The Naked Troubadour

How do we paint our given time? And even if
the colours match, our canvas stretched upon
the frame of rhyme will soon be cut to shreds
consigned to history’s dustbin without trace
or record of the stolen years we snatched.
{I think that I have never really loved —
mistaking that for sexual attraction or some
ardent fevered passion or some basking
in the limelight of another’s lust for me}.
Our time is even less than short, although
we don’t perceive it in that way, shot through
to such a depth are we and frought with
all the cares and woes and trite concerns
of every wretched day. Our point of view
is like the speck of dust on which a money
spider lay. What we see is never really
what we’ve got. We think our lot is more
than what we have but yet the truth is
what we really have is nothing. Not a jot
or tittle in our lives. No husbands, kids
or goods or wives. Nothing really thrives.
“I think, therefore I am” is just a farce
and begs the question. Strike a match
(viz. your face on my arse) the only sane
suggestion. Call off the search for meaning.
One doesn’t need a flashlight on the road
to nowhere. It won’t be long before your
pockets will be emptied by the barkers
of this vain and lame existence funfair.

You want me to exonerate you now —
to say that this was all a joke, a bitter
exercise in cynicism; some crazy kind
of philosophical vandalism; wrong-side-
out-of-bedsome pugilism; the polar
opposite of pacifism; a self-indulgent
case of pessimism. No such luck for you.
This snapshot from the hinterland of time
(my ancient home) comes to your chosen
neck of woods a forest fire to scorch your
patch of earth — whatever you perceive to
be your goods. Then when we stand on
charred and barren ground with just the
odd peculiar sound of crackling in the
knee-deep ashes of your futile dreams
we then can wistly wonder if our total
sum of schemes (or was that screams?)
have been for nought along with every
neuron-charged delight or act or thought.

© Alan Morrison, 2013