Do you ever suspect the world's an illusion,
That only your thoughts have substance?
That life is an unending dream are you are but sleeping,
Forever locked in solitary slumber?
Does the world seem a joke? A laugh? A scream?
An endless chant of mindless syllables from some mad monk?
Does the world seem a circus where the clowns bear Uzis
And the monkeys drive Porsches,
And the tumblers invest in stocks?
"Must the show go on?" do you ever cry?
Sometimes I wish I could switch the world off
Like some cheap Western rerun,
And turn it on when I'm suitably bored.
All or nothing, alone or in good company I'd be.
When I'm alone I can think, and there's time to digest
All which ebbs and flows through my baffled consciousness.
When I'm in company, I may relieve myself
Of the terrible burden of being the sole entity,
And I can forget for a time,
The ponderous serpents which writhe and coil
Through the dark and sulfurous caverns of my mind.
But how cheap is the wine of idle babble!
Animal utterances in ogre's tongue,
A stark cacophony of emptiness,
A howling wind for a confidant,
Droning, chattering in its elemental exuberance.
Such sounds are these to sleep by!
If only the world were music,
Instead of the din herein,
I'd learn to write a finer score,
A new world to share with my friends.
I'd hear the worlds of other masters
And from these golden inspirations
I'd forge my life's master-work.
George Chadderdon © 1992