The Tony

The Tony

by aiP / 2011


I know a man who lives beyond his where-abouts.

And when they sense him, as they walk-about,
They somehow feel they don’t belong.

Not tall, but high-strided, he floats along,
With his children of the shifting dunes who follow him like shadows,
Then dart ahead to cross the dead
Before a chill wind blows.

The Tony has occurred in a grain of sand.
He’s absurd because the suburbs bore him.
He utters the words, yet knows the words ignore him.

He created disappearance before appearance became subjective,
And dismantled seven of the ten totemic dimensions to …
“Gain a little perspective”.

Where material disassembles,
The Tony self-assembles in immaterial zag-zen form,
And fluttering like a factory’s overdriven plant,
He’s a-blur with seven illusory edges.

He shifts in the formless, for he is the process of shifting.
He rolls along to the billabong as ‘The High Priestess of Rolling’.
He is the crescent moon of no-rights,
And the setting spoon of no-wrongs.
And when they sense him, them aboriginals,
They somehow feel they don’t belong.

And his children of the shifting dunes
sing their slow plaint song;
They, who follow him like shadows.

The Tony has revived a crying eucalyptus whose leaves had turned to logic.
His voice is carried on silver birds; its meaning is there for all at sea.
Flashing chaotically across the tempers, he is there for those who are not.
For those who meet every retreat with open feet,
And each last stand with an empty hand.
He is there.

Beyond the sands, the sticky resins, and the fluttering moon,
In the formless, static present, without a care …
Tony finds The Tony there.