CALIBAN'S DREAM ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ by Klaus J. Gerken (1996/1997) THE DESERT ~~~~~~~~~~ It's rough in the desert for a frog like me. Tough sun to hide the naked truth. I'm not one to hold back anything, but something's go to go. Once they tell me this was a bright red ocean. Hard to see it now. But time displaces everything, and time's a bitter pill to swallow. Well, perhaps not so. Time does take care of certain things untenable. I for one am the master of my fate. Substance without shadow. That at least allows me to survive in this desert climate...barely. Anger can't be vindicated. Where one's without the other the other's not without the one. You ask me what I'm doing here. Miles from the foaming sea where I was born. Hard to describe. Master of his fate was taken here. Bound and gagged and left for dead. They thought I'd rot shrivel up and die. Time and time again I proved them wrong. Nothing different now. The master of his fate is strong. I smell the sea: it can't be far away. But as the dagger sun blinds my eyes my senses blur with thirst and petulant desires. What damage has been done we can't repair. We can only hope what comes from it is not a confiscation of the sanity of mind. Hot sand. Dry lips, parched throat. I long for an oasis Where the silent mind Can rest in great denial of this burning wilderness. Dune upon white dune. Waves that glitter in the sun. Like an ocean to infinity. We are fools indeed believing that we see! The mind's a terrible example of illusion. Maybe once, but only once, do we see clearly. And then we hardly notice. Or if we do, we do not think It any different than the surging mass of false ideals and veiled assurances that haunt or daily lives and make us flaccid with desires and retroactive dreams. Here there can be no illusion. Hot hell day and freezing night. The stars so crystal clear they taunt you to stretch out to them. They mock you in their clarity! And here I am alone and frightened Shivering and empty and would only Wish to be in bed again blanketed In warmth and the vast arena of a dream. Why have they brought me here? Why have I allowed myself to be brought here? Am not I to blame for my own misfortunes? Am I not the auger of my hunger and desires? What journey am I on? What path to where Have I begun unraveling what must be? What shadow haunts me to this end? Why am I so distant from my precious sea? Ah but isn't this another type of sea? On ocean of sand and dust and grand illusion? Perhaps we all must feel the opposite of our natures to truly understand ourselves? And to do so is no easy way. No purpose commands respect without a fight. Even if the enemy be so to you as you yourself. Poison thoughts. My mind cannot be sane. I plot and argue with the wind. I suffer With the sun. And the blue sky haunts me in my dereliction! This is the place of self-doubts. The scorpion's tail the only way out. Bleached bones. Even vultures dare not Venture here. Deceptive destitution. A mirage ripples in the silent air. Dead air. Nothing here should be allowed. My skin turns black and crumples like burnt ashes from a log. Death would be a simple thing if it wouldn't take so long. I don't understand this world at all. We throw up wall after wall and come to this: backwater desolation. Thirst upon a thirst. Wanting upon wanting. Greed or survival? There's a topic for philosophers! Throw them naked in this place and what would then their logic be without the water? All their words mean nothing without water and survival, whether greed or not; good or evil; they'd kill for just one precious drop. Some say the best just argue with themselves, and fools proliferate the game of chance. None needs know the consequence save what the resent holds for them. The future's never where the present is. Small change; thick stars. Even the brightest glimmer with no hope, overshadowed by the near. Not always do we see what we should see; not always do we know what we should know. Least of all we know ourselves. Strangers have a better chance at knowing who we are. And of course we know others as needs be for survival. What dependency is that? Trust and honour. One hand on the sword when we shake hands. The eyes tell all. Look into the eyes and cut the icing off the cake. Such is our desire to survive. Sun hot. Gust of wind? No gust of anything. Window to the universe: water isn't everything. Water water everywhere...I gather dust and how do I reconcile the elements that made me thus? Hallucinate? No I am that sane! I can't be blamed for anything that dust collects my dust. There's no window anywhere! How could I survive, if not to gather this brave substitution? No one knows and no one cares. Did they ever? I know not. There's a presence of insidious design that eradicates the moment of our caring...You don't understand me...and I don't want to understand you...Miranda's not my child. She's not my