September 8, 2003

• CAROUSEL FLESH
  
  Tell me where the difference is,
  Tell me where the circle ends,
  Tell me when the carousel won’t make me sick
  With its nickel nightmare nightly crushing the paper stars
  Hung with poisoned care, growing weak
  Upon the crowded thoroughfares,
  While the angels flare and die
  Like incandescent moths just above the heads
  Of the unconscious.
  I see them flutter
  In miniature agony,
  Streaking the chipped-paint horses
  With ash, under these flashing baubles
  And glittering gold of sad-eyed fairy tales.
  I see it fade away
  As though my afterthoughts
  Had drowned them
  In a plastic cup of pain.
  
  The music is not loud enough,
  To make a difference,
  Only enough to jiggle the dry bones
  Before my eyes in the wanlight
  That sparkles and spins.
  Surrounded by the glow of lament,
  How can I fail to see
  That I am alone?
  That the voices will always echo
  Off my skin, their hands touch
  A surface little warmer
  Than the empty saddles
  Of the sorrow-hung faces of hollow-sung horses;
  Oh, follow me dreamers,
  To the battered-mirror room,
  Where our faces will bounce about
  And stare at us with three thousand tired eyes,
  Veined with cluttered, rainy red gutters.
  
  There, we will be alone,
  With the best semblance of company,
  An illusion of someone else,
  A shattered stranger with a face as cracked
  As our inner eyes,
  Staring back with accusations as new
  As the fading bodies
  Of the carousel steeds.

  • 8:17 pm
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