Scarecrow

He hangs his decapitated head in defeat, half heartedly attempts to return his entrails to the gaping hole in his gut.
The world has no place for those clubfooted clown-shoed fools who cannot but see; cannot but question; those who cannot keep their big mouths shut.
At the edge of the sea he sees it all connected: Should’ve taken a photo; should’ve paid attention to the weather forecast; should’ve kicked the can when the worms were still inside.
The sea washes over him; rising through the holes in his shoes to bubble up through his gut and lungs and leak out through his eye-holes; salty and bitter in the back of his throat.
What do they have lurking up their sleeves?
What magical treat for popular consumption devised? What cybernetic propagandist hero in Clint Eastwood poncho tassels brushing psyche with cold tomorrows?
What blind need to top the polls without supplying the quality?
He sees now the gaping void in those magician sleeves; the hand that sleights no longer distracting his weary eye from the truth that has become too awful to ignore?
How narrow is the trembling lip of the prejudice?
How wide the ledge at the precipice?
How do you shoot the rising water; bomb the obscured sun?
And now the rain joins in; lashing a sine of cat tails against his face; mewing and mauling his already drenched thoughts.
He breathes it in, tasting the grit in the gull’s cries, the weight of past tides, the fate of the future.
It’s cocktail hour at the submerged bar of inconsolable sobriety.
Drunkards; dope-heads and demons possessed await, knowing it’s his round.
Do him a favour and cut him down before the gulls take his eyes; the sea his soul; and the red fire-ants get to hollow him out for multi-story car parks.
Cut him down from the billboard of mediocre engineering rituals.
Cut him loose to fly from the hollow hearted; the lost souls of nights dreaming.
Filter him through fine mesh net to catch all that bone and bitter lip chip; the poison in the well; those boots laced with lead the better to kick shit out of that which will not fit.
Pepper him with lime and lemon zest, dress him in unfashionable tea-strainer vest, tell them he wasn’t ever quite the best at what he endeavoured, attempted or underwent.
Close up the box with bread and milk staples; fill it with amber and maple molasses.
Paint it with symbols indecipherable and bleak, arcane and oblique and weigh it down with all that has been lost and all that has been yet to be found.
Nail his heart to his sleeve where it’s always been read, feast your eyes on the feelings that are better off dead.
Send the sea to reclaim what has always been hers, let the moon leave the sky in silver tatters.
Howl.