my imaginary past

i was born and crept up my mother’s breast and drank my fill
till she pushed me off into a pink cradle and i slept and
knew no difference between myself and allaroundme, no concept
of my body ending somewhere and the environment starting
at the edge of my skin

and then and then i grew up and didnt go to school
because i was too smart, too ugly, too small, too spoilt
by my everloving parents and i went into the forest instead
and played with serpents and pineneedles and cooked weedcake
with red roots and prickly seeds and i travelled roundmyworld

in a flowerpot with a garden hose round my shoulders

and later i had to study how to grow up but i didnt manage to

stayed small, beautiful, fat and curious

was visited sometimes by nightmares in the daytime,
strangled them before they hatched, applied magic ointments,
searched the clouds for the past, ran from gurus, looked for
fallen stars, tried on masks, turned lascivious,
interviewed passing midgets, tempted gays, wondered about
blacks, constructed loaded questions to discover hidden cupboard
truths, had coffee with e.t.
              sipped panaceas personally recommended by guardian
angel, turned to stone under some gorgon’s gaze, pining
for rebirth, fireworks of the third kind

sneering at the warming globe, dripped on through the ozone
hole, alerted for the rising of the waters, melting of the
icecaps, invasions by polarbears, whales, feeling responsible
for the deluge god turned on when mankind bored him

suddenly blossomed into a dancer, tangoed languideyed
spanish burning, burst into fame, plummeted into boredom
changed direction, became mother of twins, deposited them
on traditional doorstep, turned into a man, penetrated
orifices, was excommunicated, rose from the dead,
turned into a musician drumming, an actor draped in
windingsheets, a fawn in the woods, a tiger burningbright,
at home in the unknown, never worshipping any gods or devils,
needing no satoris, changing mercilessly, swimming in tepid
seas with sealice and plankton, swallowed painlessly by
whales, tickling octopus, turned into a mermaid ~
sacrificed nothing for the love of the soulful prince,
grew no wrinkles, looked at no mirrors onthewall, stayed

the fairestofthemall
breathed at cows’ bellies, looked through frostflowered
windows at the snowqueen with andersen, rode merrygorounds
with existentialists, turned into a sunbeam, resting on the
camel’ s hump could not squeeze through the needle’s eye,
grew muscles of butter and steel, or fish and chips, turned
into a melody, swung in ripples through your nightmares,
neither got married nor stayed single, nor gave birth, nor
knew death, nor enjoyed relativity or the purpose of the
cosmos or myself …

why dont you try to compose a fictitious autobiography
ignoring facts, see how they keep butting their greedy
beady heads in to get at you

Lucy Raig