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Remember that fantastic journey over there in Oz, where the yellow brick road took you to the wonderful wizard and a pair of magic slippers brought you back home? Well, imagine Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tinman and Lion returning to the Wizard a year later with complaints. What would those complaints sound like? How would the Wizard respond? Well, thanks to the creative mind of Ion, several poets have taken the challenge of reconstructing that journey to let the Wizard know that everything that glitters ain't gold.
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Tin Man
by Ion
Copyright: © 2008
Wizard, a year ago you told me how lucky I was not to have a heart.
That they’d never be practical till they be made unbreakable,
still I desired it none the less.
You were right. This plight is that of mad men, not tin men.
This flesh feels foreign to me
since I have forgotten all that I know of blood, sweat, tears.
When I’m all to common with oil, rust, and gears.
This heart the most complex mechanism that I can’t comprehend.
It’s haunting as I listen to it barely beating inside me, this body it’s tin coffin.
It's faint echo resonating within metal,
I've carved at my surface for something beyond my reach as if I was Narciussus
trying to touch the reflection of my own humanity.
The scarecrow for all his logic deemed this temporary insanity
but I feel it's something I had once been, something more... human.
And this state of human being isn’t as easy as it once seemed.
Wizard, you said a heart is not judged by how much you are loved
but by how much you are loved by others, you failed to mention her.
Neglected to mention that of heart-ache, pains, breaks!
You never told me how fragile this was!
Of the damage that can amount from these dreams so serene,
they seem worth dying for but death hath no place in happily ever after.
I have never known “ever after” to ache like this.
Within this skin... a reminder that she fell in love with the other half of the man that I use to be
before this tin, before rusted joints, and clogged cogs.
Before breath became steam, back to when these hands could still feel
before touch was stolen from them by corrosion.
but I swear I can feel her body heat still permeating through my chest plate.
The sound she conducted internally with her heart,
beating the percussion throughout the symphony of her anatomy.
While all that plays within my hollow is the kin of caskets and good-byes... silence.
The distance between our melodies not a question of love but density.
Our orchestra sings sorrow together perfectly.
Almost Shakespearean how it's composed by tragedy
I want her love, her need, and if the request is impossible
then take this complex machinery out of me I’ve no further use of it’s percussion.
If I could still bleed I'd turn the yellow bricks in this road red again.
It was never supposed to come to this, sentimental over emotional shrapnel.
It was not supposed to be this, common to that of most men
but tin skin rusted it from my memory until now.
These lips almost forget how to weld the shape of the word,
Wizard, why does it “hurt”?.... Why does my heart “hurt”?
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Scarecrow
by Poetic Assasin
Copyright: © 2009
Wizard, a year ago you told me how lucky I was to not have a brain
That they wouldn’t stop until I was the reincarnation of Winston Smith—
You’re right, but still I yearn to go back for just one second
This body, bone chilling it feels without a skeleton, my closet is vacant-
Faint signals coming from somewhere in my head but it’s hard to process,
Hard to stand for something in this world, I’m searching for balance-
Hope-stuck on a cross for one whole year you have time to
Pray
On your own innocence- I’m spiting my left arm to stuff my feet
She walked out on me and I couldn’t chase her, couldn’t focus on getting the right words out, some form of…
I’m on life support and you are the only thing letting this fluid flow to my!!!
… brain.. soft… delicate thing
Wizard, you never told me that if I chose being a scarecrow over death
That I’d feel like I was dead anyway and that my heart, the only thing next
To my eyes that were saved in the blaze, would never thaw
I’m Dying inside!
Standing 20 feet away from the fire place while she sits on the couch
Thinking about someone else,
Maybe someone with the courage to walk through the fire for her
Or have the heart to say… I’m sorry
I’m sorry, sorry for loving you live from a different body,
For taking a risk of not cooking you a microwave meal, but this time,
Using a pilot, for wearing these tattered clothing,
But these are the only things that fit me right now—
For shedding
And yes I’m all over the place
But my hands were too busy trying to pick up where we
Left off.. and
She didn’t care-
Walked out on me and I couldn’t chase her.
My grains are now untouched
Corn feels numb
Black crows hover over me-3pm darkness
I play Russian Roulette with matches
On the ground I’m an angel
Seeing if the candle will blow out
Before it hits the snow
Second best is never good enough
I stare at the pieces of my charred flesh in a jar and whisper
You were one lucky guy.
