Painting By A Mental Patient, Weaverville City Jail, California, 1922
By James Masao Mitsui
—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.
