THE FOLLOWING POEM WAS SELECTED IN WINGWORD POETRY PRIZE 2023 LONGLIST.

I ain’t no wanderer in dust

Nor a bird of passage dying of thirst

I’m not the trickling sand in glass

Then why do I feel I’m sinking into a morass?

Of illusions and deceptions

Of pretentions and dissimulations

I see an enchanting vista before my eyes

But is it all a scape of lies?

I’m drawn towards it

As if, losing my wit

I know it’s an illusion, a mirage

But there’s this force causing me to barge

Straight into the alluring fantasy

Into the Goddess Morgana’s territory

I see the oasis of dreams

Wondering what it really means

As I move forward and touch

It becomes real, oh so very much

I sit back, reflect and ruminate

What’s real – unreal anymore, I struggle to differentiate

If I’m living in a too-believable illusion

Or the delusion of illusion was itself an illusion

Was the conceived reality so unreal?

And perceived fallacy so real?

I guess everything’s a reality, everything’s an illusion

It really is, in our own vision

To see, experience, and believe

The truth beyond what we so dearly perceive

Maybe I actually, am a traveller in a caravan

And that mirage was where the realism began

I discerned that everything’s true and at the same time untrue, I’m nothing at all

And that’s when it struck me that I have it all