CategoryIssue 17 Issues Lightroom Poets Vol. III

The Joker and The Crystal Maiden – by Lightroom Poets

September 15, 2012 Off By Lightroom Poets

One fairytale too real
This story I weave
Don’t know if you’ll feel
Or if you’ll even believe
That a joker can actually love…

I used to get dreams
About a joker and his tears
The smile covered screams
And the mask covered fears

Let me tell you a story. Being a story, it’s all truly fictional. It’s about a joker. He had a funny on and had a funny little walk and just like all jokers, he wasn’t allowed to cry!Well anyways, enough from me. I’ll let the joker talk now. After all, it’s HIS story!

The Crystal maiden, well what can I say
She loved my dreams, so took them away
I loved her though, may be I still do
But love, was an emotion that she never knew

You know, as in every story, there’s a girl in this too. The girl who made the joker laugh… Crystal, let that be her name. The girl, for whom I became a joker. She was the reason… she was the result.

I’ve got best friends who remain nameless
And I’ve got foes inside my head
I thought of dreams that I’ll have in white
But when they came, they were all red

I made her believe that ‘we’ are real! But shaky, was her faith. The practical world was too strong for her to ignore. What followed was a “mutual understanding” as she called it. Not even an ‘end’ to things. Only a dotted line to prolong the misery …

I’m yet to fathom, who owes a favour?
Did I set you free?
Or was it you, who set me free
And did the honours for me?

Now I sometimes wonder who should be credited for this new found freedom. Was it I who gave you wings, by walking away? Or as it you who gave me the strength to walk away and be free? But forgot how to be free really… entrapped by the memories of the crystal maiden…

Doesn’t matter, whatever I start
I always end with you
Between the feelings, happy and sad
I find my end in you

Actually, the corner stone of my life so far, has always been my cage. My crystal maiden.. She’s been in my pictures of celebration all this while. Now that she’s gone, when I see those pictures of my moments of celebrations, all I see is her face…. And my failure being celebrated.

Cruel, how we pretend nothing happened
It’s funny how we still are “friends”
Funny, how I feel the same way still
Even with this dividing fence

Something fragile, can also be the hardest to break you know. Hard, it is for me to emulate her. To re-name her as “friend”. On the other side of the fence, I still cling on to the railing, looking at the footsteps she left as she walked away. And when I try? I start and end with her …

The joker and the crystal maiden lived
Two separate secluded lives
The crystal maiden takes it all and leaves
The joker never got, for what he strives

It’s always been like that you know. I applauded when she won the world over with her charm as she celebrated my failure. Even I loved being a failure, to give her little reasons to feel good about herself. I wanted her to win. I wanted her to see that she has won me over,…. And over and over and over … And now, I wonder if she ever took note of that.

Living in denial, now I
I do not buy that fact that you are gone
My life has been full of lows, no highs
All yours to decide, for me there is none

Sometime, it gets hard to believe that she’s gone. I still make a fool of myself, half expecting her to ridicule me and giggle like a little girl. From what I see, my life is full of highs, for I could make her laugh with the absolute lows of my life.

The first and last laughs you had
I always loved to see you smile
I just failed to imagine a time
When your laughter will kill me for a while

She had a smile to die for… Just didn’t know that she’ll kill me with it, this way. She didn’t let me touch her, as she bade goodbye. She said she didn’t want to shed crystal tears. My fragile crystal maiden. But why did she smile when I turned away?

“You knew, this would happen
Now, don’t stir a scene”
Crystal stole ‘life’
From the joker and his grin