One Poem by Greg Patrick

 

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.

Greg Patrick - A dual citizen of Ireland and the states, Greg Patrick is an Irish/Armenian traveller poet and the son of a Navy enlisted man. He is also a former Humanitarian aid worker who worked with great horses for years and loves the wilds of Connemara and Galway in the rain where he's written many stories. Greg spent his youth in the South Pacific and Europe and currently resides in Galway, Ireland and sometimes the states.