A Series Of Cages Pt. 2

“She’s got me. She’s got me not. Oh, the pain of not knowing, what my love has got me. Got me or not.” Don’t you love the words of lyrics of songs that simply make no sense but vibrate your very essence and capture your soul?  Just for a moment, you fall in love, male or female, as you unite with the flow and rhythm, your heart thumping to each beat and your mind pulsing with each movement.
         “The words! Oh them words! My they make me smile. She’s got me or she’s got me not.” Words that both free you and yet capture you; each syllable is never missed and instead replayed like a broken cassette.  Freed from your cage only to be caged with one larger with walls garbed in musical splendour as chords decorate bars and verses along the vast canvas of the ceiling. Can it truly be even called a cage anymore?
         “Oh! There she goes again! Painting her love upon me! Just to get me. Or get me not.” Yes, it is a cage, and yet freedom comes only from within. Freeing the mind from the jumbled mixture of thoughts that echo and doubts that pursue to immerse within the brief limelight of another. To stand beside their glittering dresses as they cry like larks caked in make-up and smeared with smiles. That’s when I saw it. The limelight was simply my cage to be.
“She knew me, but got me not.”
         
         I fix the thousand loose strings of the story. That’s my job and I don’t enjoy it. But someone’s got to do it as they always say. But in reality, I know there will always be someone else. Someone lined just behind me, hidden within my shadow and awaiting the moment the black ice beneath me grabs hold and pulls me down. Until then I’ll be doing my job tying the knots and fixing the stories within my little cage. It’s not very large but make yourself comfortable, I love the company you see. Watch out for the rolls of debt and those pieces of paper, the bills I mean. What’s my cage feel like? It’s quite an average one. A bit of peeling paint, old pairs of socks, leftover noodles, and do remind me to throw out the trash, I always forget. What’s there to hate? No golden teaspoons to lick but the cracked ones still get the job done don’t they? The ones in the cage like me too; they get the job done nicely with no cracks or splinters. Just the tying of the stories strings in my hands that have long stopped ratting that bars from within.

Sometimes they think I’m on those little packets of powder. No blaming them though. I look like a mess and live in one too. But that’s also part of the job description. You do the job, you live the life. Chained by the endless cords of grinning, green patriots and bolded letters declaring the value of what’s what. And mine? Probably close to the takeout chicken wings they sell down the street. You should go take a look once in awhile. Would I ever leave this cage, you ask? Well send me my guardian angel that they forget to deliver and I’ll think about it. Until then, I’ll be content and do my job of knots and ties and stories, here in this little cage of mine.