He wakes up in jail minus a name,
wearing a maculate white linen cassock,
lace cuffs blemished with forgotten indiscretions.
Staring from the discolored glass above the sink,
a man he’s never seen in the declivity of life.
Inside his head the discordant refrain
of a sacramental bell.
He’s embosomed by a woman he doesn’t know,
radiant in her splendor.
She pays his bail, exchanges his
polluted cassock for a lavender knee-length suit,
suggesting he’s taller than he ought to be.
She leads him from the cell to a harbor town
he’s never seen, chanting a ballad
he’s never heard in a language he doesn’t speak,
accompanied by an unseen psaltery.
Fiat luc, she cries.
Stunned by a coquelicot sun
bathing the town in a scarlet orange tint, he
stumbles in his obliquity, his departure from reason,
to an unfamiliar wharf.
The lucent woman unfurls her wings,
seizes his hand, guides him through the gulls,
hangs him from a yardarm.
Who am I?
the pitch of his vocal pyrotechnics
measurable on the Richter scale.
You, she whispers, are the son of a sea nymph
who communicates entirely by spindrift and ripples,
an outcast who sidles through the stings
of puling vipers,
the flaming tongues of evangelic fossils,
the bluster of misanthropes,
seeking sanctuary behind parapets of silence--
the mark of quidnuncs and cranks.
He has no idea what she's talking about.
She tells him he is the figment of a whim,
the indulgence of his imaginings,
then vanishes in a sphere of sunlight.
He discards his abbreviated suit,
retreats into a one dimensional world
in which he wonders if he is real,
reading a J.D. Salinger novel
yet to be written.
Share
Print
Save
Follow
Am trying to catch up after my bout with staying alive. It seems to working well. Today, I feel great and want to celebrate. Thanks for your concern, my good friend. - Bill
Marvelous Word Smith Is he That Can Capture The Intrige of Poetic Stories as in the captivating flow of "Man in the Empty Suit"
Much Love To You...Word Smith!!
Peace, Love & Poetry
Embraced ~ Embrassé
Vickie
a pocketed visage of yester's ruins combined with anachronistic voices; of self, of soul, of surrealism. . .. . in the words of the late mr buckley, 'ahhh, this was so real'.. .it makes you taste the scenery, feel the words, know the impenetrable body of wor.l.ds as jsut a veil. . .. worn thin and ready to be lifted, kissed and wrapped delicately about the dream; how is it you amke unreality better?
Axilea
luv,
et
I see this as construct and characterization, personae brought to life in the world between dreaming and waking, deliberately placed in both realms, an exploration of what's real and what could be...and that Catcher in the Rye (the sequel) ending rounds it off beautifully.
John
(((HUGS))) and love, Karla.
Be always safe,
Karen
Mary
Sandie Angel :o)
(((HUGS))) and much love, your friend in Tx., Karen Lynn. :D