Palisade
A fence encloses me
Formed of impaled skulls on wooden spears
Shoved in the mud in a circle around my feet;
I stand naked in the center
And the radius between me and each spear
Is about two yards.
My cage of refuge
Is located in a tiny clearing
In a huge hazardous rain forest,
A jungle swarming with unpredictable contingencies,
Random accidents of chance,
Crazy events involving both the living and dead.
Occasionally as I scan past the treetops
For a patch of azure sky,
A parrot or bird of paradise crosses overhead
And shits on my shoulder or hair;
The skulls grin at this subversively,
But mostly they provide faithful service.
These bodiless heads are scarecrows,
Except more like a four yard diameter pentagram
In their portentousness,
Warding away evil from the heights
Of their ten foot javelins.
In the mud at my bare feet
I have scratched a crude representation
Of extravagant female breasts
And one mantric word:
REASON.
6/27/1999
Excellent. Really vivid and symbolic; sticks in my brain. It leaves me questioning the two definitions of “reason” and imagination as forma of self-defense.
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Thanks SK. This was a very personal poem for me. Glad you liked it, though I put it out there mostly for me. It’s sort of a Freudian confession. You are right about “reason” as a defense mechanism.
Have a great day.
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