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 ...