Chimera

The Ridicule of Esméralda

barkers hawk
shifting paradigms
change is good
and I've got a pocket full
drop a token
in the slot
and get
all the advice
any clown
made of nuts and bolts
can offer
a calliope jangles
the unsaid
a cacophony of slights
left with a sickly slick
(candy apple on a stick)
swirl and whirl
gone crazy
just another ride
just another chance
at the desperation
and acceptance
of the soul carnival
~BAB 14 June 2010

It's not great, but it was there when I woke up. Granted, I went to sleep with some of it in my head, which preceded noisy dreams of a carnival midway, complete with all the excitement and anxiety. And smells... (I smell things in my dreams)... cotton candy, hotdogs, sawdust, sweat, grease. I did get advice from a rather redoubtable mechanical clown. He spit out a piece of paper, on which was written Nosce Te Ipsum (Latin for Know Thy Self). It made me cry. The bright lights against my tears made it impossible to see where I was going and I kept bumping into people, unkind people, indifferent people. No one wanted to help.

I woke up frustrated, exhausted, and alone (Steve having slipped out of bed early to go fishing). Yet, I also felt somehow exulted that I'd made it through the experience at all... as if I'd confronted some abhorrently aberrant thing in the dark and lived to tell about it. Well. Here I am, huh?

Nosce Te Ipsum. I'm reasonably certain that I do, at least as well as any of us can. I can meet the Cimmerian freaks and come out with my soul intact.

~Karn Evil 9, Emerson, Lake & Palmer