lover either... If that's what you want to know. I never had her. I only fantasized. Now are you surprised? Isn't this a hopeless institution? I wish I knew why I am here! Is there a key to this predicament? For every lock there is a key... The god's provide their "rest-assured" We don't see it...maybe we don't want to. The blind don't lead the blind: the sighted do. It's not a precious argument. Blight upon the ego. Cause upon effect. I don't know the hologram of this effect. I don't know the fashion--the market is unreal. Further promises are no solution. Once we have a purpose, we know we have the foolish argumentative denial. I was frozen in that time and now I'm melting. I envy you old Yoric, your bleached bones survive without the melting. Without the dryness. Without the draining of emotions by someone you have loved. You were just a fool following the purpose of the fool. Hamlet was your friend; he knew you like no other. But he was a monarch to your emotions. Who wants to know a monarch to anyone's emotions? Hazy disposition. What dreams do not require moisture? What is the breaking point of our desires? Is it when we stop demanding something of ourselves? Or give up hope? Or is it when desire breaks away into obsession? To know our limitations is the wisest thing. Hope. O who has hope these days? Aimless wanderings. No starting point and thus no end. Useless compass. East or West or North or South? Does it matter where these footprints lead? What begins nowhere must ultimately also end nowhere. So what's the solution then? Does one stay where one is set or does one wanted without destination hoping upon hope that something will appear or happen; some change develop, something that will form contentment in your soul? The sea is my desire? The salt that gave me birth, so many billion years ago. From single cell to this. That commands attention. A microsecond in the universe of time. Imagine just infinity caved in upon itself. The snake that eats its tail, swallows whole itself. That's the brightness of the sun's clear ending. The darkness of a 'nothing'. But we are ants beneath the sky and no matter how great the vision, the vision is unclear, distorted, and can never be untarnished by our prejudice. I hear th'ship's bell in the fog. It's a hellish thing, this freedom. So hard to understand the mind when it plays tricks on you. Soft the sand but hot beneath my calloused feet. Murderous this trek. The water in the distances dances a mirage. Now Miranda crosses me in trice dread purpose. She dances veils upon the wind, and motions me to come to her. But how can I submit to a vision more erratic than a dream? 'T is a poison dart for sure. One wonders how love gratifies when it so readily destroys? Think back, think back, think forward. Know thyself, know thyself...and if you know thyself know nothing. Vanquish dryness, dryness vanquish. Oh the sun a blazing vanity! Vanish! daggers from my mind! Commit yourself no further. This raging torrent of deception pleases me no more. The sky's a raging solid wall and I must reclaim the indivisible and open to that door. Unseen, unknown but in a dream. That leads beyond, that leads beyond, that leads beyond nowhere. So tired, so very tired flesh and blood that boils within the confides of this mind. Mind that is not solid, mind that has no boundaries, mind that overshadows sensibilities. Mind that furthers no commitment. Mind that is not real. Is not here or is not there, but everywhere, and we are dreamers in repose. Self deluded restless ghosts. Come Hamlet, if revenge is near, then prove it to me thus. I have no wish to open burning eyes to sand, but sea. Oh to feel the freshet wind upon my brow. To have the ocean soothe me in its arms. To merge again with what I am. The primal being in these netherlands! Knowledge is corruption. And the cummerbund of our desires binds this knowledge in. Fast held tight the knot a noose around our broken necks. Hardly an end for a diplomat. Especially one held hostage on an island without a bottle or a map. Safe to say that no one notices. The dead are held in more esteem. Oh how brittle and alone we are! Suffering our restitution in silence, flagellants and weeping statues in a desert paradise! Without others, what are we? Do we belong then only to ourselves? Or do we wholly belong to those around us? Is it our environment? Is it our upbringing? Is it anything that we can even control? Presentiment? Fate? Hollow shadows that we are! Presuming to know everything when nothing's there to know! Despicable intrigue. Fallacy of fallacies! Devil to the dogs! Damn this dead decrepit craving! Miranda! Miranda! Why hast thou deserted me? Or have I never had your feelings in the fore? Often machinations and hallucinations ratified my need. But so far and dying in this desert I have known you like no other. There is a dream desire and a need, unsatisfied and oh this loneliness is