The Virgin Tour

Do you smell fishy here,
in this corner, or any other
empty, dusty smell?
It’s here mostly I’ve confronted
with fate: my friend and foe.

Listen to this record, but
don’t be a harsh judge
and tell the tale at the well,
for no other I’ll give a tour
inside this mossed cottage.

“Fate, did you raise me
from a stinking gutter
to a mountain height;
instead, from mountain height
to a stinking gutter, to fall me
again to that stinking gutter?

You should know
I’ve been
caught in a conflict;
I’m like an arecanut
caught,
with no chance for a miraculous escape,
between the blades
of an arecanut cutter;
I’ve been caught between my love
for my teacher, my life-long
friend, guiding star
and
my fellow students.

This
me versus others conflict
is doubled by my untamed
fingers in my right hand
that deny just copying
my thoughts: logical, rational thoughts,
that flow like a mad flood
that my weak finger-banks
have failed to push against,
or like an unleashed wild-buffalo
often taunts me.

See
my peer students have boycotted
classes
but since I, like
Dickensian Blackpool,
cannot take any sides
have been oft, bullied
by fellow rivals
by guarding their mouths
but showering my ears,
when I am afar,
with jackals’ welcome notes,
while my star does not see
how my untamed, weak fingers
waste the flood of thoughts.

I know you’ve your own plan for me,
but give me one chance
to resist you and find my own fate.
When Sun starts plodding back home
today,
I’ll follow him, leaving this dormitory,
and restarting my life again as a worm
in that stinking gutter”.

 

Copyright © August 12, 2018, Newton Ranaweera
Image source: Pixabay