my eyes were closed

My eyes were closed…

Slipping on wanderlust thru the funhouse

Standing before the wobbly mirror

I could feel my distorted lips part

Into what I think was a smile

My eyes were closed…

Continuing to move into shadows

Where I would consider never moving again

Collapsing into a fetal past

Covered in white face

I’d pantomime my pain

And lip-sync along with the show

My eyes were closed

As subtitles crossed my mind

When threats of darkness passing by

Laughed in foreign tongues…

Pointing at the ingenious details

Of the surreal boy

With the Cheshire yellow smile

My eyes were closed

And becoming wet

As more and more and more

Travelers cast their curious shapes

Across my face,

Strobing over-lapping languages

That spoke of pilgrims from arctic valleys

Who came to warm their hands

In the tears of the petrified angel

My eyes were closed

And thousands of generations were gone

When one foggy night

(long since the legends had died

 and the carnival kept alive

 by lingering ghosts of foreign beasts

 who bravely refused to speak American,

 had past away in dreams

 burnt away in books)

A femme fatale in a satin blue dress

Disguised in black and white

Caressed my back with her hair

Ending in a flip ripped off from Rita

Pretending to be a woman

She never could live up to

And never wanted to be

My eyes were closed…

My trembling fingers stretched out

To find her lips were parting

Into what I think was a smile,

And just as we were about to wipe 

Each other’s tears into a waterfall

Washing us clean to answers untold…

My eyes were closed

As they ripped apart and opened

To watch the late-late-late movie

Where two smiling clowns were kissing

At a carnival in a far-a-way land

That somehow looked like home

My eyes were closed…

But now wide alive

Traveling zero to zillion

To the start of my time

To the eastern frontier

I’ll meet the sunrise

And start over my day

With what I think is a smile

On my face…

Diving into the open sea 

With eternal open eyes

Swimming home to the funhouse,

Stopping to leave a stone prayer

By the memory of the boy who was petrified

But this time I’ll be walking out

The other side

With eternal open eyes.