The Obsidian Theater XV.
Welcome to my nightmare
Welcome to my show
The audience awaits your praise
And your stage light glow
My, my, it’s been too long.
[Walks across stage; light follows. Curtains pulled]
Where have all of you been?
[Audience laughter]
Oh, forgive me, that’s not the right question
To ask
Where have we been?
That’s more fitting
Where
Sipping Champagne with Bing Crosby among undead poets
With a casket made for two
“Brother can you spare a dime?”
He said,
“Lift me from this tribal paradigm.”
And
For many days I wandered the wilderness in the threads of
My carnivalesque grandfather
Ripping and tearing in the clinging trees
Hands of branches
Groping and pulling the garments off my body
In the middle of the Serbian wilderness was The Manor
Draped in dead trees and blackened ice
The valet stood at the gate in prime condition
Waiting
But for who?
“Why, you sir.” He told me, guiding me through the entrance, to the front door.
And inside were wonders to be held by the
muster of my weakened eyes
Ladybug dancers tossing their legs up to honky-tonk fanfare
Swirling magicians pulling rabbits and naked men from the shadows
Allegorical usurpers coated in a filmy residue of
Herzog dreams
And
Lynch fantasies
Perpetuated by my longing
My lost soul
My parched thirst
My growling stomach
My throbbing manhood
My forgotten affliction
And severed diction
A man slivering into the skin of a woman
A Lady donning the cowl of a man
Skins shivering with afterglow effects
And dreams woven by old witches with intestinal thread
It was eloquent darkness in the belly of the manor
Fit for a King of Devilish glamor
Brothers of Grimm
And
Sisters of Mercy
Told from the pages
From the books
Of frozen Gods
And forgotten Titans
These are the happenings of a great story
Fiction or not
You may tell it
And believe what you will
It doesn’t matter as long as it is strongly retold
From the lips of another
The wandering bard
Or
The pub crawling drunkard
To
The enamored *****
And
Bookworm report
It needs
To be shared
To others
Even impaired
To celebrate
Gasp
Giggle
Scare
Love
Soothe
Disrupt
My impeccable, capable
Hands-down sensational
Tour de force
Troupe
A la mode
Cherries on top of whipped screams and drinks
Juggling heads and animals over coals of fire
Give them a show
Give them a feat
Give them something to remember
Give them something to crawl back to
Give them a performance that will beckon the applause
For years to come
Show your audience
And readers love
And
Sorrow
The likes of which
Cannot be equaled
Or even compared to
Lesser
Congregations
Of silly-billy pud muffins
And their
Street-smart guff
Let the institution of your mind become a corporal being
Teasing and pleasing those eager and waiting eyes
Staring up at you with
Wanting
Drooling
Wanting
Begging
Wanting
Affections
Don’t you want to see a show worth seeing?
[Audience cheers; laughs and applauds]
Watch a movie worth seeing?
Read a book worth reading?
How do you come by this?
Create what you’ve always wanted to see, read, watch and say.
Those performers
Once peasants and beggars
Stood up from the grime and ridicule of the trash and rose above the
Plateau
To conquer their hearts
Look and see!
Those people balancing and singing with fluffy dogs
Magicians and warlocks summoning spirits to dance among stars
Poets on stage reading mixed words to nodding peers
Directors blocking actors on stage with unparalleled enthusiasm
All these creatures of the ubiquitous night
Gather and produce
The whim of their lives
But many of these masters
These
Unknowing
Are
The bus boys cleaning up after your meal
The mother alone at home with the kids
The unsociable man on the park bench
The frigid girl in the corner of the classroom
The nervous boy wandering the circus
The stern librarian in Brooklyn
The blogger in the studio apartment
The hard working abroad student on a farm
The homeless man cradling a dying dog
The celebrity chasing photographer
The undergraduate tutor
The ignored substitute teacher
The bullied Muslim student
The underprivileged south side coach
The Turkish cab driver
More and more
These warrior poets and victims to racial slurs
Commonwealth bigotry
Ghetto endorsements
Faulty criticisms
From hosting countries
And sheltered, over-privileged, disillusioned
Politicians
Bureaucrats
Religious figures
Dogs of War
Angels of retribution
Demons of industry
Ghosts of the hours and days past
To sympathize and cry for the world
Thrown into invisible and subtle chaos
Like an ocean littered with the blades of
Broken glass
The sludge toxic waste mixed in molten lava over craters of dead bodies
Or
The sand dust covering the thousands of bodies in the earth
So
What teams won the World Series?
Which movie star dates who?
What’s the latest trending diet?
What new pop sensation has been manufactured?
What new insult can talk show hosts say?
Is there someone new to blame for all the bad things in the world?
What are the things the media has told you?
And
The things it hasn’t?
It’s a
Bitter sweet symphony
A
Crucible for the faceless grins
Pointing fingers everywhere but themselves
Let’s leave the worries to our kids
I’m sure they’ll figure it out.