Right then, Nobility.

Some time has passed

Since the witching hour began.

And having watched a drama

Of men and empire,

Where Union Jack rode forth,

Pensively I sit

Thinking is his language,

And drinking his scotch.

High in my house, sixteen floors

Keep me from the ground,

I lean out of my window

And look.

To the right,

The dunes of Arabia abound,

The desert that passively saw

The inception of man.

Man who'd tread her sands

And spread to all the earth,

Taking from her fingers

All that she would give, and more.

A loan never recognised

Yet disdained with interest,

Her payment instead

Is spit in her face.

To the left,

Piles of mortar and steel stretch.

Those towers that house

The teeming masses,

That throb and thrive to get

Entry into exclusive comfort,

That now slumber to begin again

that pointless scrabbling,

Perhaps forgetting something

In their dash for success.

For the din of baying hounds

Drowns our ears, and sense

Fails to pierce patented helmets.

In our patented leather jackets

Wearing patented felt boots,

As we hunt that wily fox

Who looks back, all the while

With a wide grin.

But when I turn

Mine eyes below,

Life looks back at me.

Amidst a sea of cars

Parked neatly like bricks,

A lone figure works.

A wet cloth swabs

Testaments to edifice,

For that is what they are,

Removing the grime

From the desert's sands,

Off shiny chrome shells.

Tiring now, he finishes one,

Pushes his cart to the next,

This one's run-down

Old and battered,

But still that man

Took no pause.

With none to oversee,

He cleans that beat up car

That is somebody else's,

And moves to the next.

Should I have looked up,

Away, I would see the floors

Above me, and naught else.

For the night-time halo

Of our civilized world,

Shields our view

Of the sympathetic stars.

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

Stilted Smile

The joyborn free giggles

Of those pig-tailed little girls,

Skips on heat that mingles

To rides humidity's threads.

A flipping coin to those adults,

The plodding resigned sods

Who waver between laughs

And tears.

House, park, carnival or life;

the background is an oblivious spectator

To sundry puppet shows of motley souls,

Celebrating humanity, that mimics convention.

Adrift , bereft of barbed anchors, I watch,

From the solitary island of mind.

My being stares out at the breakwaters,

Unsure of the sea-foam, it's salty sting.

I wish, I would that I had seven-foot legs.

From silence, dragged from the thought,

I hear click-clacking of wood on tile.

And through the pell-mell world world,

Wades a lone stilt-walker

Ploughing on with seven-foot legs,

Walking on a here that's somewhere else.

His blue coat-tails swish ducking heads,

Under red top hat, I wonder where his is.

Stilt-walker, on your wooden feet.

O' Stilt-walker, what do you see?

People ooh their dawning ahhs,

Laughing at the gangly figure

With the odd gait and toed knees.

They collect all their mewling herd

To clutch to cling to the ends,

While shutter-bugs flit and flame

Until the final frame is clicked.

Then without even passing thought

The moths fly, buzzing away,

To the nest shiny draw.

Stilt-walker, on your wooden feet,

Stilt-walker, with your painted face,

O' Stilt-walker, what crosses your mind?

The hesitant clouds are numbered,

Their choice is made for them

And they disperse before the onslaught

Of that resplendent Mr. Noon,

As his goring rays will the mulling crowd

To seek shelters of shade and fan.

I see him unthinkingly shrug

And shuffle to lean on kind wall,

He pulls himself to his throne

Slowly stretching his reaching shanks,

He pulls out a yard of black cloth

That wipes a sweat-logged face,

And undoes those cutting straps

That gaspingly free yearning feet,

And grimaces, straining to bend,

To wearily rub aching toes.

I see the flash of artifice

Turn into a silhouette,

Of a man.

Stilt-walker, on your wooden feet,

Stilt-walker, with your painted face,

Stilt-walker, wearing your stilted smile,

O' Stilt-walker, what do you feel?

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

Overture : A Tribute to Neil Gaiman

The pen's whirling dance,

It's twenty-six step tango on page

Revels truth, in what the mind could be,

And folly, in only what the heart see's.

That sensual movement of emotion's finger

Drawing designs on intellect's chest,

Where each lingering stroke is, and

Has purpose, beyond creation.

Lost in transalation, lost in spell

The couple moves cheek to cheek,

dancing on the beaches of infinity

Leaving us their footsteps to read.

For in their wake, if one could see,

One would realise the hands of Destiny.

Thumbing through the truths in his tome,

The card dealer of the ultimate game.

They exist too in Dream's dominion

He who whispers them to meld his power.

The ruler of ephemeral allthought

Where if, and could, then we would.

They bear the brand of Desire,

That scintillating, bemusing spoor.

It, that's pawing shell ever grows,

It that resides in every living heart.

Sifting through them one can find

That wafting musk of Despair,

She who lurks in every shadow

That enters her grey-scale halls.

Some have sprung from Delight,

She who skips in every laugh.

She, who has no rules to joy,

Playing hide-seek in glass forests.

They've wandered Deliriums desert's,

Trudging through her fractured domain,

Under half dripping suns, stopping by

The inquiry booth by the White Rabbit.

They resound of Destruction's rage,

Whose solemn dirge breaks worlds.

He who lusts for the end of each, all,

He, who divines the last fall.

At the end of their slow waltz,

The whistling wind settles down.

And as flying hair veils meeting lips,

There is the sound of Her great wings.

And there is Death.

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