Kaleidoscope, 2008

Dream carousel kaleidoscope,
faces, places, colors, things,
shift in and out and all about,
where long dead singers sing.
Kaleidoscope, the mind, a whirl,
faces of the world unfurl.
The raining pictures never stop,
images of faces, clocks.
A kid fishing on a dock,
his father not there, but he appears,
Someone else, the young child hears.
Be this, be that,
something worthwhile;
you worry too much.
Don’t panic now.
Just tap your foot and smile.
Images of twisted hands,
two sets of footprints in the sand,
one man walking with himself,
in his mind with someone else.
Someone never there,
though in the mind, where,
the kaleidoscope breathes in and out,
the long burning flame,
forever remains,
no water puts it out.
And so the kaleidoscope goes I see,
an image of a man like me,
locked away inside a glass.
His eyes wide open, fading fast.
Knuckles, hands, love, and hate,
two different things when separate.
Wrinkled hands cupped, held to the air,
as though in some great despair,
and listless hoping, as he looks,
around him the formless kaleidoscope took,
the images of the life,
and flashed them by the mind.
And in there, they’re crystal clear.
The meaning, though is not;
a slideshow of a thousand images,
is what I’ve got.
The kaleidoscope, the mind at rest;
the good the bad, the worst, the rest,
goes by and bye and waves, to lay,
in the shallow grave of yesterday

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