Theater of Utter Charm Part 9
Part 9
there is a wraith with an hourglass
dancing quietly in my shadow
he's gone when I look
but I can hear him do a shuffle step on the ice
his inside out umbrella more than a fashion statement
about the coming winds and arctic wolves
how he gets away with it
in my schoolyard I'll never know
acting without permission has its ups and downs
but why do I have to translate everything
into a binary threat or no threat
when increments can be an atom apart
and a day late and a dollar short
in an era when everything counts all the time
on a daily basis constantly and unremittingly
basically our species has spent its time
coping with the not intended
as if intention were a big friendly giant
who got his way at every whim
so many pathologies hidden from view
in a many mitigated kind of world
unmitigated is certainly worse I rebuke
and it leads us to the only ultimate
when the hourglass empties
and the chorus laments and weeps
as the lights dim and no one can find the exit
stumbling and crashing through the scenery
the director started making hand signs
that I thought were gang signs
his script pecked to pieces by the noisy crows
roosting in the flies making the stage slippery
then borrowing mine from a life I never lived
but desperately wanted to live
every sunrise every noon every twilight
for every corpse in the morgue or coffin or ditch
all I got to say is it's a new and unhappy genre
the borrowed personal point of view
added to the list of heresies
that's what they call it
when you finally run out of ideas
not a cause for joy and hopeful song
can this be turned against me
is the question my impoverished legal team asks
before they raise the esoteric curtains
to the Greatest Show on Earth
whose working title is Adventures Up **** Creek
but for practical reasons will be televised as
The End of the World Part 2
apparently it's going to be a slow death
at the hands of the codpiece Commissioner
and the pinch nose Inquisitor
and neighborhood Ubermench
and Sublime Zealot and Masticating Mendicant
real boot camp drill sergeants every one
when it comes to considering the obvious
but there's always the pesky subjective
go ahead ask a paranoid what is obvious
just compounding the stupor
with indelicacies like truth and beauty
having spent most of my life as a decoy
for the black dog black ops operatives
it's a battle of overt vs. innuendo
(to be continued)
From "Theater of Utter Charm"
http://tinyurl.com/yd5wbtgt
Artist Portfolio: http://walteralter.site11.com/
Copyright © Walter Alter | Year Posted 2018
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