Pulled from the ConFest Vault

Dredge your garden for mutants,
stake out forests for fictions,
follow an endless path; it is
hardly easy to say, "this dumb
little trinket has lit my dark".

I light an incense stick; my boots muddy the frayed strips of pink and purple carpet. All the trees attain machine-like perfection in the back-lights. Thousands of faces twitch and writhe; bellies heave, symbols and strings are plied, plucked, and the chai tent's cup rental policy is seldom taken for a ride (such is the goodwill supervening.)

From under her massive lampshade, no view of the monstering night.

Downcast faces beat a rhythm of empty-eyed togetherness, beat through incense fog
and languid steam and tea light bags
burn like brown sacks of disclosure, thicket spikes stick
into calluses on feet, elbows, thighs knee-deep in chalky grey mud;
collapsed tents, tee-pee canvas water-stained, and everywhere
butterflies flutter on a stiff breeze of good luck omens, banana-skin
cloudlets and a girl with one leg shaved, the other a fuzzy forest to worship in.

And children parting crowds with velveteen hands,
and silken cobwebs snaring sunset surfers,
and loot lessons left 'til later; drums,
drummed into giddy oblivion,
and chess board tables footballed clear.

Naked sun salutes, nakedness on parade
as tailored suits another leaden day, dreadlocked
dancers lost in ecstatic silent space,
soothsayers spinning skipping ropes aflame,
the bitter kick of unsweetened Chai
rapturous renditions of the English
alphabet by illegal campfires- prettiest
girls on earth a bevy of signets, flock
of good luck omens.

Like rivulets running uphill
their bodies betray the secret
rituals of heaven, book-bound
magic of Eden aroused in body odour
birthed by those dizzying modal
movements of our origin;

we with jester hats on watch them,
we declare our love for lines
of rhapsodic strangers, laugh at
laughter, scream until our skin is
pimpled; we exercise, amidst all
of this clownish contrivance,
our forsaken capacities.

For silent hours I sit, patiently observing each person's response to this, to their upheaval. Weird women weep for the incurable lack in our souls, goddesses glimpse truth in shooting stars on mushrooms, others blush at bare dicks but nod with approval at that 'modular intimacy' picket sign, and children who know no other Easter gather eggs by the tantric massage tent; tennis court dotted with hard boiled good luck omens.

A misty jealousy claws at my half-open heart; to fill a womb,
to hurl musical rejoinders without embarrassment,
to upbraid the selfish,
to harbour no ill-will toward my physical defects, to abolish 'defect'
from my endless game of dialectics, to climb a log outcrop in the frigid Murray
with only one arm, to care nothing for the slant of sunlight
illumining my arse for no-names, to walk barefoot over morning dew
and not feel I have suffered -
to be as impressed by a single human as I am
this carnival of humanity but who - who will it be?
There are many candidates, many good luck omens.
To help a lost girl home. To trust a man in a loin cloth. To believe in redemptive activity for the soul -
to believe in more than monism, to grasp the sacred influence of India
when I see no Indians here.