My Crazy Shadow

[Delta40]

My reservation
for the looney bin
casts its crazy shadow
on the cobblestones
and I freeze in the middle
of the marketplace.
Oh God, not here.
Please.
I watch how it dances and weaves
to an Indian snake charmer,
its hair rising like Medusa
as it leaps from stall to stall,
sliding down pillars
to lose itself to me in the crowd.
I can hear hissing,
dark laughter rattling
violenty against that primitive cage
stored inside of me.
A vendor grabs my arm.
Everyone's going bananas today love.
I break free too,
past the exotic smells
the hypnotic music,
and the beautiful clothes
to find the one thing
that I know will fit.

[Alexander III]

That was quite a good peice, I very much liked the twist ending.

[AuntShecky]

It took me a while to figure out the antecedent for "it" but then I realized what it was.

This short piece seems to me a highly accurate recap of the symptoms of agoraphobia, or the kind of panic some of us occasionally feel in public--the "agora" actually means "marketplace."

Up here in the states there's a commercial for some prescription medication to treat depression, and in the animation the depression itself is a coat that follows the suffering lady wherever she goes, till finally (after the advertised pill goes down the hatch) it goes to sulk in a corner. The point of that commercial--and more so your poem--is that the ailment is like a separate entity from the person who's afflicted by it.

This piece takes an abstract idea and very effectively shows it in concrete terms.

You continue to astound and delight me, Delta!

[Delta40]

I didn't know that agora means marketplace Auntie but how odd that I would use 'marketplace' as a location for panic....I like to make the most of these observations rather than brush them off as mere coincidence!

[dyne7]

yea it is a great ending. i like how you parsed the piece bit by bit as well. it did wonders for the pacing

[Buh4Bee]

Hah! This is a fun piece. Me and my shadoOOO strolling down the avenue...