Through the Glass

Alice saw herself in her looking glass

and walked through

into a topsy turvy world where

everything was back to front and inside out.

She drifted into a dreamscape

of madness and unreality, 

without breaking the glass.

Uncut by the shards of her mirror 

or the place she entered into.

She had only to wake to make 

things the right way round again.

But walking through a clear glass,

a transparent window,

it would have been different.

Her reflection would float 

towards a place where everything 

seemed the right way round.

Where everything made sense

and added up sweet with reason.

A place without madness,

which looked easy to enter

and had no sharp edges.

Apparently.

But this glass forms an invisible barrier

to the other side and the life

that seduces and entices her.

And to get through she has to break the glass,

whose sharp edges cut her

and propel her crazily into a place

where she cannot wake.

A jagged, topsy turvy place 

where everything spins round wildly.

Where caricatures of humanity scream out

trying to make sense of it.

Front to back and outside in.

Everything is the wrong way round again.

Published in Silver Birch Press 2015 and Anomalie

http://www.versewrights.com/