Being A Dirge Theurgic for the Demi-urgic, Word-absurd when so preferred, A Play Polemic, Poetic Omenic, An Alle(z)-(Go)ry, A Mortatory, A Metaphor (made Meta, for) /I’m/mortal(s) or . . . . . .all of these and Nothing more. PRELUDE: SUBLUNE TO SET THE SCENE THE DREAMER DREAMS WHEN DREAMING DREAMS (of Death, of Doom) ASLEEP BENEATH A (murderers) MOON Night. Abed, a’dreaming, dreaming, dreaming . . . Here we go. PART ONE The End (Incipit) Sleep. then. . . DREAM. (Cue the Dreamer) I dreamed last night (then, woke to write) that Death came calling at my window, gravely dres’t (his best), bare bones got up in Midnight formal. Black as void, he came slowly, s...l...o...w...l...y, pregnant with his undertakings, groaning, burdened with the weight of promise irremediate as birth. Onward, onward, on He came, calling out the dead, A nativity in negative perspective. INTERLUDE: DEATH (P)RATTLE SOUNDTRACK TO LAST RI(GH)T(E)S A THRENODEVIATION (House lights down) There. Coming. Close. Closing. Rippling shreds of Night on a withered patch of lawn. Astride an organ of oblivion, a (c)old conductor, (d)ark director, bone-bright in night beyond the window, ashine in pin-pricked starlight, taps point, now counterpoint, keeps time by timeless measure of minuets macabre. By Couru keeps the cadence, in Fouetté follows flow like a Dervish in a daydream made malicious by the music, INTER-INTERLUDE: ` INTERLUNE BETWEEN DEATH AND DREAM, A’MO(U)RNING Name that Tune: Canticle of Cancer, Psalm of Plague, Hymn to Hell, Song of Sickness, Paean to Pain. This is music meant for endings. Grievings shriek like coarse-voiced crows turning circles in a gyre above a grave. Stones, grown, sing! Book-bells ring in candlelight. The dead, dead lie beyond sight or sigh, deaf to rue and rite. Listen. . . Can you hear? You will. (in this) You (have no) Will. Crack of bone and beat of blood, thrum of muscle, flare of flesh, (ex)static heart (in)tone-less terror, resounds a tuneless, tenebrous, lament of life loathe to be abandoned! A show exclusive to the almost-ghosted is this comedy of life riposted. In audience, ye costumed corpses attend, applaud, and die. ENTERLUDE: QUAALUDDITE DELIGHT A RECUMBENT RECITATION Malicious Maestro! Villain! Virtuoso! Friend? Foe? Brava! Bravo! Encore! No more! No. . . More. . . Death be damned, Death be cursed, as end to endings, worst of worst! Command performer for lives out-played, sings sorrow, sadness, serenades with songs that carry from the stage on breath that stinks of carrion. Beautiful, so beautiful, but barbarous as murder. THE DREAMER IN SOLILOQUIETUS “Cut! Curtains! Stop the show!” Through tear-torn eyes, with sobs, with sighs, I took the stage to Death engage by roles reversed, this play perverse. I cried, I cursed, wild-eyed, I raged, “I am mis-cast! You have mis-took! I am not writ within your book of death!” Fed by fear, enraged, effluent, taut-tongued, pursuant of prolongant, I, spieling, reeling, railed reprovant, “I am no player selling out each suicide on stages set for sips from skulls of cyanide. Not Prince To-being, nor first crush, bleeding, cured of poisoned love. By oaths, I bide, Ive craft no crime to Death defy in tact or time as Cain, cold killer, defied Divine. Not I to risk in self-cessation cease of sour life’s vexation, and all life longly-lived, life wrongly-lived consigns. My act, in fact’s owed no applause, tho’ earned no hook by case or cause. I am a hack! A Ham! Of age, yet of an age undamned! An understudy un-auditioned! A walk-on wanting for ambition! Farceur! “Unfit so far to be the star, tho’ loathe to leave the stage.” With victim’s vigor (tho’ sore ashiver) I proffered pleas for lengthened lease on life, and toward that end, endeavored, “This cannot be. . . or, if it be, it cannot be for me. I am alive, alive, tho’ asleep, alive, by sound or shake will wake, revive!” I sighed, “So, that’s the grief! In sleep, relief! I am the God in this machine! Deus! By Zeus! Down deep in sleep, I dream, I dream, I dream. Thrice thought’s the magic that makes it so, a spell should sleeping dreamers know. So,‘Death, Death, Death,’ I think you thrice to death in life. I dream you gentle, soft as breath, as fear-less as a dawn. Now, Out, you lout! Et in Arcadia, I deem thee dream! Begone!” Death deigned retreat, but did not speak, No need has he for that conceit. Looks alone fulfill the feat. (Ex)eyes the voice of verity. EXTRALUDE: INTRAVIEWED MESMER EYES IMMORTALIZE See Right inside one cryptal cavern nine fine clouds in seven Heavens, there, hung with halos hot from Eden, a gilt and garland golden Kingdom. Now, enter ye the left and dwell where Hope abandond nine great Hells. There, hotly howling hordes rebel in seven deadly sinners’ wells. Those lamp-lit eyes across the void, flash with fire, as port, as pyre, hopeless to avoid. DEATH “Not myth, mirage, Fata Morgana. You, who deem me dreamd Chimera, should doubt life alike and call that dream. So, dream, and dream, and dream, and still it is not so. The IS of it remains as tangible as pain, physical as fever, irrefutable as flesh. Name me what you will in fear, in anger: Baneful Beast! Sanguine Stranger! Perish Priest! Dread Deranger! Names are novel for the nameless! So, come now, be creative! Bestow your best Nom d’abative - Nox Invictus? Soul-gilt Croesus? Revnant? Rictus? Thief? Defeatist? Good. Still better, debtor, hail me humble Toll-Collector. For every life, to be, must die. Each You, each I, are taxed before the soul can fly. For every Me, acclaimed or cursed, the show will stop, the curtain close, the orchestra disperse. For every moment, past and present, One thing is, then one thing isn’t. Every star, each piece of Earth, old as Time, new as