The Blind Man

I opened my eyes

And a sunray crawled upon my skin,

But I couldn’t see a thing, not a thing.

Warm, wet membranes cradled my eyeballs

And all around me was a haze of red,

My blood and veins

Groping in the dark for those that had once been a part of me,

I saw none revolving around.

When I touched them, all were alien

And all that had seemed alien to my eyes

Slithered in my mind

Hysterical and desperate, I pulled the membranes,

But my elastic lovers returned to me,

Slapping my eyes, each time harder than before

A fanatic fire burned my entrails, leaving nothing but

Ashes of my sweet comfort

I could feel it rushing up my throat to be spurted out,

The vomit of complacent living,

Fearful of the fire which threatened to consume and conjure away

Little and big things that defined all it was

And all it had made me become.

My petrifying screams brought none who could help

So I sat where the breeze touched me

And the warmth softly clung to my skin.

All the while I could sense their presence before the footsteps started ringing in my head,

They just stood silently and stared.

I whined and wept and then slowly let it grow on me,

The blindness of belief and disbelief

And like ivy, it soaked all sunlight and killed the plant it grew on.

Learning to feel, understand and know anew

The recent I walked the streets again.

I shed my clothes, thoughts

And then I saw it all in the dark-

The heavy load of acquired actualities, the sweet dream floating in vacuum

Liberated I ran haywire, joyous to be free,

Happy to find myself within me

Soon I tripped and cried for none of this had happened.

It had just been a dream within a dream,

Like this one is.

I touched and redefined shapes for that was all I could do

And wandered into a dream within all of those

I pleaded with I don’t know who

And prayed to see again, to return to what I had shunned before

The new world had become old; the old would be new again

Then one day I woke up to find the membranes gone and the world alight

My happy eyes soaked in all that it hadn’t seen in a while.

But I stood transfixed amidst the beauty of it all

Incredulous to see those that I had seen

To find that they had always been

The world was still a red haze, the people still stared

The blindness had forever tied itself to me.