INSIDE THE GOLDEN CAGE
~The Song of Bombalurina~
~*~
Here I sit in the golden cage,
The cage of beauty that I built,
I built it with coy looks and flirtatious smiles,
With cherry lips and dancing eyes,
With fleeting affairs and Cheshire cat grins.
No one sees the cage but me.
~*~
It closes around me.
Each time I try to reach out,
The bars turn hot as poker irons,
Searing my flesh with their intensity,
And so I withdraw,
And put on another maddening grin,
The kind that makes the boys go crazy.
~*~
They come to the cage,
And perhaps because they cannot see it,
They never enter into my world.
They never see the solitude,
The grey Sunday skies of my life.
That's because the veil of alluring looks
Shields my soul from such close scrutiny.
Oh, how I wish just one could see the true me within.
~*~
I wish I could fly from my gilded prison,
But the bonds I have created hold fast.
So instead of pleading for help,
I bat my enticing eyes
And lose myself in the pleasure of another conquest
Knowing he will disappear with the morning light
But at least for a moment, the walls of my cage
Will stop their inward march,
Hemming me into an even smaller
And more claustrophobic circle.
~*~
Oh, no one can play the Temptress
Better than I,
For I swivel my hips
Give a sly smile and a wink of the eye
And leave a sea of raging men
In my wake.
~*~
They say my beauty blinds them,
But really it is the ugly light of Truth
Reflecting off the golden bars of my cage.
For to them, I do not possess a soul,
Only a body that, for a time, they will possess
Leaving me as empty and cold
As a windy march morning.
They will never see
For I have gotten too good
A building illusions.
~*~
They always praise the magicians,
Extol the talent of the conjurors,
But it is really me that they should bow to
For I have done something truly spectacular,
Without any help or magic at all.
I have taken my soul
And made it
Disappear.