I LONG TO BE A CHILD ONCE AGAIN

I miss being a child. Now I am an adult, these stirring emotions now sit in my heart to walk down the lane of ages that has brought me this far. Our childhood in way holds us in its palms, though we do want to break out from its grip, but we cannot because doing so simply means we are accepting mediocrity. The life of a child is a world of all possibilities and dreams and that is the bliss we loss when we are mature.

So, this poem unfurled itself into my mind, though quite long but I definitely know you will enjoy it.

I LONG TO BE A CHILD ONCE AGAIN

i
seconds walk into a mile
making the journey of a dreamer. &
you just gaze on towers watching minutes
roll into the holes of hours
days months
building the castles of years & all wrapped
into a pill a pill of fallow dreams.
You gasp out
You cry like a baby seeking
mother's embrace
but mummy says: “son, you must be a man.”
for those whom years have planted beards
on the plate of their faces or
breasts on the template of their chest
can't merry-go-round in the hamster wheel of home.

but today you just want to be a baby once again.
so you cry:
"take away the beards,
take away the breasts"
let me feel like
a baby once more under the nursing breast of age.
but
the sounds of fleeting time says no!
then you cry but home is no option.
then you get to know life is teaching you
to walk through the sands of epochs through
the ice age where
cold bites the skin teaching it to be tough
even then you just have to learn to swim through
the cold of ice and snow to survive.
then the iron age stumbles into you stretching
your fist to jostle a sword
& heel to run with antelopes.
then agrarian rolls bends your waist &
scorches it dry into bones.
there you learn how to make forest out of Eden
by making Eden out of a forest.
Still home chases you into
an industry where pennies are served on the plate
of promises, a golden wrist watch.
& you watch how luddites
crawled into the skin of time but
you get to learn that age
does not ask men whether they like the meal it serves.
age is just a cook.
you just have to eat or create
a different world where silence
will be your companion.
then you learn how to be smart with a smart phone
how to dance with sharks on the oceans of a digital age
you're crammed into a cocoon a school-
to gain the knowledge for a longer hand.
and now
age says zero.
zero to all time has taught you
it shows you a tin line the new bridge to cross
to the path of greatness.
& you cry.
because now you've to learn to be artificially intelligent
which teaches you how not to be a human

ii
but
the pin was not in the plan.
dreams roll in the cave of your memory box
screaming at you.
how you'll tour the world.
how you will build a home that sit on the sky then
the stars would be your companions teaching you
how to twinkling in the languages known to smiles.
how you'll build an empire like a nest for
lost birds seeking a home.
you the king, the world your subject.
and how you will speak &
the world will drink from the well of your wit.
then, you'll be a god amidst mortals. how
your voice will drizzle water from the sky &
inflates the empty bellies of the thirsty. how
your mistress would be a cake
baked fresh from the oven of beauty &
with her, travel into the sun
moon Jupiter mars mercury &
there will your home be caved. how
your children will be sunned in gold having
the first of everything first.

a pause of evaporating memories
vanishing into vapours
into the wind then into
emptiness.
sour sigh.

iii
i turned back the hands of time
in it was a treasure island.
but i flew in the present all but
slum rickety emptiness.
oh! please don't tell me that
dreams born in the eyes of a child
are mirage masking water on asphalt.

i shall close my eyes &
be swallowed by the reminiscence of my childhood
there i shall be a child once again locked
in a world of all possibilities.