How The Tyrant Always Fails

How The Tyrant Always Fails
© Surazeus
2024 11 12

The bedroom window frames the silver sky 
with memories of afternoons years ago 
when the curious child, always asking why, 
got lost in dream of the conceptual show, 
so now she drives forever on the road, 
searching for secret grove of the God Toad. 

Portraits of ancestors who were never real 
hang silently judgmental by the door 
while someone keeps asking, "How do you feel?" 
now that knowledge is not true anymore, 
though faces on the television screen 
seem illusions of the vision machine. 

Imprisoned in old books of photographs 
to rearrange the past with paper trails, 
she stops outside the video store and laughs, 
then dances ballet on rusty train rails 
to prove that voices in telephone lines 
are ghosts of demons in the mountain pines. 

While passing empty store by the bus stop, 
she tells her spirit animal, the Wolf, 
that she wants to open small knitting shop 
where she can sell mittens to Beowulf 
to keep his hands warm when he fights the Worm 
because their son is lawyer for the Firm. 

When I was younger, head full of grand plans, 
I ran past each obstacle toward my goal, 
but I got lost in jungle of Tarzans, 
so now I drift, mutating with each role, 
to wander wherever my heart may lead, 
for living day by day is now my creed. 

In the middle of nowhere on the road, 
she stares at name of some town on green sign 
that seems to contain secret psychic code 
preserving key to grand cosmic design, 
so she copies thoughts in her Book of Spells, 
then weeps at distant ringing of church bells. 

The God Toad, whose eyes have seen the first flash 
that flares forth into galaxies of worlds, 
reveals the secret of earning more cash 
for driving fast cars to impress cute girls, 
but when she gives him mass wafer to eat 
he vomits bars of gold as bales of wheat. 

Her computer screen frames the universe 
within contrived ontology of faith, 
so she attends college to be the nurse 
who heals mental wounds of the global wraith, 
then relaxes at home to read spy tales 
that detail how the tyrant always fails.