craven madness to the mind. Hardly human left, I do not know the mind of one who's brought me here. Bound and gagged. Thrown away like so much carrion. Who plotted this defense against me? What rival should I have for her affections but my own? Am I not the arbitrator of my own? It is but I who have shadowboxed and wounded me? Let the desert purge my soul of all the wounded demagogues and poisoners of hope. Let it not be said that I have fought this battle for my vanity, but the abnegation of my suffering. Hardly useful where my food is dust and sand. The musings of the mad are tinged with wisdom no one hears. There is no decipherment for purpose. They say this desert once was a great ocean...stretching from one horizon to the other, populated with strange animals and fish... evidence of which we only know through stone...and from out of this sea, where life began...the slow road to what we have become... silly proposition... what we have become...why...nothing! Oh what savages we are! And hardly noble in the consequence of our desires, hopes and dreams! Faltering like so much flotsam on a brazen cesspool of a wild commando river leading to a silent dead black sea. Has this become our legacy? O Miranda! why have you forgotten me? Like the footsteps in the shifting sand all has been erased before it has been found! Hardly a reality before the past eradicates the evidence that we even had existed. Now what have we, a dream, a memory? Not even that. A slow decay perhaps of something never registered. Fitting that this sun should melt me down. Three days three nights three sun-drenched days three slivers of a night...nothing to dream of nothing to understand... basics...basics of survival...live let live let live live...one clear drop of water...sun. THE OASIS ~~~~~~~~~ Swaying palms and rippling water. Cool delineated shade. Voices whispering from somewhere Knowing that we speak at ease... Miranda was the strength of revolution...Ophelia surprised herself...I don't know who Hamlet was...Ophelia drowned in a lake and bold Miranda pages on... knowing knowing knowing what was wrong... Oh in this oasis...I am solid as a rock. The desert didn't phase me...I survived... because the shock of this survival was greater than my death...I wouldn't be here if I only bled to death where you went wrong. And who is wrong I do not know. Sweets of plenty: sacrifice... Beauty to the devil...why would beauty lie...?... I remember where when I was young in my false identity... the telephone would wait the difficulty froze... I would lie awake at night and wonder if the universe was vast or small...or whether we were God or God was other than we were...I was five years old and life was like a dream...broken into sequences...mighty sequences... wondrous in their denial of the future I would curse... But the past they say's identity... and the future is a premonition of the past...something we were wondering at but did not know... and now we know but do not really understand... So what turns present into past? Eyes waver...some minds wager...couples merger, gambling with their lives... I have no control... The Oasis is too real...I believe I have become a relic...a "lotus eater"...a favorite of no one but self gratification... this is my Oasis.. Welcome to the barnacle of my justification... Moroccan wine...denials...provocations... hope renewed and then denied... the past is like a scepter... if one cannot convince the other... if only one...if only one attempts the slow conciliation... The other does not compromise... Why should one just make the effort? It's like a two-edged dagger... does one always have to argue for the innocent? and who then are the innocent?...certainly the children...but with children... infinity of patience...with adults the river runs it's course, and and when too many rapids accrue one heads for shore...one paddle does not make a tandem... Here in this oasis I have everything... lotus land...dreams...violet aroma... water...clear breeze...essence of security... all that anyone could dream about... or is it just convenience...? Is the dream that's formulated not a truth? or perhaps the truth's a dream and relativity denies us any form of management? Blanketed by shadows is this just another womb insulated from the desert I refuse to cross? For fear? Yes, fear. The single greatest consequence of our denial. And what denial? How do we deny ourselves the truth we should uphold? How do we shade ourselves from the adversity of questioning what must be questioned; of taking the first step to a new beginning? We refuse to confront ourselves, that's how. We refuse to look into the mirror and stand eye to eye with what we have been, are and have become. So much easier to say 'not I.' 