Wonderland

The morning sees me on my way to work
and I arrive to find my office closed.
My diary's a blank, too much exposed
to day's fierce light, the lift has gone berserk

and speeds to floors I never knew were there
until it stops, and quickly I squeeze out
into my trusted kitchen. Some slight doubt
creeps in when all the fixtures aren't where

I left them so I hasten through the door
into the living room. The curtains are all drawn;
the day's too hectic. I suppress a yawn:
among the party sitting on the floor

there's faces of the people I like best
that quickly age why I am looking on -
they shrink and wrinkle till all bloom is gone;
the mirror shows me old like all the rest,

a wizened ghoul, while room and people fade
To yellow grass beneath my weary feet;
the sun is red. I run downhill to meet
the unicorn, the lion and the maid

to watch in horror how the maid is eaten,
the lion skewered by the unicorn which
then trots of to leave me stand forlorn.
I brace myself to reach the road unbeaten.

The asphalt wobbles and to my dismay
both road and hillside start to disappear
and turn dark pinewood when I come too near
where vamped-up elves and grinning satyrs play

until I try to focus when I find
they're just dead trees, most branches gone. Decay
clad them in dense, dark spiders' webs that sway
although there is no breeze, lit from behind

by what appears St. Elmo's fire, and soon
the flames leap from the pines along the road,
and, flashing signals that I can't decode,
high overhead there is a cold, blue moon.