birth, will be, to be unbe’d (undone!).” “So it is, and so it be, put off protesting, come with me.” Thus contending, hand extending slyly as a snake in Eden, Death reached to take my own, still living. THE DREAMER I laughed, and laughed. at Death, I laughed! (Thrice done, it gave not clue nor craft. . .) Though silence better served by half, I said, “So, tho’ Will be free, the Live must lose, and cannot choose to be? In this verdict, most decisive, you strut and cut by words derisive, refuse refute, deny dispute from fear of mortal’s wit incisive? Are you such a Tyrant, Death? At this hour of a life near ended, will you take it uncontended, mute of voice, of chance, of choice to dance with Death and die, or stay in step with Life, and live?” DEATH The smiling Spectre, droll deceasling, rattled laughter, mocking, grinning, “The mortal think themselves so clever believing that a life’s worth keeping.” THE DREAMER “Of course, all living want to live!” said I, in sleeping, leaping to the lie, “We cling to life by trade or trick, with mortal mettle strive to stick. By hand, by tooth and brittle nail, will one more breath ourselves avail, that darkness should be held at bay by miracles or man, the end delay!” DEATH With bony, baiting, bold beration Death clatter-clapped a cold ovation. With acid, placid affectation, took bow to my over-oration. “For what token would you buy that life, to live, and live, and live? A thousand years could I give, or, would that not suffice? Would you then ten thousand live? I can sell it. . . for a price; I can give and you will live, Immortal as a stone. But, as Time wont bend, the long-living end Immortal, and Alone. So, make an offer, for trade or coffer, Life costs less than you believe. So, what is it that you would give to live, and live, and live?” THE DREAMER “Everything!” I cried, thoughtless as a zealot, “What Cloth or Coin holds more worth? No Castle, Country, All the Earth, do I value more than Life!” DEATH “What worth, indeed? To watch those loved awasting, wither’d with soon-gone Gravelings gathered in some sickness, sorrow? Here today! Gone tomorrow, to shores of Night beyond the cock-crow? To tame tears by Time, regret refine, to every loss of love assign some dark design of faithless treason? A red-eyed wretch to be all seasons in grey-shade moods of mourning? When all save you are dead and done, and long-old Love with last, long Love, have come and gone, and, mortal memory with Time conspires, til, in the end, all Love expires?” THE DREAMER I said nothing. Judge me in that sullen silence as victim of a hope done violence, without the will, or scrap, or skill, to further our debate. For, Death does with the dead converse in living lines of prose, or verse. Has studied, as debaters must, parries, points, feints and thrusts. Has sharp’d his wit to atom thick, to better best by trip or trick. From sparring speak with truth-tried Greeks, or Persians perched top reasons peaks, from sons of wisdom, students, sages famed from wiser Ages, does Death his darkling dogma preach. THE DIALECTICS OF THE DEAD APOLOGIA MORTUUS A MORTOMONOLOGUE DEATH “For Lives divest, for Loves deprived, I’m scorned by Men, as scourge, as Sin, reviled, defiled as villain. Give a thought to my vocation and leave in life the expectation of what you think you know. I am not the beast that you suppose, you, who Nature’s law oppose. In deathless life is living death, all urgent purpose crushed beneath weight of Time to Timeless slowed. Now, think! I am not the Why of Dying, but collecting, counting, quantifying dead of minutes, dead of hours and of days done to death by wicked ways, by War, By Hate, of Man or Men or State. When Hawks and fools in fear-fueled duels trade acts appalling, grisly, galling, they seed and swell corpse fields fell with shell and shot; to fund those few, will millions rot. So, here’s a truth, told for gain, ‘Once a slayer, ends as slain, Violence, victor, is vice in vain’. You sell slaughter, hate and Hell for taunts, for wants, for worlds, for wealth. Hidden back of honey’d words, finely flowing, unreserved, waits the bite, for sport, or spite, that chews the hand the monster serves. Generals, like gods, devour children of an age entire, while high in hallowed halls of power safe will wake and sound retire. Yet, not on war should they depend though lives been fought as fighting men, for in the end will worms defend them, gods damned in their graves. You may trust me undeceiving, less free am I than you still living, bound by what to be must be, prayerless, careless, but never free. I hold no anger for the being, nor am I the Bane so seeming. I’m tasked to take and not to break a soul in need of swift escape. I am a beacon for the weakning Light for the no longer living. I m the end of all Philosophy, Androgyne Elixir, Greatest Work, Greenest Dragon! For pain of heart or head or soul, I cede release, Immortal Medicine! What loss the left alone(ly) feel may longly linger, or burn but briefly, ‘til at the end themselves receive me. So, Man, remember, Life is loss, in dying, Living pay the cost. No one who lives eludes their ghost, I alone can make that boast. In time I come to visit all, the great, and guilty, worst and best, to lead them through eternity to Paradise... to Rest. Notes: This is an updated version of the original poem, with spelling and wording corrections and revisions. Once again, however, I cant retain the original dual-column formatting when I paste it into the appropriate space on this website. As the author, I certainly feel that it loses much of its impact (however meager that may be!) when formatted as it is
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 09:37:07 +0000