'The fault lies somewhere else.' So, how more vulnerable can a person be? To have to hide from one's own feelings. Even Achilles couldn't hide for long. Even though he knew the future that awaited him, something grapples with the man and shakes him to his senses. We all must have a dream, but the dream must be made reality or else it's just a dream; an empty space of vacant thoughts and vanquished possibilities. Too many vanquished possibilities lie in this place. The Lotus land. The land where men are gods without responsibility. What a fool I've been to gather alms at waiting, where others stood their ground and firmly made assertions to the positive. I've been responded to the breeze by saying 'This is Paradise!' though this 'paradise' cannot exist upon this earth. How intangible this wanting is? How we continuously prove we do not need it when we have to give up shelter and fight for our poor parts! I had hoped That here might be a garden where sweet rest would guide my mind to something better. Where I might not have to search and toil and argue to regain a glimmer of that happiness I lost so long ago. But my demented nights within the desert gave me better rest. Here I dream without a purpose, and I have no purpose to contest. Here the nights are bitter in their restfulness. Listen: I was walking down a dark street when I turned into another and found a brightly lit avenue with carnival booths on either side. There were many young wounded men, and they were flocking to the carnival booths to be healed by these beautiful ladies of the venerated night. And I, wounded also, was looking for a lady who might heal my wounds, but could not find her in any of the brightly coloured booths. Alas, looking up toward one building I saw her, dark and radiant, standing in a window. I ventured up the stairs and into a hallway on the top floor with offices at all sides. I entered one of the offices only to be confronted by a tiger who slowly came toward me while I backed away. Managing to jump into the elevator before he had a chance to pounce on me. Returning to the street I wandered from one end to the other watching the people and hearing the laughter echo like a curse into my ears. I ventured up one more time and picked another door, this time the room was empty and when I left it I saw her just entering another door and looking back at me. She was with another woman, and they were laughing to each other. I tried to follow them, but was cut off, again, by the tiger, this time I fled down the stairs and made it back to the street unharmed. I wandered many hours more. I felt the weight of centuries upon the meltdown of my bones...so tired had my bones become. The laughter now was shrill unto my ears and I felt so alone. I mounted those steep stairs one more time. I felt I had to find this vision I had seen. I felt I needed to ask her what would be. The stairs creaked and the assent was slow. I constantly looked for the tiger on every floor. I felt this somehow had an urgency. Some secret door I had to open which everything else would hinge upon. I got to the last floor. I opened the last door, and there by the window, overlooking the great expanse of city, she sat, a vision of dark desire reflected in the window pane. She did not turn to look at me, but she knew that I was there. She knew because I could see the eyes knowingly stare at my reflection. Slowly I walked toward the angel of this night of carnival. But half way there, the tiger stood between us. I don't know how or where it came, but there it stood majestic, eyes of vigilance, slowly growling beneath it's breath, ready to strike at any moment. I stopped, it stopped and we surveyed each other. The lady in her black gown spoke no word. The silence as a century of hidden knowledge unattainable. I began to recite the Blake lines: Tyger Tyger burning bright In the forest of the night It seems that somehow we could understand Through eyes communicate the purpose of our being there. But neither would yield that purpose. In the mean time the mysterious lady had gone from the window where she sat, and I knew she had become this tiger, and I knew she would protect herself from whatever person she had mastered. For no one mastered her. Slowly deliberately she moved toward me. I moved back. She backed me toward the door. Into the hallway, to the stairs. Then into the stairwell and backwards down the flights of stairs until we came to the main floor, there I slowly opened the door and went into the lobby, shutting the door just as she jumped at me. I ran back into the street. People stared at me as if I were insane. Looking back up I saw her in the window. This time I left her there, walking into the icy darkness. For although the carnival was still in progress, summer had turned to winter, and the frozen chill cut like a knife deep into my own defenses. I needed now to be alone. Alone in my Oasis. And the rest is silence, where I wake. What has been surrendered, must now be forgotten. Light breeze, calm spring. Water so pure and clear that it intoxicates like an exotic liquor. Sweet