Puppet show
Mimes in the form of god on high,
wandering, wishing at the will of the one,
the one who rules from the clouds and the sky, the one holding all the strings, commanding, controlling all these misbegotten earthbound things,
this battalion of half-baked, blank-faced creatures on wires,
hanging slumped, jaws slack,
joints swiveling, like someone started building toy soldiers, someone had a dream of something great ,
something that could lift earth to the heavens, shine brighter than an immortal soul, and talk to gods.
But the toys turned ugly, and their creator could not stand to look at them, so he abandoned them, twisted his dream, and started trying to drag heaven down to earth instead.
And now these half finished crash test dummies hanging like a world full of incomplete suicide attempts,
and all the demons staring up at a torture even they couldn't devise:
Hundreds of marionettes hauled up by the strings and made to make war on each other, no evil in their minds, no goodness in their hearts, because they have no minds to manufacture good intentions to pave the road to Hell with, no hearts to be pure of to ascend to heaven with,
so nobody wins.
Except for the termites feasting on fallen toy soldiers, littering the rocks, because eventually when you make puppets dance long enough, kill for long enough,
they cut their own strings.
and eventually the termites will devour all these puppets, and nothing left but sawdust.
and eventually the demons will find other worlds to corrupt.
and eventually all the gods they made will fade into failure, just like their string-bound servants.
But those marionettes are laughing in whatever afterlife they may be occupying, singing:
"I've got no strings, to hold me down,
To make me kill, to make me drown."
and the gods would be enraged if they hadn't disappeared when their minions had.
and eventually in this empty land of sawdust,
new rulers will arise over all others, simply because they are the only ones left.
and eventually every world ends in dust,
every mechanization ends in rust,
and the crown always falls down to those who are willing to survive after all others have died.
and, eventually, in a land of wooden warfare,
the termite is king.
(yay ekphrastics!)
ReplyDeleteThough the theme is in touch with your usual work, the execution of it was different. It felt a little less like a poem to me and more something that I might read in a prophecy - it had a very formal tone in parts, and a more subtle rhythm.
The imagery is vivid, and your ending message blew me away. It was unexpected, somehow, but was exactly the right way to close.
As always, friend, bravo.
As always your words are a sum of intricacy, the intrigue creates a balance on my thinking, with Ideas of what this world is all about. Among other things.
ReplyDeleteThank you Sir.