Sunday, February 15, 2009

Sphinx

As I was walking,
Down that endless highway,
I roamed and rambled and followed my footsteps,
Till I came upon a crossroads,
Between the everlasting ways of Love and Life.

To my surprise,
At the old crossroads,
Was a Sphinx,
Resting,
Guarding the road,
Feasting on fools,
Dumb enough to cross her path.

So there I walked,
Dumb enough to cross her path,
But wise enough to keep my distance,
I prepared myself for a perplexing puzzle,
And the very real possibility of a gory death.

To lessen my chances,
Of a bloody, gory death,
And gain the Great Sphinx's favor,
I started petting and caressing the Great Sphinx,
Till she was purring in a strange and passionate voice,
Writhing in ecstasy and intoxicated joy.

My touch did not sway the great beast,
But between salty Nile tears,
She gave me this arcane riddle:

"What is the one thing you can always and forever have, but never have as well?"

I knew the answer right away,
It came to me in a matter of seconds,
I screamed:

"The answer is YOU!!"

We both knew I was right,
Then in the most horrible way,
The old Sphinx started devouring herself:
First went the tail,
Then the torso,
Then the claws,
And finally the human head.

After that,
All I could hear was the distant roar,
Of the Sphinx,
From the aeons of infinity,
So I kept on walking,
Down that endless highway,
I roamed and rambled and followed my footsteps,
Till I finally found the field,
Where the sunlight blurs and roses fade.*


*I borrowed that last saying from a grave I saw when I visited my dad's grave. The actual saying is "The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade."

I hope this poem (I actually think it is kind of prosaic) will carry the torch of Sphinx literature that other great writers such as Sophocles, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oscar Wilde,etc. have written about in the past.

1 comment:

Zarina said...

wow thats some awesome stuff
i like how you're getting longer and more story oriented with it.


i cant say i can decipher what the sphinx is though