Jungles of the Mind

I walked in fetid jungles of the mind

Where grief like strong lianas clung to me

Engulfed in sorrow's swamps I could not find

My path among this occult wizardry.

Thorns of hate grew lushly there and tore

The fabric of our human tapestry,

Escape denied I heard the sudden roar

Of anger rush like poisoned poetry

Into my being as a blinding force

Storming the guardians at the inner gate.

Their havoc spent they left without remorse

My calm dissolved in their malignant spate.

All was not over yet, a noxious rain

Poured down its deluge of pestilential greed,

Malevolent to fill the world with pain

Dousing the inner light, drowning the seed

Of faith in torrents of ungodliness.

Then from the reeking forest floor's deep mire

There grew the sinister fruits of wickedness

And the multicoloured flowers of desire

Begging to be plucked by unwary hands

To spread their dark contagion through the blood,

Unseen barbs beneath their brilliant bands

To rip the flesh and crucify the good.

As clouds of life's uncertainty arose

Like fog banks slowly blanketing the night

And all the world once known around me close

In the darkness of the day approached a light,

Faint at first whose incandescent beam

Lit up this world of beings without souls,

Phantasmagoric as a nightmare dream

Devoid of love, these denizens and trolls,

Elves and goblins, conjurers and sprites

Who wreak on man the ways of misery

To sate their small but ravenous appetites

And stay the course of human destiny.

I have refound the sunlit road once known

In births before the lighting of the stars,

Through Their compassionate grace my soul has grown

To recognize the dual Avatars.