Nightmare in Wonderland

Ever been to Wonderland?
You know, like when you’re strolling
And smiling with no reason at hand
The sun’s shining, no one’s whining,
the grassland’s rolling, time’s crawling
On and all’s as good as you’d never planned
All’s as good and slow and right, by Jesus… and presto!
You’re FALLING
Next moment, off a cliff you never knew existed
Like the ground had a split and you missed it
It’s night, Jesus Christ, there is no light
Now you ain’t crawling, no, now you’re falling
Now you ain’t beaming, gee, now you’re screaming
And falling, and screaming, till you know you’re dreaming
And then you wake up, tucked up in bed
You smile and swear and sweat all over your head
You turn and push the switch on the bedstand
You stare up and about, reach out for a hand
Of whoever you love… you know, that’s when you understand
The place you’ve been, the thing you’ve just seen
Was just another show in your little Wonderland.

Yeah, it’s a show, that’s what I’ll say
A show of shocks and laughs and magic, if you may
Of sunny nights and invisible lights
And ghosts and giants and spooky boogiemen
That’s right, yes, but every now and then
Those monsters will speak, like the clown of It
And show you a place where Shinola turns to shit
Where there is no God, there is no fright
Where sins are welcome, where sick is right
That’s when you’ll know how dark you can be
And just which demons you’ll always see
That’s when you’ll open your eyes well past sunrise
Stretch for a moment and wait for memory to lend
And then turn cold, curse and beg to pretend
Oh, you never dreamed, for you never screamed
And oh, you never beamed, so you never dreamed
That’s when the shock is not just in the end
That’s when you’ll cry, and maybe even spend
The rest of your days getting over the scare
Of dreamscapes and that solitary nightmare.

My stupid take on luck

If nights could qualify as dreams, this would certainly be a nightmare, thinks the stranger. It is, indeed, the winter’s coldest night. He spots a bench nearby, empty on account of the time and the night, and takes seat. He is fortunate there is a lamppost close by, gifting him a measure of heat.

The wind brushes against his bare arms, and he reacts with a shiver that has more than a passing resemblance to being assaulted by an army of ice picks. He pulls his woolen muffler closer around his face, rubs his palms together in hope of some relief and looks heavenward. The lines on his forehead and around his eyes—the scars of age— and the ones on his face—those of life—deepen in agony. He doesn’t pray, for he has no faith in God. Instead, he reflects.

The night is cold, the winds are high and here I am, parked with an ancient piece of rag on my body and a borrowed bit of wool to shield my face. No stars above me, no moon. All is dark, and this darkness has a depth more than any night ought to have. And yet…yet I feel as if I am blessed.

The stranger is truly perplexed by this feeling, for it seems to have no buttress. Another gust of wind takes care of that, making him shudder. His body feels sore. The night’s outrageous callosity seems to be the perfect end to a long and utterly unrewarding day. There was not a coin of currency in his pocket and not much to go in the name of food in his stomach. He slips out of his slippers, starts as a momentary chill races through his spine when his feet touch the pavement, and then curls up on the bench, upright. His face tilts slightly to the left as he closes his eyes. He falls asleep in the same position, and dies.

***

The specter is thus: A mountainside street lined by pines, a bench among the many that dot the street side, a man curled up on it, and a sodium lamp in the vicinity that casts a ghostly light on him. The street is deserted of all human bustle.

The wind screams and moans in turn. It is wholly devoid of humanity, for it gets colder in rage. The pine trees sway in eerily concerted harmony, seemingly out of respect to the might of the wind. Fallen pine needles fly about in abandon as new amigos join them every now and then. A bunch lands on the departed stranger’s pate, and the image is now unexplainably and utterly complete.

A bard and a casual onlooker shall equally have construed it so: The night is dark—the blackness would have been total but for the stars and the full moon, and of course their man-made imitations, the streetlamps. A man crowned by pine and a halo of yellow effulgence rests on a bench with an expression of otherworldly peace frozen on his face.

Not even those entirely unblessed with poetic sense could have missed the metaphor. It was the corpse of a man in peace. His eyes are closed, and there ends the vision of the ignorant.

The better informed would go a step further and tell the world a tale of darkness and destiny. The stranger wasn’t new to the city, or the street. He was a stranger in a sense that transcends tangibility. He was blind and mute. For him every day was night and only habit had led him to believe otherwise. He was a beggar with no ambitions or direction. For brevity, he was a stranger to life.

Now he was dead. And in his dying moments, he had come to terms with an inexplicable truth. He had realized that he, blind to the sight of blood beneath the coruscating stars, mute to the treacherous touch of diaphanous words, and privy only to the darkness within, was perhaps the luckiest man in the world.