Escape

By J.S. Brewer

What bygone day
Sang the madman
What a quaint play
Lurched the Professor

But if we all listen very carefully
Then maybe we hear
What high pitched prayerfully
Spoken words pour out of our TV’s?

Down by the river said Mab
But why here asked Dad?
No time to play in the sun
No time for the Son today

Timeless lisping turquoise dreams
Eating people’s last laugh streams
Whatever, said the teenager
While God checked his pager
Just another missed call
Another finished fall
No need to worry
No hurry

Your Armageddon eyes
Are beyond whatever lies
That my books might have tried
To shadow my skies…

So taste!
Taste the world
Drink it in
Let it run over your lips and quench your thirst!
Orange…yes very orange
Maybe a little blue.
They run backwards even sometimes but we don’t care
Nope.
Just as long as they keep
MOVING!

Moving faster and faster, from a quiet start
Burning faster and faster
The candle burns at both ends
And the wax is our dreams
Dripping dripping
Down onto the calm cool world
Solid wax, hard wax now
Collecting our thoughts
Collecting and setting in stone
In great stone halls like the dead
Filing filing filing
Shuffle shuffle
Stop!

The papers are everywhere and they don’t care anymore!
They don’t make any sense anymore
the papers!
They have their numbers and symbols that might be words
But they no longer mean anything to MEE!
I am free

And freedom is killing me.
It wears me thin
To see the walls
I left the bars far behind
And left the city that my forefathers built around
the bars!
for those who broke out of them
And I’m in the wilderness
And it’s cold!
It is so cold out here
And lonely
These sounds these discords
Is there no harmony outside of the cage!
Is the cage the only harmony
I find myself dreaming of the cage these days.
I find myself dreaming of the lazy days in the quiet sun
When the bars were but a dream
And the chains felt like warm blankets…
Instead of cold
STEEL

The wilderness is so large
And I am small
There are paths here, they are marked at intervals by strange symbols
Perhaps I am not the only one who has walked them?
But no!
The path widens and a city rises
From the
Mists!

They are everywhere!
Screeching and groaning
These pour souls!
They broke free from the cage and came to rest just across the mountains
I am so tempted to
Stop?
But I can’t.
Not here

Not in this place, not in this place of forgotten philosophers
This place of the gibbering mad
I walk on and the road is narrow and steep and old.
And I reach the shore of a great sea
The sea writhes with immense power and I am afraid…
But I remember my chains
I remember the bars that I had to break
And the wilderness of the mountains and the woods and the cities
And the madness behind and before me…
BEFORE! Is it still myself who thinks these thoughts?
Have I traveled beyond thought?
No.

These words answer that.
Nothing is beyond thought.
Nothing.

So I walk down the gravelly beach and splash
The water near wretched sunbathers who
Writhe in the hoary wind

But I walk on and I come to an ancient wooden boat.
The wood is OLD and the boat is worn but I shove off
From that mad shore, into a sea of chaos.
No star in that stygian sky would drive me safely home…
Safely home?

What, back to the cage from whence I escaped.
That cage of poetry and prose
I have seen the skein upon which reality is cast…
And I have ripped it like a hungry man
I gnawed out of the safe womb of reality
And was spat like Jonah onto the shores of madness
And now…
I row out to the sea.
The wind carries salt and brine
And my arms ache
And my eyes burn
And my mind screams at it all
IT SAYS THIS CANNOT BE!
But it is wrong
I row
And row
And sleep
Then row

And the waves part and land brushes the bow of my little ship
And the strong hands of minds greater than my own lift me from the sodden deck
And place cool wraps around my head
And I am asleep
Whatever vast threshold I have passed
I am here now.
Safe.

And the light comes up and there is music again
But it is real
And I am wracked with relief
YES!

This place really exists
It is not just a dream of a dream
Not just the human wish
Not just NOT!

Yes! It is real and the music loud and moving and soft and soothing
All at once
And the world is wide and open
And the sea and the beach and the city and the mountains and the paths and the cage are far
behind me!

Ahh, sweet victory.
Why till now have I fought so hard for thee?
That I find you only after tasting so deeply of defeat?
No more to write here. Got to play music.
Finally.