Thursday, September 13, 2012

WHILE THE GHOSTS ARE PUTTING MAKE-UP ON THEIR DEATH MASKS IN THE GREEN ROOM


WHILE THE GHOSTS ARE PUTTING MAKE-UP ON THEIR DEATH MASKS IN THE GREEN ROOM

While the ghosts are putting make-up on their death masks in the green room
and looking for their false eyelashes like centipedes on the floor,
I’m out on stage apologizing for a power outage of the stars
that shouldn’t be blamed on the windmills everybody’s tilting at.

And even Mother Theresa is lining up with the mermaids
on the deck of the latest shipwreck to see if she can get a bunk for the night
without any bugs or bedsores. Crackhead, hillbilly, hippie rednecks
are pouring booze over the amps of the band, and the arsonist in the corner
who hasn’t said a thing all night a lip reader could understand
is trying to short out his nerves to start a fire in the walls.
The underground circus is back in town like Cirque du Soleil in eclipse,
and as far as I can see, there are a lot of fire hydrants around
but no sacred clowns, and the audience is perched on a public trapeze
under a tent of starmaps that have never seen the Pleiades.

If you just got here, Edgar Allen Poe’s already had it out with the raven,
but nobody cares much, since it should have happened a long time ago,
and besides, Nevermore’s not much of a door to get out of
in case of a fire. Go ask the thief who left the moon in the window
and my reflection in the mirror when everything else disappeared.
He’ll tell you about the cat burglar who fell off the seventh floor
and lived to go on tour with the tale when she got crazy enough
to be wise, and put on a golden parachute that was the same size as her skin.
Have you seen Rasputin? I’m looking for my bleeding heart,
and the last time I heard of him he was in a bag in a river
with a snake that was using a rooster as a fire to keep warm
while the toxins and the bullets took effect, though all the haemophiliacs
and worried assassins said when they pulled him out, he still wasn’t dead.
Hey, you’ve got to give a man credit for not dying
when he was too innocent to float like a waterlily or an ice-berg
in a trial by ordeal that’s more Germanic than Slavic
though he should have been more subtle in his approach
to a courtful of jesters and gleemen who hate
the sound of anyone’s laughter in their midst but the king’s and their own.

And even the high priest of the Wizard of Oz
with his police megaphone and his taser baton agrees
you can’t learn the protocols of mythic inflation
unless you’re on your knees. Though I suspect
there’s a lot less behind that than at first glance appears
as Cygnus swan-dives sidereally into a pool the size of a tear
without a safety net of shattered mirrors in the land of lakes
to break its Icarian descent into the shallow end of the fools
who are watching with their third eyes closed,
and lens caps on their telescopes like the blindfolds of a firing squad
that don’t look much like the hoods of hunting falcons
with a bola of bells around their legs,
and the crescents of the moon for a trinity of talons.

But by the end of the act, the ghost of Lady Nightshade comes forth
like a spiritual toxologist with a spiritual arrowhead in her hands
to make a Clovis point of flint-knapped obsidian as clearly as she can
by plunging it through everyone’s heart like Jonestown
that’s just run out of black cool aid to bring
everything down to ground zero again as the roof blows off
in an unexpected cyclone, and we’re all left lying here
caught dead in our tracks like telescopes
and the standing targets of easels in the doe-glare
of the oncoming headlights of vehicles into roadkill
as if there were no more ripples or wavelengths in the rain
or tree rings anywhere in the petrified heartwood of the pain.

PATRICK WHITE

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