dates; and everything a peaceful man could crave. This reliance needs no quest. Would I be a fool to live this way forever? Ravaging my days with dreams and lost endeavor? What fool could want for more? What fool could want for less! A fragment from my past: Someone: What is... I: This... She: This man has my number... I: No I don't... She: Don't be so offended... I: No offense taken... She: That's good... I wanted to add...no problem, everyone makes mistakes. But I didn't. Couldn't. The nature of regret is cruelty. But cruelty is reprehension. Confrontation is a hero's game. The lover never confronts. He hides. Feelings hide. The lover is a compromise. No one gains. The loss is happiness. No one has the right to lord another. Crucify yourself...not another. Whatever feeling I might have for her Are feelings I should never had, but still must fathom for reality, If not she would be part of me... Not even friendship...No regrets... Her feelings was a "gut" feeling... I can't blame her for that...This is my Oasis...I can be gracious in defeat... What have I to lose? Reality? Then what was the dream? Who the woman? Who the tiger? Why the carnival? What was this desire I went searching for? Never finding any that collected this regret? And why regret? Having everything should give you everything and focus on the positive...the negative holds sway...What opposites correct, they more than not destroy. Reality's what we become...not what we have been, or what we are. I hope in retrospect on our death-bed that we are...something better than we thing we were...that perhaps we've done something that might (if not change the world) touch another person and have consequences far beyond their own immediate...and that I have made something better of myself. Half true...half lie... Half anger...half denial...half regret. A minus half that is no less than what a third would give. Ghosts of yesteryear. Storm, then cast adrift. To where? Adriadne, rescue me! Marinda why have you forsaken me? And why this animosity? My brain mocks brain and sensibility is lost. I am no more gardener than earth. No more beggar than the money that he lacks. Fool. As each of us is one, there is in us yet the other. In a dentist waiting room, Allison, blond eyed beauty of the realm of ghosts smiles at me...vision of a loveliness to be desired...never touched... rose upon the blemish...beauty on the thorn...smiled at me... It was as if the world caved in... nothing altered in the sacrifice of sexual gratification...nothing mattered, yet the slaughter of the innocent appealed to a greater hardship... Summer visions in a winter storm... Broken monuments of past endeavors... A wood without the trees...To see... To see!...And the blind upon a desert beach thrashing on the water... calling calling fish to shore... Only fish they cannot catch... They know full well reality can never match the dream...and yet they thrash and thrash and thrash the waters taking comfort in the sound of a "perhaps slaughter"...Lovers are like that... blinded by the vision of a cross they cannot suffer...Masking false emotions...hiding true religion. The desert was my sacrifice... I thought Oasis was salvation... Neither is the truth...As perfume on each skin is different... each pantomime depends upon the dancer...and the audience... Without the audience what life has meaning? And the dancer wraps the wind around her waist and spins your head into a frenzy of oblivion. Drunk on thoughts confused you stammer through the entrails of the night emerging like a Cyclopes blind and raging against opponents one can't see. (Rage against yourself). And I have sent away my only true companion. Not for my sake, but for hers, lest I become her liability. A monk alone committed to the stars, the moon, the sun he cannot touch. The fear he cannot conquer. The lie he lives within his own demise. "Who are you?" "I am your conscience." "I have no conscience." "A lie. "You are your conscience; "everything you do becomes your conscience. "Every thought and every action. "Without a conscience you become the dust "that blows around the desolation "to infinity--oblivion, oblivion! "You don't know how alone you are." "But that's not true," I cried! "You are alone in your convenience." No appeal forthcoming: the hammer breaks the gavel. Stern denial; frozen wastes. Your history's a spear thrust into the wounded hope of what you could not be. "Be what you are." Then what is my survival? Can the present be enough? "The present's your forever. Notice, you deny it." The future's my endeavor. "The future never comes." And with that I bid adieu to this oasis. There's no denial life was sweet. Awaken lotus eaters! The journey once again commands attention! THE RETURN ~~~~~~~~~~ The winter's not been difficult. A few cold days, but mostly mild: milder than expected. The city's covered in a blanket of freshly fallen snow. Still pristine on the rooftops