The six of cups

Perhaps it's all a reflection, and a pale one at that; and if so, how does one change it? I don't know and I'm getting to the point where I feel that if it's all a rat-run then maybe it's time to disappear...

In my next dream I had the six of cups and so died in the afternoon of a Thursday and went straight to heaven to blow my trumpet most loud to announce my coming, but found myself blundering through a forest; oh-oh, I thought, must have taken a wrong turn. So I backtracked towards any love that I could find.

I thought of many things and places I’d been, but realised: that was all gone, and there was only now, and if there’s no love to be found in the now, then I surely am a poor man.

Well, it’s just a dream I said, to no one in particular, and carried on into the six of cups where I’d fled.

Tomorrow came so many times to wake me up, as I hurried towards it like a satellite around some small planet, grim faced and showing me the door.

After I’d found somewhere to hide where I could lie down and drift away, I just had to wonder: will tomorrow come tomorrow, or will it give me a miss and tell me in passing: this is your stop and it’s time to get off now.

I’m not sure what I can say to all this when it happens, so I blew off a few farts and jumped off the bus and went to sit on the wall where all my friends were dancing.

I couldn’t help it, I said then, I just had to wake up.

We know, said the fairies in the trees.

I know too, said the holy dancer in her death plot to fool the sky her love was not fools-gold.

This is the other side of the door here, said the angel in my path, around about here in the thing of it.

I will not sit on any more toad-stools for anything, I said, and skipped out of it holding up my rosary beads and spraying holy water everywhere.

We can see you, said the broken sky, soaking up the weeds where the effects of refuge was as distant as the moon.

You can, I said, a little bit surprised I was being spied upon.

You are in the six of cups: of course you are being spied upon.

This got me to being curious; and plunging onwards, I let out a cry to be found that came up short of where I’d aimed it in the six of cups.

A beaver, floating upriver, heard my cry and turned over and dived downwards 600 feet and took with it the six of cups until it was lost forever.

You know, sometimes I feel as if I’m breathing through a tube and not getting anywhere at all, I said, wondering where my guide was to help me through all this.

From another room came sounds of discrimination and condemnation that I picked up through my multiplying hearing-aid. It was something that I wanted to blow away into dust; and then I thought: there is no dust until obfuscation takes us away.

Hmm, where the hell, are we, I said, looking around?

Oh, aren’t we all having fun, said the TV, from the other room.

My beard was down to the ground by now and I was wondering if there would be any after-effects to liven me up like, and make me grin.

Are you feeling exhausted by now, said the wicked witch of whispers?

Startlingly, this almost cured me for a moment, until I remembered that the air conditioning was still on and it was costing me my life.

Many naked women came onto the stage to dance then and distract me, and I felt that I was being taken away by surprise once again where I most wanted to be.

I tried to blow my trumpet, but it wouldn’t work, and my lips were brandishing a pale colour of blue just as a neo-sign said: come away with me and I’ll show you the onions in their graves.

I had to think about this for as long as it took me to decipher it, and then, picking up my beard, I gave a mighty bow, and disappeared back into the wind where I came from.

image from Pixabay