No Casual Strangers Allowed

There she was sitting beneath a decaying Magnolia tree, Whistling the lamentations of the discontented, Absent mindedly flicking empty beer bottles into a arsenic pool, Hiding her soul from the pestilant sun And the bitter hope of yet another false dawn, I knelt beside her beneath the poc-marked Black boughs. And watched the ripples dying a painful death upon the stagnant water So skillfully posioned by man's skeletal hand I pleaded " this is no place for one so young who has the privilege of time dancing at their feet. These dung hills this poisoned land of wishful thinking and demented dreams Is only for lost causes, disappointed truth seekers and the battle weary who fought the world, Who spend their days taking obscure roads To pointless destinations. You must return to paths narrow and straight, Where bitter words shrivel and wither beneath the radiance of a fulsome moon" She wants to speak but I say, "Please don't tell me your ills my wisdom is As deep as that toxic pool. There is no cure no hidden medicine upon This parasitic breeze" But she weeps, "Why can't they leave me be to my rhyming And my poetry, I was obedient you see believed all the lies They told me never realised they're reducing My life to office cubicle mediocrity And now they want more, Body beautiful is what they say, a perfect life with white shiny teeth," I sigh " the world is what the world is they Will never be satisfied " I take her gently by the hand and lead her back To the mist that poets and madmen cannot Pass I kiss her on the cheek and hand her a tattered copy of Yeats 'The land the Heart's desires ' I whisper "your pasture will be greener Your sky the deepest blue and you will bathe in crystal clear springs of the mind, Your soul is for you alone" As she vanishes into a haze I hope she gone forever and never returns to this empty God forsaken land.