A Prowler's Lament

 

And as the statue moves its fingers and opens its eyes, the dragon stares hard with its fiery red eyes, glowing with bewilderment. The statue steps from the podium and makes its way into the street and the heart of this newfound town. Silently merging in with the pouring crowd of machines which look like humans, some of them kings, some of them knights and a whole lot of queens. All of them, with glazed glossy eyes, but so dark and dead that it pierces you right to your soul, if you have one.

There are also the wizards, with eyes so hollow that one glimpse is enough to show how dead they are from the inside but look deeper and it acts as a mirror which shows what you are, how burdened are you with all your lies and your misery, how you’ve built up another you totally different from the one who you really are.. But who can really tell who the real you is when one does not know who the real me is…

 

And then there are the mystics, the dreamers as well as the drifters.                Oh what a sight they present.

Colours fly in every direction as they arrive, smoke before they actually do, a smoke looking through which one can view the whole spectrum of light breaking into seven colours but dare to look beyond and you will see every colour colliding with air to form just one pattern, a pattern which is not a pattern, call it whatever you may want, but it can never be defined as defining it would destroy it. A pattern of nothingness, of void, of black… No wonder they call themselves the Mystics, from the faraway lands but alas present in every speck of our monotony.

 

Try to look at them individually and all you see is a blur, loitering around, but look at them as a whole and you would see so much more of them, much more than just a blur. Such a paradox it remains, look at different components individually and there is nothing but looking at all of them together you see real individuality.

Or is it just another thought? One of those which seem like a shadow you catch from the corner of your eye when you’re sitting and reminiscing. Or like the enchanting view right outside your window when you have your rosy glasses on, a wreck of concrete, rubble and ash when you take those off.

Take a step back and fall onto your bed of stone and watch as the flames engulf you, devour you till the bone, ecstasy taking over your senses, the fire so cold it freezes you and numbs your ego, the dancer, without a self or conscious, without an identity or definition lifts itself up and drifts out of the window, expanding on both the ends to merge with the orange ground underneath and the purplish black sky above.

The ground trembles and particles fly in every direction,

Alas the statue walks on, the statue walks alone, eyes as stone as the bed you fell upon, the statue walks on…

 

Reviews

[Willard Wells]

The imagery is great and a really good prose. I could see the statue stepping down from guarding the temple gates to walk to the city center. Great feel to this piece. Thanks,

[Karthik Narayan]

Thank you Willard. Glad you liked it.