Georgie Porgie and other misunderstood men

The shadow of a former self is a dark place. This reporter realized this depressing fact as he went on a mission to explore what had become of the fallen childhood heroes. It all started when I bumped into Mr Dumpty at a party, old and wrinkled now, he has never been able to recover from that fateful moment when gravity got the better of him. I asked him whether the media campaign to revive his name had any basis to it, whether he was in fact, pushed. He said it didn’t matter and walked away to the bar, but obviously, all the queens brandy and all the czars vodka have failed to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
He’s tried to change his identity, to find a normal life, to convince people that he’s more than just someone who fell of a wall but the world has a surprisingly permanent memory when it comes to embarrassing moments. For some these moments fail to die even within their own mind. Little Miss Muffet for example has been haunted by a pathological fear of spiders all through her life. Now institutionalized by her family, she mumbles to herself in her padded cell and screams throughout the night. Her caretakers wonder if her state would ever had deteriorated to this extent without the catchy verse that immortalized that incident in the park.
Another epic immortalized fall comes to mind. This reporter tried his best to trace down Jack and Jill but failed. No one knows whether Jack survived the head injury, what is known is that they both were sent their separate ways. All this reporter hopes is that they now live in modern cities with taps and showers.
There were as many sad stories as there were rhymes, the little blue boy has never been given respectful employment because he feel asleep once, as a child, tending to sheep. No one has asked why he was tending to sheep at that tender age, or what happened the night before that left him drowsy the next day. These are all things that must never be put into funny verse.
Perhaps, these are things that nobody even wants to hear about. Which is why, during the course of researching this article, I decided to never publish it. Then I received a letter signed ‘George’ asking me to come meet him. The address led me, strangely enough, to a sheep farm where I was met by this gray haired lady called Mary. George met me a few minutes later. He confirmed my suspicions that Mary was indeed the one whose lamb had followed her to school. They had met after George had spent years as a bachelor and a loner because no girl would give him a chance and no boy would ever let him hear the end of it.
He convinced me that the world needs to read this. The world needs to stop laughing and pointing fingers. They were all children who have had to step out of nursery rhymes into the real world. They have suffered greatly so children could be amused by their name which is why George has now filed for royalties on behalf of him and others like him. The case is still pending in courts with a baffled defense desperately trying to buy time. “Words have a strange power” he says “yet we must believe that we as people have greater power than them”. His loving wife does not cry when she is kissed and he says he never ran away from any boys. All he wants now, apart from millions of dollars in settlement, is for someone to explain what the pudding and the pie were all about.
I get another call, from Miss Muffets institution. She passed away mysteriously, perfectly sane and lucid in her last day alive. Her last wish was the her tombstone not read “Little Miss Muffet”.
Here’s hoping they win the case.

I do not love you straightforwardly

Back to the basics, one at a time

Breathe in, breathe out
Love and be loved
It's simple, but simple is hard
Nobody said it was easy
But what's hard is simple

I do not love you like the flight of an arrow
I love you like the wind that takes it off course
There is pride in that love, and in who it's for
Yet I will veer away and find an easier target

I do not love you straightforwardly
Shadows blend with the soul
I love you in cryptic messages
Simple words are for simpler people

I know how, why and I know from where
I forgotten all else to make room in my mind
Plants that never bloom must become the flower
I love you like still air loves the wind

But my hand, my eyes will never find yours
I keep my eyes open so you may sleep
The hand on my chest feels a dying heartbeat
A complicated rhythm, out of sync with the world

Back to this basics, but wiser this time
Breathe in, breathe out
Play the game and hope to lose
I wish I could love straightforwardly
I'm a simple man
But it's hard to be simple

Dreamworld

I thought of her the other day. All smiles and happiness, breaking the cardinal rule. Moving on with her life after she had lost true love. 
I sent a cold wind just to remind her
I can be cruel that way

And she must mountain every molehill I make. She didn't feel the familiar touch and sigh. She didn't hear my voice in the wind and smile. 
She screamed and gathered a crowd
She can be foolish that way

