Slipping from a dream into a dream
and waking up to a dream,
The painter and I shrugged off
our blanket of cherry blossoms.
The tree was asleep; its song sung
The sun peered from among the clouds
careful not to disturb that pink slumber.
And we walked down the hill.
We ambled sans destination or purpose
going where whim or wonder steered our feet
We ate in the shade of broken monoliths
and rested in the halls of ruined castles
Fellow travellers we met a few
each walking in their own reverie.
Some shared a song, some bread
some offered their soul, some a bed
We came in time to the edge of the plain;
Below us was a wide valley
A road ran along its centre
stretching from one end to the other
And though we saw people
on the plain and in the valley,
not a soul ventured onto the road,
walking instead on the bare earth
"The Road of fates," said the painter,
"A road for the impatient..or the despondent."
We sat at the edge and watched;
We were not the only ones.
Presently, there came along a man
holding a pen and a book.
With an agonised look in his eyes
he stood in the valley, pondering.
With a sigh he stepped onto the road.
He started writing in his book,
his hand flitted from page to page.
Feverishly he wrote as he walked
A slab of the road came loose
and landed on the man's back
weighing him down like an ideal.
And the man walked bowed
Dogs came running up the road
and without knowing how
we knew what they were,
what they embodied.
As Responsibility clung to a calf,
Loneliness and Sickness took turns
and bit and clawed the man's legs
causing him to stumble and weep
He picked up a stick of Faith
and tried to fend off the dogs,
but soon the stick was lost
and the man started running
The dogs chased and harried
and took away chunks from the man.
Not scraps of the flesh,
but pieces of his soul.
Still the man wrote in his book;
bowed and in pain,
losing strength and vigor,
still he wrote.
Rain started to fall on the road
and the dogs scampered away.
The man sighed and sat down
and started writing again.
The clouds poured out their balm
and his pains melted away.
The man started walking again.
But it was a short respite.
A scream filled the valley
and we stopped our ears.
But the man fell down
as Loss struck his heart.
The sound of barking far away
as the dogs gathered again.
The man sat up and wept
and picked up his pen and book
Buffeted by the echoes of loss,
dreading the jaws of woe,
weighed down by his ideals,
the writer sat and wrote
The mongrels came into sight.
The man started walking again.
A snake slithered between his feet
and sank its fangs into his being
The man stumbled, stopped
and writhed as in torment
as if the poison of Regret
burned his life blood
Onto the road he fell once more,
his pen flying away from his hand.
The dogs kept drawing near.
Giving in to despair, the man cried
He lifted up his head and yelled.
And brought his face down hard.
He kept smashing his head
until he rended it open
And as his blood flowed across,
the book was soaked red.
Silver figures rose from the red -
the man's fictions, his dreams.
All along the stream of blood
stories from his travails came to life;
And looking at his creations
the writer smiled and died.
The carcass would be dragged away
The blood would be washed away
But the shimmering silver stories
Would remain floating on the Road.