Thanks Brenda. I like your playings.
I wrote the same idea as a freeform too. It's a good exercise to write the same thing in different forms, I think.
Best wishes,
K
Verse libra #2The young people are arriving
for this street theatre menage thing,
and they look like a bunch of scarecrows,
(penny for the guy,)
I remember making effagies long ago
when we dressed our stick and cloth people
in old clothes,
and like armaggedon,
when the graves will open,
here are resurrected discarded rag-pile people
congregating.
Yet they all seem to be so happy.
I don't understand.
Well, I know they are poor,
most of them unemployed,
but they could find something halfway decent
in the opshops to wear,
if they wanted to do it.
Maybe that's significant in some way.
I notice that they seem to favour little knitted beenies
and layer on layer of cotton or wool garments
irregardless of colour or style,
and they all wear leather shoes, mostly sandals,
or else they just go barefoot.
They must have dressed like this on purpose,
perhaps it is a subculture of the young
who eschew all the rules,
subvert the dominant paradigm.
Oh yes! They are here to support each other
and to participate in alternatives;
they buy things from the art displays,
and the aromatherapy stall
spread out on the floor
beside the face painting girl
who is doing quite a business there
as people weave past the massage table
sipping mulled wine
and eating oriental fast food
cooked just over here
next to the banner asking for signatures
to protest against
the destruction of forests and
the freeing of political prisoners and
multinational domination and
the protection of wildlife.
There is a girl on stilts dressed as a tree,
she dances to music from the stage,
where they sing of
social injustice and
racial dysharmony and
personal pain and
they sing the precious beauty of our planet.
Some of the talent is amazing,
that girl's voice is exquisite,
the passion in their songs and poems is tangible.
Emotion seems to
sweep the crowd as
people spontaneously rise
to dance with the tree-lady;
some are dressed
to match her wild spirit,
wearing leaves and flowers,
shells and dangling pendants,
most of them hand made, and
they have feathers in their hair;
one girl has an Indian headdress.
Their dances are just as individual as they are,
some are swaying, some cavorting wildly,
all of them seem happy and fulfilled.
When I wander out to have a smoke
I see that a boy with dreadlocks
has set up a blacksmith's forge
where he is making tongs and ornaments
which he gives away,
"I have no need for money," he tells me,
smiling happily, his face lit like
a saint's in an old painting.
Behind him in the side street
another group are twirling fire sticks,
where a girl dressed as a tiger
dances absorbed in her personal tigerness,
and suddenly I realise
I am in the presence of an army
defending Gaia.