and sprinkled through, like powder, the bare branched trees. Pedestrians and traffic form a constant movement like a symphony of sound, waves upon waves upon mosaic. There's two lovers holding hands, walking briskly, bundled in their chunky coats. The kindergarten's playground's empty, and flags are briskly waving south south east. A few moments ago the sun shone brightly through the gray flat clouds but now has been obscured again as the city's slowly nearing dusk, where dreams again escape into the nighttime trans-reality. Puck's fancy favours us. And we are visions of eternity again because we fear reality itself. One has this question: whether Caliban or I is real? Who's this speaking? Who wakes? Who dreams? Who is the entity complexing this? Thirsting for the water in the desert, or questioning the caliber of the oasis? Illusion or a perfect paradise? Nothing's ever like it seems. I look out across the white city from my ninth floor office window. Soon it will be time to go home and I will walk through cold streets, past the university, across the bridge that spans the frozen canal which skaters have reclaimed for the duration of the winter. I will pass by the Defense Headquarters and wind myself through the crowds of teenagers just getting out of school. Their rosy freshness, that betrays their innocence, soft-reflected on their faces. Can't believe so many years ago I too exuded such clear confidence and promise of a future now no more so promising. Reality knocks hard, and the sum of my future years is now less than my past. One has to think about these matters. Youth refuses to address these issues. And youth is right; it has no need to think about the future: the present is the moment of their truth. And the future is a promise. Age reflects upon the past, and there the presence is a consequence, either of the future or the past, but never of itself. Where the journey matters less than the quality of journey. The reflection, not the duty. But I continue on. Past Bell Canada, and home. Five days a week, summer and winter, fall or spring. And there among my books I ruminate upon the opulence of thought itself. Di- versity of thought. Where experience itself becomes pure thought. Continues to develop in the mind after the physical reality. And the past does continue to develop and affect the present. Past, present...perhaps all a dream. What random individuals--ants upon a sphere. How do we relate? Are we all not just the same? Or are some "individuals"? Is there a set of experiences that do not relate to anyone else but a single self? Perhaps to be alone, and shut the combustion of the world outside away. Being one of many yet above. Somehow beyond the call of this instinctiveness. Days have passed. In my office warm and safe against the elements, I pause to reflect of scattered plumes of smoke dissolving in the wind. Cold cold cold. Miranda once appeared and I could not contain a faltering emotion. Eyes that did not contact with each other. No word spoken. Each within their own sheltered sanctuary. Best this way, and that there comes a time when past will be the past one can remember and put into clear perspective. Of course it's Caliban. The voice so insecure and faltering. Lost among the images that make no sense at all. Thoughts form passages of terrible derangement. Carnival of darts and daggers. Flashes of reality among the hardly sane. Were we with each other, what would be the curse? Now alone I have no bother, worse among the worse. Where's the sentence? Life or death? What does it matter? The concern's with how we live our life...not how others live it for us. Quite a moment in the scope of things. Shallow argument no more serene. Shed a tear...the statue's safe. Sun upon my shoulder. I note my present self defeat. Whatever harbour can this storm accrue? Whatever lighthouse signals shelter from the massive storm residing in my genitals? I call my ancestors of prehistoric times. Wild and natural and unrepressed. Dancing like a shadow in the wilderness of time's refusal to be salient-- a self-destructive element--and therefore lost into the self-referential hollowed vertigo of black consuming rage. Twisted twisted twisted. Where everything's consumed and never blasted into that which is another. Lost night. Lost day. Being has no reason. Fate twists fate. What's the use of striving when the doors clam shut and the oyster of our reason does not palpitate a perfect understanding? There's a door for every understanding: question is is knowledge knowing every door or just how to chose the right one? Does experience count, or just the process of amassing what was written down? What's the sum of our experience? What's the sum of our retention? Some might say we waste away. Some might just decline to stay...others hold the future of their souls at hand, and some hold others. Condemned to bleed, none bleed on the snow for fear they might