The Grateful Dead

What was your original face before you were born?

Among the sun eaters, 

dirty baby lounges on a crushed velvet 

pink couch.

Decanted familiars illuminate the path. 

Reliquaries entombed with cigarette lighters,

all creatures great and small 

have a place in the choir.

Sonic containers, inconspicuous keepers 

of the flame.

Sister’s frosted Easter bunny effigy

Father’s gum dropped gingerbread house 

ceremoniously devoured with licorice tea.

A red headed woman 

builds sand castles with a sailor.

Awareness burns through the veil of illusion.

Fear not!

Do you trust the knowledge of your calloused hands?

Time is a spiral.

The choicest morsels curl inward,

compressed and prepared for reanimation.

Whales jam band with crashing waves,

an oceanic string ensemble

balances the crescendo of contracting aquatic percussion.

Cast me in your image,

that I may re-member how to fly.

Pack the abdomen with crystals.

Saucer our eyes, that we may see in-between.

Grant us the heart of a lion,

a sweet snaggle-tooth bulldog smile

with wrinkled soft jowls.

Inscribe our destinies in inky black strokes.

Twin-speak synchronicities,

whisper 5-5-5 from the other side.

Fibonacci trans-mutations

forge amulets to summon the others.

Protect our journey with talismans

swaddled in Grandma’s linen closet.

A fire snake torches the block.

May a sculptor of light midwife

the artifacts of shadow,

the mysterious work of the psyche

so that we too may trace

the forms of their edges

and integrate their shapes.

Wells Chandler / September 2025 / Written for Erin Lee Jones’ exhibition Guardians of Myth are Rarely Soft