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 *****-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.

The Obsidian Theater XIV




Good evening.

I’m sorry to say we don’t have a show scheduled for tonight.

Too many people didn’t show.

Performers were absent.

The ticket girl is dead

The dancers are downstairs naked and in piles of sweaty flesh


And I’m here,

Talking to you.


It’s just one of those nights

One bottle of wine
And
Three packs of cigarettes later

And the shadows turn to people

The stage lights beam down on you

Like a blinding sun

Prompting you to open your heart
And spill the regretful clots that block relief from your soul

Some time ago

Day in and day out

I was there for another.

A relation of mine who suffered from a disorder of the eyes

Glaucoma

Unusually high pressure
within the eyeball
that leads to damage of the optic disk.

I become the eyes she wished she had.

The valet she wanted
The Grandson she loved.
The only person there who could do anything

Numerous visits and endless prescriptions filled:

Polytrim
Four times a day, left eye;

Atropine
One time a day, left eye;

Prednisolone
Four times a day, right eye;

Travatan
Before bedtime in right eye;

Timolol
Two times a day, right eye;

Brimonidine
Two times a day, right eye;

Dorzolamide
Three times a day, right eye;

All in one day.

Eye drop medications

Bottles with
White tops
Red tops
Pink tops
Turquoise tops
Yellow tops
Purple tops
And orange tops.

Each day of putting someone else before you
Because you love them
And
They did the same for you when you were a child

You’re hopeful those hours in surgery will help

You feel utterly useless waiting for something you cannot control


Imagining what those frail, foggy eyes think of you

When you pull back the pus-crusted eyelid back to administer some relief.

And her moaning in the night matches your fears


And when she speaks you tell her how well you’re doing at work in at school
How you have a lovely girlfriend
And you’re getting along with mother


But these are lies
Lies to lessen the troubles

But I have to work is excruciating

School is put on hold

Girlfriend is non-existent

Replaced with shallow, empty hook-ups in bars

And Mother doesn’t speak often

Only to dispel her constant disappointment

But not Maw-maw

She looks at me as an angel

And good person maintaining a life when she is ill

But I’m not sure it’s all that

Either
My happiness has never been important

It’s always been others I wished who were happier than me

Why?

Because I can make that sacrifice

I can forfeit my happiness for others
Because I saw the world for what it is
And the last thing I want
Is for others to see that side of life

I’ll make the sacrifice
So others don’t have to.

Why?

There a monster from where I came from
It was Hell itself
And it devoured all

My body was slammed and crushed in the underbelly of the immortal beast
Hellbent on ridiculing me
With Toys and whips and
Instruments of merciless pain.

All in the name of “good”
Of “love”
Of “care”
Of “discipline”
Of “God”

Looking up at the framed picture of Christ in my Maw-Maw’s room
I feel so naked

So weak

And afraid

Orbital apparitions of anguish
Hover while I sleep

Wishing just to be in the arms of one person

Who loves and truly cares
And will accept my release
And my tears.






One bottle of wine,
two swigs of self-loathing,
a case of nostalgia
A line of white-lighted prayer
Four packs of cigarettes
And a dying stage light later…

And we have a show.

Look at that

A full house.


I’ll take a bow.