| Where have you gone? Where are you now? Oh, there you are my friend. Dancing over the rooftops without care Just beyond the windows through which I stare A smiling face peering back at me With flashing eyes Needs no fairy dust It�s his spirit With which he flies �What are you looking at, boy?� �What lies outside those panes?� �Your mind has become absent,� �And when it pours, it rains.� �Tell me now, for this is inexcusable.� My friend lives out there His name is Jimmy, and he�s invisible They called me a dotter and a fool A silly child who finds a friend within a pool I stopped looking for my friend And he stopped coming by The day I grew up and learned the word �maturity� That was the day I lost him The day he faded into obscurity I looked for him again But only when the darkness came I called him back into that window But he did not look the same His eyes were sunken His skin, a sallow shade The shadows crept in close And caused his face to quickly fade Now they call him James He grew up And left behind his games But for all his travel and age Two things about him never changed Two qualities unmovable He�s my friend, and he�s invisible. |
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| Explanation: For all of the children of the world who have ever had that friend that no one else could see, this is a story written for you. When I was younger I had many friends, most of whom never had parents or a birth certificate. They lived in the open places of the world. If I wished it so, they could be in my presence in an instant...or vanish just a quick.This work I wrote in the middle of class whilst looking out the window over the city. I thought about how I had daydreamed as a youngster and pondered why I didn't now. I felt that as I grew up that parts of my imagination had sat unused and gathered dust, like my friendship with the world that lay just beyond the window but never truly existed for anyone but me. In the piece I use some duel purposed words like "panes" which is a homonym of "pains" and the phrase "when it rains it pours" I reversed as if a mirror image. Showing that this imaginary world we create in our minds as children still exists in us as adults and we are never simply the creator of it but an inhabitant of it as well. The word "rains" is more truly "reigns" because that world is in control of us when we become absorbed in it during the daydream. In the second half of the poem I deal with the idea of an "unused" fantasy world. One that ages and becomes distorted from the figure of its youth. Like Peter Pan in Never Never Land, "reality" is age and "imaginary" is supposed to be timeless, but this is not. Our creativity when gone used begins to fade and loses strength. This becomes a reminder to people that we must never lose our dream, we must call our own friends back into the window of life and remember the spirit that dwelled in them...like a duality that exists in your own reflection in a mirror. |