Addressing the state of the onion

something i wrote half a century year ago, and which I've dredged up from the labyrinthine sewers of my personal archives to show y'all how prescient I can be (in hindsight).



Suddenly we felt alive
as the veil of lassitude
circumscribing our manifest destinies
all this while
was lifted off and cast aside
by an unseen hand, which some few
imagined to be divine, wearing rings of
pure gold adorned with sapphires
and emeralds and rubies and
crafted by the finest artisans, while others
less devout suspected the hand of the
fiendish blue-eyed courtesan
who dances round the graves of
unwed mothers on moonless nights

The rest of us didn't give a toss,
caught up in the moment,
hugging and kissing,
jumping up and down
and twirling and whirling and turning
cartwheels in the sweet-smelling air,
chattering away incessantly
on orgasmically multifunctional
cellular phones, till we were overcome
by our newfound sense of vitality
and fell in to loose military formation
on an unheard command
to watch, ba-jamaat, a million
high-definition plasma tvs displaying
a million and one tv channels broadcasting
in tongues alien and native

Breathing heavy from the exertion
and the excitement, yet
smiling gaily, weighing our options
now that life was restored and
stunning vistas visible to the native eye
beckoned coquettishly, too busy
all the while to notice the veil
that fell silently upon us once more
and we were, once more, to be counted
among the living dead

(minos - march 2007)