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.

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

Where I Am.

Lying on patchy carpets of sandy green,
The day-kissed sky enfolds existence,
In breezes of willowy white fingers,
As for that moment, I live and write.

Reverie broken by mulling disbelief,
I turn my face to the gathering milieau,
Of bellowing seagulls, that clamour to seek,
The cause for my reticient positivity.

The world's orchestra, it's unseen maestro,
Sibilantly provide the fuel and purpose.
Or so they caim, and secure a herd hold
Over sodden skies, flying under the horizon.

The seaspray drives me to different currents,
That lead me through riptides to darkest abyss.
My sea floor is fathoms deeper, it's surface
Scattered with far older thoughts.

The happiness of sheep, in itself,
Contends contentedly with chewing cud.
My happiness is a many wondered thing,
Bright sides offset by darker understanding.

Innocence intrinsic in a baby's smile,
Enters the world to faith's benediction, and
Fundamentalism's twnty-one gun salute,
That slowly seep into that ideal, in stacatto.

Progress is a feverish snail crossing quagmire,
Of blotchy indistinct tragedies, that ferment
On certain curtains that conceal, the world,
The end. So the politicians mote it be.

The dead's bodies have become horses,
That causes whip the mileage out of.
Love is now neatly shelved, orderly labelled,
By the middle-age virgin librarian that is society.

Rebels without cause strive for resonance,
Floundering in individual meaning's deep pond.
Those who come after, looking at us through glass,
Are future's illusions regarding dead pasts.

That which lies beyond a grasping mind,
Further hindered by self's choking smog,
Is relegated to the gates of nothingness,
Which are thought to open, but never do.

So smile, laugh and love, in ignorance-
We are the punchline of a cosmic joke.
And yet, I am Jonathan Livingstone,
Seagull, and so much more.

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

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.


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