Dream Of The Lion Tamer

Dream Of The Lion Tamer




It was the very first time I had been in this arena and I was looking up at a crowd of Lions.
They must be waiting to be tamed, I thought. It had been a very hot day and a warm gentle breeze blew.
The sky was a deep electric blue.
I heard piano music playing, beautiful music. I had never before heard such beautiful music, in fact, I had never before been allowed.. Looking over my shoulder, I saw a large piano perched on the uppermost layer of the arena churning out the music all of its own, I wanted the music to take me.
There was a telegraph pole nearby, wires hung loose from the cross-bars and they battled to sway in time with the music, but it was all too often drowned out by growling.
The sun beat down hard and tar oozed out of the telegraph pole forming shiny black globules, in them tiny windows reflected a large woodpecker higher up the pole tap, tap tapping the wood trying to get insects to come out.
The woodpecker was wasting time, no insect could possibly live in there, too dry.
Half way between the telegraph pole and where I stood a hole appeared in the ground; a crocodile poked its head through and smirked at me, the lower jaw fell open…
'Going round the engine looking for a leak…going roun/ the leak looking for an engine looking for a light at night…going round the engine at night looking for a gas leak with a lighted match ……BOOM !!!.. It said and sniggered.
This droning hodgepodge of non-sense annoyed me and I ran forward kicking out sharply at the crocodile, caught it under the jaw which launched a missile.
The missile hit the telegraph pole and cracked it in two and the woodpecker fell dead beak sticking in the hard dry earth.
At that instant the music stopped and the growling became very deep, very low.
I stood in absolute silence watching, waiting, didn’t know why, or for what. The breeze charming the telephone wires became harsh and turned into a furious wind.
Everything started spinning and the sky turned a dark red. I was whooshed aside and where I had been standing only the burned out stumps of old trees remained, as the wind gathered strength I grew cold tired and afraid.


I saw a book lying on the ground through the swirling dust and debris. It was open the pages threshing about in the violent wind.
Pinning them down, I saw the beginnings of a story and at the same moment thought I heard a woman’s voice - it was my mothers, a mother I thought I had once known began to read.
She spoke of a wingless Pelican who lived in a flock of Pelicans.

She spoke of a wingless Pelican who lived in a flock of Pelicans.
‘One day the other birds flew off looking for food, leaving the wingless Pelican behind. Fending for himself didn’t please him, he was starving and badly needed help to feed but without the others strutting about in the water the mud settled and he saw many small fish swimming about below the surface easy to catch.
He trapped and ate, ate and trapped so later when the other birds flew back famished after not finding any food they found the wingless Pelican crouched in the water bloated and drowsy.
It was very obvious that while they had been away he’d been feasting on his own and they all wanted to know where the food had come from.
The wingless Pelican tried to explain that if they all stopped strutting about, the water would become clear then they would be able to trap the fish swimming below their feet easily, he wanted to tell them that by doing this they would not have to use their wings at all but before he finished he fell fast asleep.
They became very suspicious and angry, and started pecking him with their long beaks.
Blood from the wounds drifted away in the water until eventually the scent was picked up by the crocodile.
I dropped the book and stumbled backwards asking myself a question over and over again.
It was to do with something I had done, or thought or preached in order to survive and it had made a lot of people very angry.
I knew instinctively I had been right.
Suddenly thousands of tiny images began to appear in the pages, faint at first then becoming clear but they disappeared as quickly as they had come.
I sank to the ground and sat back with a gasp as one large image appeared, it was me and I was thrashing about in a lake trying to swim, the crocodile appeared again and approached menacingly, its great jaws opened ready to tear into my flesh and swallow me whole, teeth closed around me and though I began screaming I knew I was safe because what I believed in was right, I believed in myself... . .

I was now for the last time in the Arena, only this time there wouldnt be any taming.
This time I will fly away, fly away and kill all the fucking Lions.

I was strapped down on a gurney and a holy-man began walking over, most likely to see if there was anything I wanted to say, with a vicious jerk of the head I willed him away.
There were two other men in the chamber, both looked slightly worried, they weren’t sure if the drip was working properly.
One of them pressed a big yellow button on the wall, a call for help.
Soon after a scruffy maintenance man walked in. He held in his hand a small glass tube of dark blue liquid and fitted it into the intravenous drip.
A plastic screwdriver handle and a black greasy comb stuck out of his back pocket.
‘That should do the trick’, he said,
‘damn things get stuck sometimes and the pumps need lubrication, drip blocks up and the client only gets half the dose.
When it’s working right its gotta be the best way to go.
They wanted to fry this one in the electric chair but this guy called jesus forgot to change the batteries.
Everything's damned unsafe when jesus is around’.

The excecutioner said .. .
‘Yeah, that’s right, next time we oughta fry jesus’.
His assistant and the maintenance man nodded in agreement but the holy-man looked down at his highly polished boots and shook his head.






Dream of the Lion Tamer by Moreng Swinburne