The Call of the Golden Goose

He stumbled along, and fell down

And screamed, just screamed at the wall.

He rose again, after the fall,

Unchecked rage, a clarion call

That benefits neither him nor the wall.

So he chided himself to calm down

And as the ensuing hours crawl

He remembers himself before the fall,

Before these bricks became a wall,

A beggar of chance and time's low crawl,

A ghost, screaming at the wall,

Screaming, just screaming at the wall

That never falls down, down, down

Like the man who's ghost,

Importunate, wanders

With weary resolve, wanders

With aching loss, wanders

With wistful delight, wanders

Forever unresolved, wanders

Down, down, down,

Lost, like the forlorn ghost,

Screaming at the wall,

The phantom of a man

Who once took a great fall,

The wanderer of the wastes

Who got sick of it all,

And sat down in a soothing shade

To acknowledge a debt unpaid,

Pushed to the brink again,

Beyond the wailing wall,

Beyond the failing call,

Beyond life's low crawl,

Weak and weary, wandering.

Unresolved complexity,

Amor Fati, destiny,

The broken tale of you and me,

In the labyrinth built

Brick by brick

With pain and guilt

Yet never quick,

Never gilt, the sick

Low, slow uneven crawl

Of the life of man,

The importunate ghost

Who screamed at the wall.

***** * *****

What remains but hope?

Better than the dangling rope,

The noose offered as halo

Which slowly slips down and around;

A game of rope a dope!

Each knot untied, retied, retried,

Hoisted by muscle which burdens plied

Into sinewy steel, a rough ride.

Each brick scaled with callused feet,

He overcomes, he does not retreat!

His ghost screams at the wall,

Screams at him to fall, fall, fall!

Down, down, down, but no,

He strains, he scales the height,

But he wanders, standing tall!

He is not his ghost nor his scream,

His life is more than a dream

Within a dream within a dream,

But all that he would see or seem

Would be a blissful nothing,

Wandering feet and wistful loving

Without the need for betrothing,

Territorial pissing, pushing, or shoving,

He wanders amidst the echo,

The creep of life slow and low,

The echo, the echo, the echo

Of the phantom screaming

Against the lonely, lonely wall,

So long as he can stand

Or even if he has to crawl,

And no matter the fall,

NO MATTER THE FALL,

He scales the wall

And slips the noose

And hears the call

Of the Golden Goose.

This is an entry for Gabriel Huizenga's Lost-ish Challenge: