To Turn Around, Slow Yout Hurry.
DANCE YOUR OWN DANCE OR BE BURIED.”
“An Abstract Elephant”
An Abstract Elephant
(perhaps the color blue)
is steady;
it is stomping
through mounds of glitter and fumes.
Red clouds protrude
in a pitchy black sky, like fire;
they are smoldering and a touch
too hostile.
Behind it, air stiffens.
The past crackles in the distance.
And the elephant,
in its blood,
trudges through.
The Obvious Hooey
“The obvious hooey of it all really/ could never just be/ the idea of it all being/ nothing/ which is the same as everything.”
Oily Eyes on Ice
I was not sleeping, with my cheek
pecking kisses
on the slabs of a bench
when I watched you walk by.
I was not close to you.
Your eyes emanated from the middle of your head
when you looked up
a pale and sickly sight
most others turn from
your glance,
even dread.
It was oil and ice spilling from your oily eyes
saturating mine
wide open.
You said
without saying,
“Don’t listen with your ears, but your heart.
Don’t see with your eyes, but your ears.
Think with a head that could never be dead,
And be weary of what you digest in fear.”
I shed a few layers and sat up to watch you go
walk away
into the trees...
I imagine you feel slightly confused, a little skewed, and possibly horrified as you stumble out of The Fun House and into the light.
The majority of poems featured in this issue were written in the witching hours of my early twenties- a time when my words swerved past traditional semantics.
Once in a purple moon, insomnia would push me to the brink of insanity, barely functioning with the use of masks by day and then spiraling into a disheveled pile of panic by night. In retrospect, I can see how well my art captured my immature and dissociative psyche; how freely I could express myself through the nonsensical and the sensational; and how I spoke in a secret language to protect myself from reality.
But no one wants to stay overnight in a fun house. It isn’t fun. It’s chaotic and loud and emotional and disorienting and scary, and it does not resemble a homey abode in the slightest. The bedrooms are hard and restless with flashing, fluorescent lights, and the only utensils in the kitchen are a whisk and a butcher knife. After three consecutive nights, I would cascade into a waterfall of self-pity, or self-loathing, or skin-crawling. I would search for myself in the mirror only to find my brother, or my mother, or a blurry face staring back at me. After the fifth night, I would see spiders in my lashes or hear people calling my name. By the seventh night, I would finally collapse into a deep sleep with the help of a loved one and an Ativan.
~
Poetry and painting have been spectacular outlets for me in managing my mental illness, heartbreak, and grief. I metaphored my way through a carnival of anger, shame, purpose, and flames while I developed an identity in inverted, supplemental pieces. It took me ten years to solve the Hall of Mirrors, to accept the obstacles in front of me in order to exit the maze, and to balance myself upon a shifty ground before I could ever leave the Fun House. I could have never done it alone either. I have held several loving, helpful, and therapeutic hands along the way, giving me the strength, support, and tools I needed to escape my lunacy with confidence, order, and a solid understanding of why I was there in the first place.
Although I still feel a little dizzy from all the spinning around it took to finally find my way out, the sleepless nights of my troubled past are far different than the sleepless nights of today. Overflowing with breastmilk, teething woes, wet sheets, and stuffy noses, I sleep better now as a young mom than I ever did as a young adult. I now have what one therapist referred to as an “heirloom seed” of understanding myself: I can return to The Fun House anytime, but I know where the light switch is, and I have stolen back the key to the control panel.
~Sophia Elizabeth
In the spirit of Post-Halloween,
I lift my mask
to reveal where I’ve been.
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