Seeking the Stage

Stagnant memories of a fading childhood,
Precarious propositions, futile speculations,
Uncertain motives, furtive longings,
A discordant rhapsody of chaotic themes
Leads me through this pagan dance
Cuing my motions with earnest desire,
Accenting my foot-falls with stoic pride.

Scintillating hues, radiating through the mist,
Smoke and mirrors, this wilderness.
Carving out consonance from a dissonant world
Garnering the germ of life from the seeds of madness.

My mission? My purpose?
To breathe life into visions,
To breathe visions into life.
The paper messiah, the prophet of motion,
I stand enthralled at the precipice,
Surveying the lands below me,
A voice from within, my inner God, beckons me
To leap, perchance to fly.

How bland the fruits of Philistine fortune,
Bitter the draft of ignorance,
Numbing the masses with foolsgold pleasures,
Fettering their minds with seductive complacence.
Slaves to a dull-witted master,
They stand agape in the fields like grazing sheep,
Waiting for the earth to swallow them.

How I thirst!
Quivering in anxious agitation,
Thirsting for the poet's brandy,
Longing for a martyr's glory,
Yearning for an audience to my psyche.

Alone.
I stand alone.
In the mighty throng, I stand alone.
None shall bleed me of my soul.
Defiantly, I stand alone.
None shall enslave me.
None shall enchain me.
Defiantly, I stand alone.
No one to own me,
None to disown me,
A legion of one, I stand alone!

Alone.
I stand alone.
In sad contemplation, I stand alone.
My words ripple in an empty stream.
A self-made outcast, I stand alone.
When will they hear me?
When will they endear me?
An audience I seek, for I stand alone.
When will they laud me?
When will they applaud me?
I need to speak but I stand alone.

And so the drunken dance resumes
Each day to another madman's tune,
Reeling in knee-jerk response
To forces beyond my command.

But my heart disowns such empty din.
What shines for me is caught within
The hope that I will meet my kind,
And join the chorus of the mind.

George Chadderdon © 1993