A ghost she screamed, of a dead love that I buried with my own hands. It is true, I am a murderer but not this, anything but this. She pleaded to the crowd to hang her. 
The crowd just observed and murmured
They can be cold that way

What a horrible death it seems to have died this ghost, look how it's face is still writhing in pain. Pain or ecstasy, a young voice asks. Ah, the young, the finders of love and pain, verifiers of age old truths.
They learn nothing from what is told
Youth can be lovely that way

So an exorcist was needed and I was called. Famous as the man who had once known love, who had lost it and been haunted but who had devoured its ghost till it showed no more. Unknowingly I followed the path of the ghost I had sent. To cast him out of the one who haunted me.
It sort of gets confusing at times
The truth can be tricky that way

Soon as I was close enough to recognize her I was also close enough to realize the finality of what I had done. She was gone, lost in the dreamworld that ghosts of past loves entrap their victims in. There was nothing I could do, no potions of ice cream and chocolates, no spells of Celine Dion. I put a purple flower on her body and then left mine. I found her soul in the dreamworld, free of the memory of what had gone wrong. In a time when love was pure and all was good. Purple skies and purple moons. I held her close, I promised I'd never leave her. 
It all makes sense even though it doesn't
Fiction can be pleasing that way




If only life made sense when it doesn't
Living without her would still be livable that way

. . . . . . . . .I

. . . . . . I wish I was a stripper poet. I want each line to bare a little more of my soul. But strippers need to be comfortable with their bodies and I think my soul needs to hit the gym. What colour is my soul? The white of cigarette smoke, the black of my clothes, the brown of dried tea leaves or has the color of other souls washed onto it leaving it a confused mixture of green, orange and blue. I wish I was drunk, my writing these words word be more acceptable then but I'm not, the only intoxicants I've known recently are painkillers. Cheers.
. . . . . . . I wish I was an actor, but pretense gets harder as we grow older. No more ruling GI Joe forts, no more world cup win against the wall. No more pretending the feeling is truly love, no more long phone calls pretending to be engrossed in the meaningless conversation. My guitar now is a real guitar but I played cleaner notes on my tennis racquet while listening to swamp thing. No more capes, no more scripts. Pretense gets harder as we grow older, my grandmother can't even pretend to walk or remember my name anymore. Maybe thats what death is, the end of the final pretense of being alive.
. . . . . . .I wish I was a lover. Wish there was still enough naivety, still enough blindness. Was she the most beutifull girl there ever was? It sure was a great mirage. Maybe I should have just stood there and let myself be decieved but I kept walking and my oasis vanished right into the desert air. Was our love divine? Is anything? Both answers have to be the same. But the past has been let go off, it only haunts me now when a paper threatens to stay blank unless I invoke it. Will I l ever truly love again? Will I ever be truly loved again? I hope both answers are exactly the same.

. . . . . . .I wish I was guilty. I wish my sins defined me but I know they never will. It was too long back and they weren't evil enough. The inner devil is like the abdomen muscle, if you don't use it you lose it. I miss him though, Keneddy should have said, speak softly but alway carry a little man with a pitchfork and pointed tail on your shoulder. Maybe the workout the soul needs is to get this abdomen muscle back. I wish people were scared, if people respect the deception of the sign saying "beware of the dog" you don't have to shoot them. Beware of the gun . . . . no deception.
. . . . . . . .I wish I was me. I may not know who I am but I know who I'm not. I'm not the ailing body, I'm not a soul which will be defined by the colors other souls leave on it, I'm not a niccotene addiction, I'm not a pretender, I'm not someone who lives in the past, I'm not weak enough to need love to rebuild me, I'm not afraid of success, I'm not my sins and I'm not a string of words written in pain and anger. Yet you are who you are, even when you're not.
. . . . . . . Maybe a man is a combination of all he has been in the past, maybe a man is who he is or maybe, just maybe, a man is who he wishes to be. So who can I be? A gun waiting to smoke, an performer wanting to take a bow without saying his lines. With love in my past and with a future long enough for there to be no hurry.

