Pinocchio's eyes

Twin opals, hard black cores
that have waded through the wooden years
when time fell in drops that dripped,
slow as honey
off Geppetto’s tarnished silver spoon.

Undisclosed, in the darkness between
the two shapes of tree, the amber eyes waited.
Geppetto’s blade, urgent as a lover’s thigh,
slid between bark’s exposed ripples
and the soft tender wood of secret desire,
licked the two hard shells of resin 
formed over two small woodpecker wounds
that had captured two lost flies that flew
in with an insect’s hungry curiosity eons ago.

Geppetto plucked them free of the tree, with
a knife honed by a stone wet with his spittle,
gently shaped them, took an oiled rag and
wildly polished them so the amber shone and while
the black specks of what once flew
began to drink in the light, Geppetto
placed them tenderly
into the newly shaved head of me.

These eyes see everything at the speed
of an insect; a flood of the senses
condemned by the choice
the savage, armoured warriors of the micro-world
made when they selected tubes
over lungs and themselves condemned
to a fleeting, Achillean existence.

These eyes force time to gush like water
forced out of a hose, body pushed
and pulled, a puppet dancing
at the String Master’s whim - to combat
the constant sensual attack
my mind must concentrate on a single point
and leave the larger flow of life
to other forces.

These eyes are not gentle,
do not guide towards the light,
are blind to the magic of just being.

These eyes, formed by greed,
remain trapped in that act of need,
seek not to see but to feast.