PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

 

Those Nights at the Circus

were full of intrigue

Full of rolling tumble waters that stretched

and broke my heart

like the restless rumble of thieves

 

But I wanted to peer beyond the Alpine

tiger lilies

Beyond the April mountains of unrequited love

yet not be crushed

by Nature’s burning blue avalanches

 

I wanted to see, beyond the sea

of acidic air

Beyond those holy temples, lost in snow-capped

mountains

that I was never brave enough to touch or climb

 

Like that fabled bird of old that clapped

its wings

wrapped in altocumulus clouds

of Hallelujah

 

Paying no attention to its altimeter

till abruptly crashing

into cliffs

and returning itself to the pyre

 

But I wanted to embrace that throbbing rogue

within my heart

like an anthropomorphic mistress

 

I wanted to be reborn – I wanted to chant

and climb

those rolling puffs of scorn

 

Letting my heart mount those

orographic cliffs

to touch those pearly peaks in hope

they'd make me clean

 

Clean, clean, clean – like a tumbling

ball of snow

that bumbles frozen, into the valley below

to mingle with crystal waters – and become

part of the stream

before running a thousand miles to the sea

 

Tying pretty ribbons into Oxbow lakes

along the way

 

Kissing rainbow trout – while making

wishes

in the dusky morning hours of newly

discovered gradients

 

But as I crooked my neck to look

into the weary bowl of wine

all I saw was failure

 

And the lumbering hunched march of time

as it periodically paused to press

against my chest

and kiss my tainted lips, like a wanton cataclysm

 

A whip – that snapped my smile away

and whirled me up like smoke

yodelling like a countertenor

whip-lashed coyote

that I recognized for certain – was my very own soul

 

An old impaired soul – now rolled in ashes

that never got off the ground

but found at every turn – a trumpet of defeat

 

And there I'd meet my end

and scuffle away

quietly telling myself – I'll make this climb another day

 

Blurring every mark of threat – that threatened my power

though resolutely and absolutely

accepting every hour

I crept upon knees – before returning to my feet

to reach my favourite comfort

hole

of self-retreat

 

A mouldy maggot-infested lodging

where I was continuously

and forever dodging

those rotten What-if questions – so seared into my flesh

from the moment I left the

birth canal

with a limping ego

 

Each question – was a reincarnation of

the former question

and the question when translated

by the fundamental Karmic Laws of Quantum Physics

was always the same damn question

 

What if – what if – what if

 

What if – you finally stood your ground

and stopped this nonsensical

running around

 

This cursive dynamic movement of running

in circles

looping back – and looping back

to get as far away from yourself as possible

 

“What then – fuck face,”

the voice

inside my head, would always wonder

 

It was a thorny issue

 

The thorny ice saints, marched across my chest

but never gave me rest

 

Pounding and pounding like a

tribal drum

chewing my soul, like bubble gum

 

Liquefying my heart to chum – and throwing my

sorry ass overboard

To laud the sharp-shooters – and the sharp-toothed sharks

that always waited below the surface

to devour me

or put a bullet in my head

 

But how might it actually be – to move away

from this icy sea

To live life on the other side of the curtain

knowing nothing at all

was certain

 

Nothing – but fairy tales and myths

A tryst of cobwebs, that often bloomed from an egg

with a shaky pair of legs

that somehow sprouted wings, and other peculiar things

 

Things I couldn't quite drink down, but somehow

wanted around

Becoming myself, an opium addicted clown

as I felt my way around

in the company of wolves and strangers

 

A strange and mysterious starter – that somehow began

with Angela Carter

But exactly how it sprung, I do not know

This wild seed, that germinated in the snow

and began to grow

 

And grow it did – and grow it did, under my filthy fingernail

 

And I watched it grow like a wild-eyed

barbarian

sprouting catcalls – from a calling card

given by a librarian

 

Till it hardened like a nail to impale me

with its hardened bony roots

as it grew

Asking for more soil, as it twisted round the coil

of my numb, dishevelled

reckless mind

 

Where it sought to find a grove

and grind its way

through my chalky pebbled moratorium

 

The silent hall of mirrors – where paper flecks

of sunlight

choked on speckled dust

 

No energy left in the rafters

for ascension

though I offhandedly thought

I'd mention

that they never had any power to lift themselves

 

Because the old fevered cogwheels

had long been

left to rust

to a molten heap of broken gears

 

Each and every one, finely encrusted

with a broken dream

barren of reasons to ever turn again

 

But as the wild seed grew – it bounded through

and broke the wall

Till then, who could tell – there was any

daylight at all

 

Till a burst of airy light blew in – splashing my horrid

feeble heart with shame

While lifting my tired pale soul – toward the sun

 

An old enigma – thought to have burned out

aeons ago

But there it was – right in front of me

just as bright as I remembered

 

And there – on the other side, were people

peeking through

Ah – the world was still inhabited

So good to know

 

So I poked a finger through – just to see

if it was true

but having grown clumsy with people – and no longer

accustomed to light

I poked someone's eye – every time I reached

and all I heard – was Ouch

 

Maybe it wasn't time – to mingle with

the mountain people yet

Maybe the best damn bet – was to patch that hole

and run

 

Go back to sleep – back to the land

of dreams

Frozen frightful dreams – a littered landscape

of broken-down machines

 

Land of thorny broken dreams – where I could

at least

return to being emperor

 

Playing basketball on my obscure tertiary hill

in my underwear

Tossing crumpled poems in the wind

where they could easily hit – the rubbish bin

 

And then I could relieve my achy joints

and roar

whenever I scored three points

 

Back to the land of dishevelled dreams – where no doubt

I could always be – a three-point hero

which is always better – than being a zero

 

There – in the blinding light of day

while trying to carve my way

through tricky human connections – with tricky

refracted inflections

 

Because the grand design of my

mirrored fun house

was being a sun-bleached bone

 

No colours to atone for sin

and no watchers

to sneakily catch my toothy grin

 

My soul, baked and parched with all the lights

flipped off

with all my feelings kept in dark blue bottles – at the edge

of the world

on my multi-coloured – Arctic ice shelf

where penguins pretend to fly

but nobody notices

 

But the best of me – was in those bottles

as blue as they were

and now there was nothing left to explore

because I had bottled myself up

 

Only a bleached white bone with a few frozen

sinews attached remained

in a perpetual state of suspended animation

 

I tried to keep my bones as dry and dead as possible

so not to feel anything

So not to feel the heaving mass of humanity dying

all around me

 

The groaning – and the pain – and the suffering

and all the bad things that happen

to good people

 

I tried to keep the doors from rattling off the hinges

whenever the wind blew

Because the wind blows a lot of bad news – around the world

 

I tried to keep my thumbs from frostbite – whenever I wanted

to reach out

Because what can I really do – to assuage the pain

of this world – I am only one man

 

The pretty splinters – I could dig them out well enough

but what could I do – to prevent or halt

the world’s gangrene

 

So I kept my fingers warm with whiskey – while washing

silky things

And I've pretended not to notice – the general affairs of the world lately

just to keep my dinner down

 

So I just keep my fingers moving – whittling – twiddling

Whittling out the rot – as I discover it

A long and prosperous occupation – with no vacation

 

Twiddling – to keep my own little courtyard in order

to keep the count straight

To keep every godforsaken round of news – from entering my fabled castle

 

 

~/~