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Dorothy
by Christabel
Copyright: © 2009
Wizard
A year ago you told me
No promise is real in a land of dreams
And I have been on the journey to get nowhere but where I started
Home
So distant that it followed me to every breach I encountered here before you
You, the unattainable wish have unfolded before my eyes and in the end you are fraud
You are cheap, you are beneath the beggar’s feet, you are so….human
As if I couldn’t expect anything more from these creatures and this place
Sun descends upon the reality of their needs and they sound familiar wails of where I began
Toto I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore but it damn sure feels the same without these lights,
The jarring faces, beings burdened by forsaken dreams and
And yet, home is still not here
Hidden behind the dazzling loop of a rainbow I wish to spool back into the seams of my droughted veins
Vomit questions fed to me every brick of this road echoing these whispers
I am a good witch,
Magic pulsing through the joints of my fingers
I untangle my thoughts from the strands of my braids and find.. longing
Hanging limp like fallen tears puddling yellow mirrors onto the ground
And yet home is still not here
Wizard
I do not blame you for lying
When lost we cling to the remnants of any power we can hold on to
In the yearning way oceans grip the shores they leave and return to
You were not the answer I travelled for yet your flaws gave me strength with their weak demands
I rested in poppy-sweetened slumber and awoke to change:
Doffed my pigtails and loosened my dress, carried a brazen beast within my arms prepared for war
Hungering to extract the taste of poison from this land
I brought the cyclonic revolution
Uncovered brain, heart, courage, freedom
Pulsing within the grime of my knuckles, I craved the risk of death pumping through my core
Damsel In distress no more
And yet I am still not home
Fantasies of chains released and shadows lighted through wishes tails
Greater hopes mapped the abandoned beginning down to my feet
Heart’s desire where you sleep is where my sickness finds its end
It hummed inside of me all along but I never learned the trick
Old remembered blood bursting off the stained toes of my tapping soles
Till I lie still awake at home
Where journey’s truths only survive within the warmth of my caverned memories
Was it a dream all along or a rainbow’s tail I’ll sing?
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Wizard
by Tre G.
Copyright: © 2009
Wizard.
This is the title you’ve given me,
And it’s no mystery
The very nature of the name implies trickery
Master of illusion, guardian in Oz,
But you have drawn the conclusion
That I am a God, Creator, or Savior,
But I am none of those,
And though I live up the road
I am not even your neighbor,
We are worlds apart.
Cause here a heart is something
Men tend to forge steel plates into gates
To have a place to place them for safe keeping
Cause they brake when not oiled by love
Despite what manner of metal man is made of
They do not rust,
Just crack or callous when trust is violated
But this is what you wanted
To be validated as human.
Personally, I would rather stay in a state of exclusion from the race
Than to face another day of that agony.
So now, here you are mad at me
For the hidden faults of your own foolish desires,
Like I am some horn headed, forked tongued fire dweller
Banging pitchfork on floor of brimstone cellar
You wanted a heart,
I taught you pain
For it is impossible to love effectively
Without understanding heartache’s weaponry.
You wanted courage,
I gave you adversity,
Cause kings conquer what cowards cannot,
And warriors run to
What weak men run from.
You are Lion,
But just because your name would imply
You are not telling the truth
Doesn’t mean that that’s what you have to do.
You embody integrity and strength
You extend a hand to defend the fallen man,
But again you are calling me from pits of fear,
Making it clear that you have not grown into the throne upon which you sit
Being amused by fools
Not knowing that a king is more than robe, scepter, and crown
Or I would apply for the position,
For I am already being entertained by clowns
You wanted a brain
And I showed you your friends,
For there is wisdom in the multitude of counsel.
I had hoped you’d come do off your post,
Away from the crows who know only to take
Those who would make your head a bed of confusion.
I offered you an institution to provoke thought
But I can not teach you how to talk,
Only show you the light,
You must step out of the dark,
But I guess some men don’t mind
Extending arms with open palms
To hold up foes that have their demise in mind,
I understand that not having a brain is a crying shame,
But you, my friend, are blind.
And to the one that has gone astray I say,
You are a girl trapped in a woman’s body,
That probably wouldn’t know home
If she was back in the house she arrived in.
Surprising that someone surrounded by so many familiar faces
Could find herself lost among strangers.
But that’s the danger of being nostalgic
While seeking adventure
You become an indentured servant of loneliness
Claiming that there’s no place like home,
There’s no place like home,
There’s no place like….
Opening your eyes to realize
You’ve forgotten to be content where you are.
But these are the consequences of your actions
You all came here asking for something more
Than what you were willing to pay for.
Whether out of greed or need to see me cure some insecurity
That I did not help create.
I can only manipulate fantasies
I am not a creator of dreams,
So don’t go blaming me
For cutting the seams of your sanity by unveiling my vanity
For it was certain from the moment you pulled back the curtain
To reveal that I was but a single person with a god complex.
Flesh and blood is all I was, and all I am,
But I did not steal your peace, borrow your smiles,
Nor walk away with your joy,
You have not been robbed,
I am a guardian in Oz,
Not your God.
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