be seen. Don't they know it doesn't matter. Life's a fungus on the world and we are parasites of fear. Fear of God and fear of others, and most of all, a paralyzing fear that's of ourselves. I do not know. Reason does not calculate. Muster no regression. Propose no recompense. The ringing of the telephone does not connect, and my voice knows nothing...my thoughts say everything...and no one hears, because I want no one to hear. My thoughts alone have always been my own. Don't violate the boundary. I am here to heal. Indeed. The hollowness begins. Perfect moment. Rotten deed. Let one chamber lead into the other. Dusty, broken, hot with age. What do we engender here? What still springs to life? Woven thread. Painted monuments? Puppets of appeal? Or frightened faces we so much repeal? Where's the sense in sacrifice? The crimson swept away: rotten garbage on a street of ill decay. Nothing's left. Oh! here to heal! The wounded spell the wound correct; the others argue its appeal. Who can heal? Who can heal? Who can heal, indeed! The snow is heavy on the ground. A woman's face is in my grave. I look into the mirror and face south. South into a linear impossibility. Time is frozen in an argument. No one understands it is not real. Truth is like a serpent's hide: great shoes, greater skin. Now what have we lost? Philosophers stake claims. Lovers wear a crown of thorns. Real lovers. Not those wooden ones we count upon to sadden the appeal of love...love that is not real. Could I understand the process...I can't...but could I understand the... process...that brings me here...that reveals to me an understanding...not of truth but of "reality"...this reality... my reality. What an obscuration. Thick fog twisted through a crowded street. No one knows the other, but the other's just the same. Questions without answers. Answers without questions. The enigma doesn't shatter plastic surgery. It somehow augments it. It builds upon the lie. The lie that is the truth. I'd venture to explain, but the rag that is a towel hides the truth that is a woman I have never met. Moments sink stylishly into the hell of compromise. I for one, remember something. Knowing knowledge is a pest. A good insecticide can wipe that notion out. Perhaps a wall is all we know. (The eyes the eyes the famous eyes!). Shadows speak more freely but the eyes tell everything. Eyes of suffering and eyes of hate. Yellow eyes, and eyes of love. Eyes of death, and blood red eyes. Eyes of hollow insecurity. Eyes of knowledge. Eyes of fate. Eyes that know...Eyes that shut us out. Eyes of shamans...Eyes too real...Eyes where nothing is revealed. And maybe our own eyes: suffering the consequence of actions finalized...yet not restructured in the stream of things. (Those refuse to know who suffer everything). "I am not your imbecility". Kierkegaard was wrong. The moral is the shadow of its consequence. Knowledge rest in peace. When the grave is opened, who do we accuse? Others or ourselves? I guess the victor of the war decides. Reality is just the victor's bold revision of the lies the other would have thought. Hold the mustard: the hamburger's still raw. Rotten deal. The argument always bleeds. And the flavour is not understanding but deceit. And like a long-stemmed rose, cut and rotting in a vase...for what? Moment of love or loss? What does the Greek Urn say: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty"? Is that really all we know on earth? Is that really all we need to know? The pioneer knows nothing of bureaucracy, his goal is reached by force, to the exclusion of all else. And truth? His only truth is dreams. A force internal to his reasoning. But what is reason without argument? Without questions? Without searching for the answers immutably obscured by ignorance? How then to maintain the equilibrium? The centre, the vortex of the hurricane? How to find calm in desperation? How to know the chosen future is for real? Even more important, how to chose? Caliban is a mighty angel come to earth upon the waxen wings of Ikarus. Melted in the too-hot sun and risen like a leviathan from the ink black sea. Set like God upon the cross he rose upon the third day and bled upon the barren ground where a great inverted tree rose to meet the firmament. Caliban's instinct attacks his sensibilities and argues with his reason. He acts, but doesn't know the consequences of his actions. Even when he doesn't act he acts like a madman paints a picture. Graphic dis-reality. What models can a madman have, but alone to live and breathe the rarity of knowing everything. Sometimes sages can't explain their actions. More like saints poisoned by their own restrictions. Or even lovers broken by the argument of want, or of denial. Paraded in their rags, who knows them less than beggars? Upon their knees they visit all the graves of reparation. Bleeding they envisage the ideal: love is suffering. Not suffering to others, but