Deceptively Good Roads

Back when we yet haunted caves,
huddling around meagre fires,
Peering past the mouth of security,
Didn't we wonder what was beyond?

Seeing mountains, didn't we wish bigger?
Hearing bird song, didn't we fantasize better?
Sensing an end, didn't we hop faster?
Tasting failiure bemoaning we weren't stronger?

When the night's quiet was eviscerated,
By some jungle's feral manifestation,
Feeling an almost tangible caress over our jugular,
Didn't we pray for four walls?

Wrapped in pallid straw, straining to ignore
The garrulous meetings of stomach lining,
Crawling to escape the world's accusing glare,
Didn't we beg for deliverance, even a mirage?

But as Time sashayed through history,
The road improved. With only the rare
Pothole to cross, we put down the pedal,
Ignoring damage to chassis and soul.

Civilization's girders lined the roadsides,
Along our fast lane. We laughed,
Accepting and ignoring the illusuion of others,
We sang a myriad groaning tone.

The drunken sun had staggered west,
Shadows kept gettting darker and deeper,
The further we ventured into Civilization,
The sketchy horizon barrenly stretched.

An inherant sense warily perused our direction,
Disturbed, we paused to confirm our bearing.
Pointing bent sextants at daylit skies,
Hope becomes a wet finger waiting for fair wind.

Turning to a broken billboard for relief,
We pee on tattered corroded paper that
Show helping hands being viciously spurned,
Could we concieve, that we took a wrong turn?


*--------------------------------------------*

Prelude

The wily blank page almost took me
But let go, and bested me in disdain.
Dissonantly, I retreat to the yawning trenches,
Sliding, into that grim muted throb.

Inside, the ones wear matte grey gas masks.
Festering wounds and twisted bones
Ignored, as a field of eyes swings towards me,
A bulb flashed, and in every eye I saw me.

Peering past ghostly smoke, I turn to tread
Over pulsing embers, alongst gutted corridors.
Through holes above, the broken hulk of edifice looms,
As footsteps in ashes of hubris mark my path.

In grimy half darkness I grope my way,
Past littered broken things and jagged edges,
Stumbling through the clawing pregnant vacuum
Until I reach the end, that thrice-damned wall!

Sickened by complacent defeat, lethargic spirit,
With last vestige of breath, I beat against
The iron vileness that chokes the multitude of words,
They who create and people my world.

Battered hands shatter unyielding indifference,
Until it cracks, and expression trickles forth!
My war cry melds with the growing storm of sound,
As the legions of words leap the barricade.

And riding the crest of that omnipotent wave,
Enraptured, I am become a forge!
Flinty ideas become the iron-tipped arrows
Which desecrate the vaunted halls of apathy.

Pages fly, ink spills and broken words die,
Until The page kneels under my bladed nib.
The melody of word song fills the world,
And something new, shoots from the bullet holes.


*-----------------------------------------------*