A Chisel’s not Enough [poem]
When fear hides behind a smile
then truth pretends it’s on the stage
held hostage to some understated
subterranean fairground barker’s
ageing clothes or costume of an
underrated acrobatic clown
A happy-fronted person might as well
affect a frown or leak some tears
For covering our fears takes no one in
but fools — whether with a grin
or other phoney face or gruelling
sojourn through the local loony bin
I saw your fear scowling yesterday
(as every day) It never goes away
Behind that bland charade I saw
the way it broadly smiled, as if to say:
“A chisel’s not enough and never is!”
More like a hammer or pneumatic drill
or wrecking ball or bloody chainsaw
chewing through the walls and layers
built around your skin which once
in glory years I dived within and duly
drowned as limpful you received
my spearly soul inside your moist and
welcome seldom penetrated (w)hole
What would it take to prove that
my credentials as an avatar of touch
have never loudly altered one iota
from the time you scrotumly
examined me declaring me before
all angels human or divine
to be a flame as brightly burned
as yours (I, searching for a sign)?
Everything or so it blithely seems
for you these wild and ancient days
has now become too hot to handle
undone promises wildly dangle in the
oxygenless haze between our worlds
your fear!
unfurled like dirty washing on a line
from which I soon avert my gaze
your fear!
a phase of lifelong blind proportions
your fear!
a raving mass of chaos underspoken
your fear!
a womb where every last
fallopian tube and ovary
was broken down and unredeemed
or so it seemed when seen behind
your loud and wide unsmile
Every fear when poked at, stripped of
all its masks and layered chainmail lattice clasps
(in other words when seen for real)
melts down to only one:
the fear of death —
a story which in this perverse and wondrous world
could run and run and does escapingfully
interspersed with what we’re told is fun
while bliss (no conscious pain or struggle)
lies outside our view by grand design
[until we wake with awful fine surprise]
If fear is an impostor and a skilful actor too
then what the other smiles or seems to be
cannot for certain be discerned as true
unless we factor in the fear
and burn the mask
and strip the veil
[burdensome task
with egos frail]
unbar the cage
expose the lie
and flay the front
(just hear those cries!)
destroy the myth
and wreck the pose
and cease the sham
(if left it grows)
waylay the wiles
and ruin the ruse
and shred the smile
then find the child who lost the way
to hereness
and thereness
and thus by dint of logic
everywhereness
Grasping the purpose of fear
(the contrary of love)
is freedom’s door
It served its uses in the fields
but has no worthy value anymore
The most (but not the worst)
that can befall us is to die
We’re all expendable
like gusts of wind
here for a moment
then like dust
without the
fettered
hold
of flesh
we fly
.
.
© Alan Morrison, 2014
.
The Naked Troubadour 