printable version PDF version

Déjà vu
by ives Wednesday, Feb 13 2013, 11:29am
international / poetry / post

walking again
always walking
through forests
of the living
forests of the dead
merging at times
so no distinction
is discernable

people imagine i
live on
a page
a screen
a medium
not so
i walk through existence
like a bleeding phantom
one green breathing tree
in a petrified forest
that died and turned to stone
so many aeons ago
it aches

so i walk
searching for life
not the living dead
whose souls have been captured,
bottled and placed
on never-ending shelves
in the corridors of hell
they are unaware they have sold
their immortality -
they mill in cities
like a tide of blind
moles

sometimes i am asked
for my ticket
to enter
so i produce a poem
to confound kings
and scholars
the gatekeeper reads
glancing up occasionally
as though encountering a line
meant for him alone

it gets me through
into other realms
but there’s no escaping
the milling hordes
the living dead,
automatons slaving,
performing tasks
for the benefit of others

sometimes, enough times
i encounter another walker
we exchange glances of recognition
being careful not to alert
the drones to an alternative reality
or that something unusual
is transpiring under their noses

déjà vu is not a sensation
it’s an action,
reality piercing the fog of illusion
alerting the sojourner to avoid
previously trodden,
tired trails