To Harvest the Fair
Dreams differed trail in ranks like a
crowd lining up before a carnival’s haunted house like old
soldiers assembling for rightful pay when
the present proves empty. Just arraying on eve of yet
another battle it hauntingly felt, just
when peace and future seemed at hand. And presiding above
all the gamemaster’s words decry the wise and
narrate a life of chance and risk.
“You can win…” the charismatic cry…But “the
giving tree” is stripped by the autumn…the
awaited boy gone and the past full of old
battles. And those that exist like a moment in cinema
when defining beauty makes entrance and
who cannot recognise their own Ulysses in return. The
other suitors laugh.
“Come on. Let’s have fun!” the laughter’s
echo trails away to his ears like a ship’s wake of
shadows. The voice at the podium beckon
him back to the game. And above the red Ferris
wheel’s revolutions like a head of red
turned away. Crimson coils around the night as hands
enfold suddenly for the first time like an
artist’s finishing touch and each wonders who in line
will leave first from the prospect of
fear’s illusion and the boarded Ferris wheel turned in
crimson revolution uplifted them. Reaching
the heights and then pausing, their cart swaying like
a pendulum. Overlooking a vast sea of
lights. Their “empire of illusions ” like a tribute of fire
before them. Before someone else’s turn.
“It’s all fair in love and war…” Isn’t
that what they say?
The games and displays are not meant to be
won. Any fool knows that, but all try in their own
way for the eyes upon them.
“I’ll win it for you…”.
The vendor smiles knowingly in light that
casts shadows of those who cross them. Held once a
year. No. Every day in its way. That line,
that rope bridge to the prize he broods can be climbed
to the end…you’ll see.
Many lives and snare lines so interwoven
and brought to the night in a dream catcher’s
chord
drawn over the path of the crowds and good
and bad dreams take their chance.
To cross a vision of night’s brightness
that leads to a new tomorrow. The rope falls the end
comes.
“It’s not fair…”
The eyes betray and inevitable look to the
one of the spectators that is worth a thousand of them
to the eyes…Gone…
“Don’t think about it!!” the hawker’s
voice roars… “Just enjoy the ride…”
“Take another chance. There will be other
eyes after the fall and the return.”
Maybe I can win it back...the elusive
prize...return triumphant…maybe then…
Figures balanced on dark pedestals. Hawkers
look down on the crowd drawn like moths to the
fatal allure of misguided light. They
auctioneered the price of happiness shunning the bidding of
true beauty’s call while the crescent moon
like the lop-sided smile of a Cheshire cat bemused
by the madness of it all looked on. The
interplay of fluorescent glows cast by the wavering lights
painting the scene in maniacal
brushstrokes as if a satire of enlightenment. One hopeful-faced
paused, like a fisherman mid-stream
fording a cold dark torrent as the
passerby flowed passed
around him murmuring in nameless and
faceless phantom procession like the passage of a
dark tide to one casting line to the night,
as if through a dwindling sieve as they reached the
limits of fair.
He halted in the red spell of a tiger’s
eye…A mangy and gaunt Bengal tiger of a traveling
menagerie, pacing the confines of its
gilded cage like a mascot of ragtime. Maddened by the
glaring neon lights and blaring noise man
and tiger shared a kindred moment of pure rage
that transcended different identities. He
stopped as if held at bay by a dreamcatcher’s chords but
yet being that one dark dream yearning to be seen, that breaks
through the snare like a salmon of
the night river freeing itself, being too strong
and untamed to be held back and taken out of its
element. And the chords are broken
through. And if the restless shadows were granted life and
took form and face to mingle with the passerby
and mainstream it was then. The tiger roared like
a battle cry of the shadows and he turned
his face as if slapped by an electrified soundwave.
And then he took pause like a nomad at the
auroran splendour amidst a cold world for he at last
knew true beauty from false light. And he
never felt more a stranger in the throng. More vision
than presence her face was illuminated
radiantly by different chromes of light. She stood in the
act of turning, cascade of hair like a
natural enhaloment of fire, the light of many sunsets seemed
to pass his sight. Her face, a definition
of beauty, was lit in a mystique of crimson. The red
adornment of hair like a pyre ignited as
if awaiting the first to claim immolation.
Gaze and dream were Gemini in duet like
two moths of the same cocoon racing to the beckoning
flame.
Playwright Tennessee Williams had once
wrote that “all memory happens to music.”
How much more so then for the
unforgettable? And it seemed all the cringing anarchy of a night
carnival’s hellish revels ceased and all
the garish music and voices became a pantomime
choir… Then all resumed blaringly. He
blinked but once and the moment under stars invisible to
city lights was gone like a mirage of
fire.
And then the fireworks of midnight
suddenly burst startling him as if a somnambulist shaken
from dreamscapes of the heart. Enraptured
faces uplifted to burning fool’s gold before again
dissolving into dark. The tiger roared
twice and hastened its pacing. It roared thrice baring its
teeth at the explosions that tortured its
senses. And then the night itself roared. A gallery of
impressionist paintings seemed to ignite
explosively as in finale the descending streaks of fire
fell and lit her hailing her its queen in
parting lavishment. Every fleeting shadow lent
mystique. Every feature caught the errant
multi-coloured light and captivated in its individual
palette of splendour.
Fair voice’s last call…
Who is there? What’s there..?
Nothing…Everything…
Like a daydream so beautiful in its
defiance willing itself to survive the twilight and night.
Then the quiet voices of the fair closing and
the night wind like the voice of a native handler
lulling the heart of a baited tiger to
repose in the crooning tongue of a distant land in a time of
aloof hearts…
You’re among the trees again...free…be
at peace…
The nightmares were just a tiger’s dream…
In the heavy introspective silence of the
empty fairgrounds, he strode at last like a defeated
prince from battle. Dawn exposed the fair.
The Ferris wheel was reduced to a skeletal circle or
metallic spider web that had entrapped
moths drawn to flame and bright facades became
haggard, like the ruins of a castle
haunted by the solitary apparition of a prince. Pacing at
threshold of a red dawn like the tiger. A
tiger become man at the dawn.
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