- Vol. 09
- Chapter 04
Waxwork
Humans are waxworks —
shiny, polished skin-suits in the sun;
as unnatural as eating orange peel:
we lack fleshy substrates,
facial flickers, human semblances.
I’ve been this way for years.
Decades.
Eons.
Summertimes are worse
when waxy surfaces melt
as sweating Olympic athletes;
they once roamed the Earth
but are dinosaurs now:
obsolete as wooden airplanes.
Winter is kinder:
hiding my eyes, nose, mouth
with heavy snow;
I’m a static mountain
without the grandeur
or majestic power.
Yet I stand just the same,
bolted to the same fault-line.
Waxwork
My thoughts whirr at points,
but are much slower now
as treacle…
reluctantly hovering
upon a spoon’s precipice —
Sometimes thoughts stop:
in the depths of cold and ice,
clinking like dropped pennies;
discordant clattering bites me awake
to conscious conundrums
of why, if, but, how?
How, but, if, why?
Nature still swerves
surviving Earth’s dystopia.
We all knew it would!
Humans have no sway,
not when natural life
bends, morphs to its own curves.
Waxwork
Nature is in another stratosphere —
its plain of being loftier
as nightingales’ sweet song,
where gold medals shine, dazzle —
swinging nonchalantly
from untouchable, gilded heads.
*
Admiral butterflies
remind me of my once beauty;
their notes of symmetry
recall memories of humanity:
applying eyeshadow —
hues bright and richly deep
as the speckles of wings;
their gregarious daring
takes me to first dates
where I’d flirt,
play-act bashfully
reeling them in as hooked fish
as I made my mark:
my palette-paint impression.
I miss “the before”.
It is all about: “the after” now.
Waxwork
Robotic machines
wipe my shiny face
in heat waves
(darn global warming)
polishing veneers
as a bronze sculpture;
metallic clanks, touches
are my only reminder
that I’m real.