Carnival

From the album Tigerlily

I’ve walked these streets, a virtual stage, it seemed to me. Makeup on their faces, actors took their places next to me. I’ve walked these streets in a carnival of sights to see. All the cheap thrill seekers, the vendors, the dealers, they crowded around me.

Have I been blind? Have I been lost inside myself, my own mind hypnotized, mesmerized by what my eyes have seen?

I’ve walked these streets in a spectacle of wealth and poverty. In the diamond market the scarlet welcome carpet that they just rolled out for me. I’ve walked these streets in the madhouse asylum, they can be where a wild-eyed misfit prophet on a traffic island stopped and he raved of saving me.

Have I been blind? Have I been lost inside myself and my own mind, hypnotized, mesmerized by what my eyes have seen? Have I been wrong? Have I been wise to shut my eyes and play along? Hypnotized, paralyzed by what my eyes have found, by what my eyes have seen, what they have seen?

Have I been blind? Have I been lost? Have I been wrong? Have I been wise? Have I been strong? Have I been hypnotized, mesmerized by what my eyes have found in that great street carnival, in that carnival?