Painting by a Mental Patient, Weaverville City Jail, California, 1922
—displayed in the Weaverville Museum
It is the picture of a man who dreams
at night, his dreams a cartoon color
he can’t forget in his blue cell:
a fork chases a hard-boiled egg
across the smooth paper,
cheered on by an angry alarm clock.
The clock rings
and the artist knows it is morning
even though the iron cell
is in a basement with no windows.
In the center of the painting
the devil blows a whistle
and his pitchfork drips blood.
Above in the night
a man has taken off in a Buck Rogers spaceship
heading for a yellow one-eyed moon.
He grips the steering wheel in the open cockpit
and doesn’t look back.
In a lower corner
under a naked tree
a satyr sits and plays his pan-flute.
The notes weave all around the painting,
twist around a girl
dancing in veils.
The man who dreams all this
pulls at his covers,
drowses at the bottom of the painting.
The man who painted this
died in his dreams.
Copyright Credit: James Masao Mitsui, "Painting by a Mental Patient, Weaverville City Jail, California, 1922" from From a Three-Cornered World. Copyright © 1997 by James Masao Mitsui. Reprinted by permission of University of Washington Press.
Source: From a Three-Cornered World (University of Washington Press, 1997)