Pride and Fear

Splayed across the swing she lays, in a pose that supposes deep contemplation — eyes shut tight against the sun, jaw slack, serpentine back, feet dangling, right wrist angled beneath the chin — a thin nod to to Rodin. 

Behind lids clenched, upon blank red canvas, (save errant phosphenes), her theater convenes. Whimsical thrills on the play bill —  running up hills, alliances formed while storming parapets. No frets, (presently, though, for demons float just over head — the ghosts of failed attempts — hanging just above like Spanish moss, shadows of passions lost). But for now, ‘neath aimless clouds, dear daughter unhindered — like untethered nimbus — perfects her opus. 

And I smile at my child, spritely girl, creator of worlds — an oasis, a well in a desert of shallows. A hallowed craft she chooses to pursue in her idle time, she just second in the line of those born to inspire. Myself an outlier on the generational plain, breaking the chains of the mundane that yoked my broke back yeomen forebears. By the everyday they were oppressed, obsessed with the sunrise, while the sun set on unspoken confessions — the festering spoil of potential unrealized, puss and putrescent flies buzzing ‘round ultimate, searing, bubbling sin etched into chest skin.

Oh, but for sweet swinging Lydia is the opposite so, as she sings a song she wrote yet dangling from the swaying ropes. The butterflies for muses, no loyalty to meter, no mind for any one key or when or if the tune will end. Suspended in the ether — daughter, artist, seer, soothsayer, prophetess of golden Providence — her innocence a medium, shoots through tedium like a needle to the bone. 

With flawless rhythm I man the ropes in hopes that the young composer remains undisturbed. Though a thought occurs even now, as Spanish moss gropes at my brow with poking sandy tentacle fingers. It’s a lingering doubt that exists, persistently insists that these words are no gifts, not a call, but a wall, behind which I fall and dirt-belly crawl — hide my pride from incoming fire. The shells explode saying I’m no poet. And in the ceasefire peace, I peak above the concrete to seek out my enemy: there he stands a dozen versions of me — violent zombies — with the selfsame face, only a macabre grimace, a morose visage they display. Sunken socket eyes bloodshot, flesh rots, open sores ooze, sallow juices sluice south through pores to gaping mouth, where lolling leather tongue protrudes lobbing hubris-busting ammunition. Ah, tradition. 

And I wonder did I inject her with this death, infest her with gnawing vermin that infect the soul with wholesale frailty? Watch as she emits her radiance, but oh, the times when she doubts her shine… the tears wash over, the demon on her shoulder — blistered, fork-tailed imp of Gehenna — whispering bitter insecurities through amber curls. Sweet, sweet girl, creator of worlds, what tragedy have I unfurled upon you?

Her opera stops. She hops off the swing, drinks in everything in sight, and takes flight — her feet stomp a beat — back to her mother for another performance of a musical sensation, (though the renditions change with each iteration). I shoo the moss from off my crown, wipe clean my frothing frown and watch my cherub flutter freely. Surely, as she ever strives she’ll be chided by wicked, jealous and covetous spirits and visited by blustering moribund undead with self-saboteur intent… but I prefer that to the alternative.