What Lies Beneath

I thought I was only the six of diamonds
It was enough
I thought
When I lived on top of the deck
With everything else safely trapped below

And so I wonder
Why I called upon the cosmic magician
To shuffle the cards?

Poor six of diamonds cannot even know
How far down in the deck she is
What lies beneath corrupts the balance
Between progress and chaos

I thought I’d let it go –
This fear
This screaming panic
The grinning ghosts of sardonic jesters
Pretending joviality
In their circus-colored garb

But now the six of diamonds
Is only one of many
Trapped inside
Surrounded by twos and tens and jacks
How can one lonely six see through the depths?
How can I know the aces and queens
Who have taken over the upper realms?

The frantic feeling
Like magma
Bubbling up
Undercurrents of agitated heat
Jumbled rumbles
Building pressure
Intensifying
The shuffle
The bridge
And I am stuck between a seven and a three

The blindness of ignorance is gone
Oblvion at the top
Was easy
Voices that want to be heard
Faces that hide in the dark
The eights and nines pry open my eyelids
Whisps of their thoughts drift into my soul
Deviously forcing me to know
The one true terror
Which should be denied at all costs

The nightmare
Returned to
When sleep is done...
The actual face of madness is the fear of losing myself