It was a snap-decision
Pretty soon fog and mirrors
Multiplied
I couldn’t discern the way out
Something true, something lovely,
Something good, something excellent
Existed – outside the fun maze.
From where had I come?
Mazes are lonely places
A strange sort of path
To be stuck in for –
What seems like forever.
A dead place.
The carnival rides, wheels that go nowhere,
Around and around and around
And well, you want to jump off, but the
Ferris wheel stops at the highest point,
And it’s too late, and you
Can’t wait for it to roll its way down,
But it stays for-
What seems like forever.
Finally it inches downward and you
Jump off and head to another ride
Which is nothing like the first,
But everything like the first,
Because it also goes nowhere, and
While it’s turning, your mind spins
To the past, and sprints ahead to the future,
And it goes on in circles for-
What seems like forever.
And you are not sure where you are,
And what and you will do when you get off again
Drink a soda, buy cotton candy and imagine
More fluff into your life?
There is no kind of lonely like this carnival
Kind of lonely.
Can it be possible to hope more,
pray more, imagine more?
The carnival
Places all its promises before you
And you toss coins to win the prize
But what you get is a stuffed bear
A fluffy dream.
An uninhabited, desolate vacancy.
You’re holding colored polyester.
More than this, you say. More than this.
And you exit the gate, not sure of what lies beyond
This crazy.
You cannot spin anymore
It’s too much – the endless
Going to nowhere.
You entered young
A few minutes later
You exit old.
©Prasanta 7/7/16
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