A Protean Performance

A story with some rhymes thrown in

Runs from one place to another without moving.

Runs forward and backward without moving.

Runs up your back without moving runs with your legs.

There is a place where reflections catch the light in the glass mirror surface of the pool,

Where a look is taken at first glance and a second, third, fourth, fifth reading is not required.

Where you can go and see yourself naked and afraid.

This place is the Imagine-Tank.

Here you can shift perceptions with a raised eyebrow or make friends with a walrus

and honk at the pool attendant whilst shouting ‘more leaves’ more leaves’

You can dance with strangers with obsidian eyes and witness new rituals.

You can blow off the past in an instant and have it return and envelop you completely.

You can see the future and its an IKEA catalogue of words prices and pictures.

You can see the past, and if you dive in, you can grasp it and drag it to shore in pieces.

Dreams become real as Alice’s. Words become big and heavy like giant sausages stuck in your mouth.

And your family carry on with their lives as if nothing had happened.

And A Protean performance runs the show.

Walls have a quality that is architectural coloured and sublime

You are living in a place where the everyday meets the sublime

In a chemical haze, you blunder from room to room making friends as you go

ten lives in a box, could be a shoe box, could be ants could be bees! You don’t know.

moments last for days under intense scrutiny and seconds and minutes escape like water from your cupped hands. All that remains is the impression of time passing, like paint drying, you know its happening but its very difficult to see and to know when its good to stay or when its time to go.

Here you have a quality of the man as plucked from the eyes you knew and living and breathing the same air as you �" oxygen.

He is quick to learn and assimilate the new whilst remaining true to his past which is indicated by possessions blue, and stories told, of how he and she did build an illusion, and how the spectacular became the every day on dreams sold.

You sit with him and it’s as if you are a child seeing things for the first time crisis bold.

You ask silly questions and as time unfolds you realise you feel not up to the task again so to your room you return and contemplate your walls.

If only you had known this peace when stacking boxes and talking cheese. you feel born again in a temple of artistic harmony where anything is possible because you are all so cool and relaxed and able to focus on what is new and important. Well, you were not to know of the bees and the drugs and the new party line and the clothes beer and thugs gathered outside. When the end did come it was without warning and a reversal occurred and you were ejected into space like junk with a punch in the face and no thanks were heard.

As you gathered your senses into a shape they fell out again and through your fingers like the water  that was time and so sublime back then. Now you take stock and see you were used and that no good can come from the abuse you undertake a new beginning in a place of your choosing. But broken and dissolved it’s all you can do to drag yourself onto a bus to a new place.

It’s only years later when the seasons have  passed in a blur and you have the personal secure that you look up gain and see what could pass if you tried a little bit of this and a bit of that. and you sit in your web like a spider content with your larder and what you have in store for the present is good  like whisky.

Runs from one place to another without moving.

Runs forward and backward without moving.

Runs up your back without moving runs with your legs.

And your family carry on with their lives as if nothing had happened.

And A Protean performance runs the show.