Next Pinocchio Poem.

Pinocchio’s eyes 

Twin opals, hard black cores

that have waded through the wooden years 

when time fell in drops that dripped, 

slow as honey, 

off Geppetto’s tarnished silver spoon. 

Undisclosed, in the darkness between 

the two shapes of tree, the amber eyes waited. 

Geppetto’s blade, urgent as a lover’s thigh, 

slid between bark’s exposed ripples 

and the soft, tender wood of secret desire, 

licked the two hard shells of resin  

formed over two small woodpecker wounds

that had captured two lost flies that flew 

in with an insect’s hungry curiosity eons ago.

Geppetto plucked them free of the tree,

gently shaped them, took an oiled rag and

polished them so the amber shone and the black specks

of what once flew began to drink in the light,

and placed them back

into the newly shaved head of me.

These eyes see everything at the speed 

of an insect; a flood of the senses 

condemned by the choice 

the savage, armoured warriors of the micro-world

made when they selected tubes 

over lungs and themselves condemned 

to a fleeting, Achillean existence.

These eyes force time to gush like water 

forced out of a hose, body pushed 

and pulled, a puppet dancing 

at the String Master’s whim - to combat 

the constant sensual attack 

mind must concentrate on a single point 

and leave the larger flow of life 

to other forces. 

These eyes are not gentle,

do not guide towards the light,

are blind to the magic of just being.

These eyes, formed by greed,

remain trapped in that act of need,

seek not to see but to feast.