. . . . . . . I am a poet, an actor, guilty as sin. I am the outsider, the mole, the pretender, the divine. I am just another human being but no one really is. I am the star and I am his public. I am nobody, but nobody is imperfect. I am the one the people who everyone wishes they were wish they were. I am the traveller at the start of his journey, deep inside somewhere I am the one who still believes, the one who still doesn't care. I am an immature man, an overgrown boy. I am my words, my unclear notes, I am the chemeleon, I can be any colour I choose.

I am me, time to stop wishing.

The midnight snack

I wake up late at night famished to the core
For words, for beauty, for meaning and more
Try to shut it out but it wouldn't let me sleep
Need to write, to rant, to proffess and weep

So I open the door and the little bulb comes on
Look around for a meal, just a snack till the morn
The same old dishes, the I, the God and a little love
Some childhood thoughts frozen in the freezer above

But sometimes the heart wants more than leftovers
It wants genies and faries and four leafed clovers
But feasts take work and I have a lazy heart
Like the good old scooter it only works kiss start

So I look at my watch and I step out in the cold
Walk to my neighbours house, a friend and muse of old
The lights still on and I hear fingers on the keyboard
Good signs, she must have a fridgefull of feelings stored

She smiles, I smile, but I'm not strong enough to play yet
She understands and in her arms, I remember and I forget
She feeds with her hands, pretty shadows on the wall
There's a fireplace and it roars, hopes rise, doubts fall

We lay on the bed, both devoured, both at peace
Smoke rises like it must after every gluttonous feast
I hold her and wonder if thanks belittles the act
But like all great eaters, I lack in manner and tact

I kiss her forehead and whisper those three gratefull words
She is enraged, she curses, she knows the most hatefull words
Dinner and a show, my smile seems to offend her even more
She goes quite and cold, and points towards the door

I don't mind the cold night, the nourished soul is immune again
I start the short walk home as the morning drizzle turns to rain
But as I reach my door, the horrid realization hits my head
I've done it again and left my keys next to her heart shaped bed

I sit in my garden, loved and alone, I scream and moan
While the winter rain playfully soaks me right to the bone
She opens her door and calls, I think I know that look
There's the hunger again. . . I really should hire a cook

The worst habit of all

Some jokes must never be laughed at
Even though you know they promise the sweetest laughter
The joke's impolite so you bite your lips

Some dances must never be danced
Even though they're divine, you know you'll like a fool
So you stand in a corner and watch the others for tips

Some tears must never ever be cried
Even though you know they would release the pain
You swallow hard and you let the feeling pass

Some paths must never be walked
Even though you smell the lilies blossom beyond the rise
It’s someone else’s garden and mustn’t trespass

Some letters must never be sent
Even though they'd be the perfect start to a great love story
You let them die as a draft, you let the words drown

Some loves must never be lived
It hurts so much, you see you should have danced and laughed
Never formed the habit of letting yourself down

But some habits. . . . . .

Numbers

Eight dreams I call my own

Dreams of ashes, dreams of dust

One dream wrapped deep in lust

But I wear them all proud like a crown

Seven sins, I've commited 

Searched for other in vain

Skipped penance with disdain

But no light bolt ever struck me down 

Six hearts I've broken

Ripped them apart without regret

The six sweetest girls I ever met

Watched them drown and waved goodbye

Five myths of childhood past

Santa Claus and eternal love

Goodness of the good lord above

The silly white truth and the sinister lie

Four paths I've walked till I realized

They wound up at the same old place

The same old I, just a wiser face

New rhymes, new meter but the same old thought

Three people though I've surely been

This one lost child, lonely and dark

This self assured youth, with just a bark

And this man who could but who decides to not

Two women I loved in times gone by

Gave them all I had, sweet and sour

A soul, a heart and a purple flower

The delicate dew drops and the harsh winter rain

One more chance to live it all well 

And I'd choose one dream, one love, one path to take

They'd be no myths, no sins and no hearts would break

Alas, clocks tick only forward and knowledge costs pain