suffering alone. And oh how many times it is dictated, not by accidence, but by necessity. And of this loneliness necessity creates, what is the answer? Have I here created Caliban, or is it my own shadow that reflects upon the shocked waters in the boundless pool of disbelief? And what has been this "disbelief"...broken promises? Frightening shadows? A child hurt so badly to refuse the truth of a reality? Paralyzed because the past has been too hateful to relate, even to himself? Denial is survival. Constantly repeat the phrase? Constantly repeat the mantra. Constantly constantly constantly kill yourself. And yet...one constantly survives. Oh, the streets of heaven are paved with bones! Bones of those who tried, but could not master the ideal of their restrictions. And those who are alone must see...they must notice everything. For the witness who survives changes history. And we, Caliban and I, have been survivors. From the escape, to the desert...the oasis and now this. No one's introspection is more real. But then, perhaps "reality" is flawed: it can be falsified. So, where's Miranda now? Lost within the tight arms of another? And why should this concern me now? Immune to it? I'll never be. But shadows always force unreal emotions to the surface, and Miranda is a shadow that the nether worlds consume. And Caliban? Caliban's the lucky one. His wasted moment is an opportunity. The art of substitution is his righteousness! A chameleon, he changes with the stars. No one sees him but himself. Ugly to the world, he knows about his ugliness and still engages in the resurrection of each hope. Come to think of it...no one listens anymore, but still he touches sky. TO AWAKEN TO A DREAM ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The carnival is over. The painted faces, masks and dominos are washed and put away. The bright lights no more glitter like the sparkles on the waters. Lost and vanquished, found and been set free. But what is freedom when alone to face the future of the world? This world, that world, your's or mine? Perhaps a world in which we cannot make mistakes. Posturing like shadows frightening to children and adults. But children capture shadows like those moths that race around the light. Sad I am tonight...I thought this poem finished but lost everything to one mistake. Frightening scenario. Sleepless nights that do not wake because they do not gather in a sleep. Crazy element. What 's there to refute. We welcome benches where we cannot stand. We welcome bandages where blood grapples with mortality. This ending was for real. The perfect ending to a handshake deal. No gone lost...I cannot find remembrance anywhere. I'm mortal but this serves no cost... Nothing but the loss of something great. And how much of the "great" is lost? How much do we never know? How much can be lost by just the pressing of a button? Dark ages? Don't we live in them? And where's the reason of the end? The perfect end we do not know. The end obliterates us all. Here's water. Water isn't everything. Am I just a shadow on the way to being everything...maybe just a shadow on the way to being nothing? Frightened we explore reality. This is where we wait lying in the undergrowth of retribution, knowing where we hide is where we lie... It's hollow. I no longer know the elements of tide, ebb and flow. Born upon the ocean, lost upon the shore. I should have been a shadow element. I should have been the man invisible. I should been the tragedy mis- understood...I should have been, but wasn't. Water into water. Element of air. Walls that do not surface...Weren't we a pair? Oh Miranda, surface...but I know you won't. Drunk tonight and lost, I favour the event of no return. And what is the return? It's not like sun and moon and earth rotates. It's not like waking every morning, knowing that the day will be the same as any other. It isn't knowing you are stale enough to be a nothing. Nothing. We sacrifice in turn, pride and honour and indifference will take their place. Placid placid placid and accepting everything. They toss the stone at you and you just smile. You who think the poison arrow is still love. Capital letters: LOVE. Sex. That's the quest of our responsibility. And where do we defeat, are defeated, loose control? Where do we refrain from being who we are? Where to practice insurrection? Spinal cord of loneliness. Voice surreal. Placid argument. Blue arrangement: cancer like a death eradicates denial. Oh we are so poor! We have no knowledge but survival! In fact are less so than a virus, surviving better than we ever could. Om ah hum Om ah hum Om ah hum Benza Guru Benza Guru Benza Guru Pema Siddhi Pema Siddhi Hum. There's a moment to remember. There's a voice that feeds the future like the past will feed the argument of passion for the entity. Life's a fine example: greater than the less of its reality. The universe alive. Now a new beginning. Dec 96 - Mar 97