for reasons
known to them,
dear to them,
like to hide.
They have
unlisted numbers
with the phone company,
they wear scarves,
sunglasses,
they walk in the shadow of
buildings and trees,
they talk softly,
they answer their calls
by saying HELLO, hesitatingly,
they drive neutral coloured cars,
and they like to be UNSEEN
at poemhunter. And elsewhere.
But then, when the opportunity,
once in a lifetime perhaps,
arises where they could stand,
sit,
crouch,
dance
on the stage, any stage
anywhere,
they shed like dogs
who are afflicted
with acrodermatitis egotistica.
Beware!
Limelight, please!
I have nothing,
really nothing
to hide.
It’s just
that the bogeymen
and their cousins
are always
after me. Just me.
Why?
I hear voices,
lots of,
and mean ones,
vicious ones,
on that balcony
and in that pool,
from across the street,
from the spires of the basilika,
from the chimneys of
all of the hot and ugly
crematoria.
They talk, they whisper and
they sing about me,
not to me,
not at me,
not with me,
but about me.
Mean songs they are,
songs of oppression,
of malice and such,
and they never ever
not in this lifetime,
or in the past,
such historic proof,
stop, tone down or,
if they could, fly away.
I hide because
I have something,
a little bit of
sunshine perhaps,
or sugar plums,
or the Queen’s secrets,
or Oppenheimer’s papers.
To hide and to preserve.
Believe you me,
it is as I say, there are,
without a doubt,
and inevitably so,
ghosts, who will,
if you do let them
and their tentacles,
and all of their
razzamatazz,
come into
yours and mine,
it will surely be our undoing,
and for all it matters,
in the end,
by our hands,
hesitating, yes
but it must be
will be
as God will bless,
your beginning.
Thank us not now.
But hide as we do.
Be invisible
or they will,
in the end of ends,
get you.
Too.