Rambling Summations

I tell you now, true as I stand,
tonight I walked and I saw a man,
with a problem in his hand.
His Rubik’s Cube was a hexagon,
and though he twisted the toy,
the corners refused to align as he had planned.

Behind this man, just by few steps,
his son shouted “ladies and gentlemen”
lost in play behind the man he loves, not yet respects.
The boy he seemed thrilled and innocent,
as he imitated his father’s walk,
while “Dad” was lost in geometric predicaments.

I watched this duo slide past me and time,
and I was struck by how much it resembled my life,
in ways I could not quite recite and describe.
So I travelled on the downhill of my days,
but the scene replayed stubbornly,
and presently pleaded some analysis from my mind.

Maybe I was just like the man,
and I spend my days looking at my hands,
if only to force dubious matters to a plan.
Occupied by ideas that at the very best,
will amount to dull pencils and filthy hands,
as I walk past life itself just to meet my absurd demands.

Or maybe I am more like the boy,
when I jest and play during our merriments,
performing for smiles without a further ploy.
Except, would a child frolic with vanity?
Because I am fun only when I yearn for flattery,
as means of mending for pertinent sensations of feeling coy.

Oh, better yet, I must be like the mum,
Who was absent, unseen and gone,
while the young and old men greedily kept their fun.
Because, I admit, I’m entirely sure,
A whole wretched world might as well exist beyond my door,
yet I would find little more than what I see when my blue curtains are not drawn.

No, I concluded after some consideration,
I thought not of my life from sympathies to the cast.
The event was actually enlightening only by association.
Symbolic of my days as a whole,
a summation of my journey in a minute or two,
however clumsy the disposition.

Call it clumsy, for it left me practically indisposed.
apart from the arrangements,
a spectator of an autobiography metaphorically told.
Like I had sat down with Shakespeare,
and accounted my summer-time dreams,
only to find no part of myself as I watched the Bard’s plays unfold.

I travelled forth, calling you to pass my tales on,
But you informed me that lamentably my concerns were unknown.
Only if Dylan would put it to you in a song,
you might catch some meaning,
deem it profound,
and tell me mankind has felt this way ever long.

I passed some houses, and began to stipulate,
formulate an expression adequate,
something naïve and firm, sweet and thoughtful, and maybe a little affectionate.
Something to repeat when dashing down cold corridors,
that form a part of my ruthless escapes.
Simply put, something that could relate.

And, as I am no prophet, I came up with this:

While I watched the man and boy pass by,
I must have began to calculate:
Summing up all the times the axis spun the globe,
And divided the times I was a humble passenger,
In anonymous cars, metros, busses, trains and occasional planes.
Multiplied by times I played and over-estimated the great events of my life in my head,
and recorded all ideas by hand.
Only to find that in the end, the summation said
“Now and then I wish some of these situations had been felt instead”.

By JPV

Copyright October 2005