the Wrong Side of the Curtain

While accepting the Nobel Prize in 1960, the poet St John Perse said :"it is enough for the poet to be the guilty conscience of his time." I believe his words to be true and that there are times when the poet must write from the darkest recesses of his/her mind even if the expression is unsettling to both the poet and those who read his/her words. The curtain spoken about in this piece is an age old theme that can be found in the work of the catholic mystics, the Buddhist monks and the prophetic poets throughout history . . . some call it the veil of illusion, others this floating dream, but it has seemingly always been present in the mind of mankind. Many believe that this veil that we live behind will eventually be the downfall of humanity and that it is imperative that we go beyond it and come to realize our full potential as a species. I guess I must admit that this premise is of paramount importance in most of the pieces that I write, however there are times when it seems to become almost overbearing in it's demeanor . . . for this I do not apologize . . . let the syllables fall where they may.
I understand that some of you will find these words oppressive and perhaps even the ravings of an unhealthy mind . . . but it is simply my response to all the pain and suffering I see taking place in the world.






We’re standing like forlorn ghosts,
watching a dead parade pass by with it’s legacy
of dark secrets,
While one million harmonicas wail on the wrong side
of the curtain.

Oh the wrong side of the curtain,
the veil of truth inverted, turned inside out,
Where druids chant beside the burning ash can
of an international ghetto
Where we dress our eyes in a fable of brutality
Where the genetic mystery keeps slamming the door shut
because it’s imprint was corrupted from
the very beginning of time
Where industrial clowns cavort with siliconed sirens,
Make derelict love in the basements of the towers
on Wall Street
While a few blocks away an Afro-American saint puts
his mouth to a tenor saxophone
and weeps.

Oh the wrong side of the curtain
where a deranged monk stands in an empty courtyard
And embraces texts of separation with his bleeding
hands
Where a poet whispers from a flaming pyre of bones
Where an old man sits on a forgotten ledge
and contemplates an ancient prophecy gone bad
Where a singular eye gazes down to penetrate
the inner heart of humanity,
And finds it vacant, even after all these years,
all these simple clues,
All these aches and trembling reverberations
that have made little or no difference
Because difference is frowned upon by the diviners
of economic thrust.

Oh the wrong side of the curtain
where we become the creases in the rotting garment
of a dead mystic
Where we fall down in the crow black night
and try to cleanse ourselves with a bar of soap
in a muddy river
Where we pray in pews like broken clarinets
Where locusts keep hungrily dancing across
the prairies,
Even though the band laid down it’s instruments
a couple of Centuries ago
When Europe disabled the buffalo and the dove
flapped her white wings and flew to a cave
of silence
That was once the echo chamber of the initial utterance
from the mouth of Creation.

Oh the wrong side of the curtain
where we resurrect a manifesto of inconceivable
graffiti
Where we witness naked fear and become rag dolls
in the rain
Where a hobo weeps without a boxcar
Where the Madonna tucks her white unkissed breast
into a rough hewn garment,
Feels her face wrinkle and crack beneath the paint
of a surreal canvas
And goes stumbling down through the annuls of time
in search of an immaculate stable.

Oh the wrong side of the curtain
where the engine travels on a crooked track
Where we finally arrive at the station and discover
that the train left 10 minutes ago
Where Edison’s ghost laughs all the way
to Hollywood
Where the dead man climbs out of his catacomb,
dusts the cobwebs from his eyes,
Puts on his historically moth eaten robe
and reenters the coliseum
Which is still a nightmare of hopeless aggression
even after a couple of millenniums of sleep.

Oh the wrong side of the curtain
where the forest is seduced by the sickness
of a chemical firefly
Where we all bear the same maggot infested burden
Where the angels left without telling us why
Where the old jeweler closes his blinds,
turns off the light
And staggers home to his wife and children who play
video games
Until it’s time to collapse into a bed devoid of dreams
or possibilities of imagination.

Oh the wrong side of the curtain
where the literary waterfall of Japan evaporates
beneath a polluted moon
Where the beer soaked bar stool of separation is never
empty
Where the void contains one billion spirits
who stagger across the ever moving sand
Where Robert Johnson trades his guitar for a shovel,
sits down at the crossroads of Main
and Armageddon
And discusses the burial grounds still to come
with St. John of the Cross.

Oh the wrong side of the curtain
where the ashes and stench of spiritual decay blacken the nostrils
of beauty
Where even holy ground can sometimes blister the feet
Where our bones yellow beneath the moist Earth
and its’ centipedes and blossoms
Where Walt Whitman gazes across the fields
of what used to be America,
Shakes a defiant fist and realizing that
the leviathan that crawls before him is numb
to his once listened to words,
Drifts back to the poets’ round table and sips
from a mystical grail with William Blake.

Oh the wrong side of the curtain
where across the street the last folk singer
hangs himself with a guitar string
Where a New Age philosopher picks up the remains
of a distant prayer and casts it aside like an empty
cigarette case
Where the laughter of a cicada is captured in
the 3rd movement of a dead symphony
Where the implementation of the plans for the next
millennium is laid out upon a desk
Where the reality of starvation and poverty is ignored
and the Third World is a gnat that creates
an itch somewhere in the wrinkled brow
of the United Nations
Even though the Third World has spoken forcefully
in an explosion of absolute fury and desperation,
Towers collapsing like dominoes upon the carpet
of democracy.

Oh the wrong side of the curtain
where sparrows pray that the sun won’t fall
from the sky
Where bardic fathers moan on the banks of swollen
rivers
Where we are sodomized by a shadowy hallucination
of relentless lust
Where a sunflower wilts outside a rusting iron gate,
collects the dust and deathly matter of diesel fueled
machinery
And tries to reflect an image of abundance,
all the while coughing and sputtering like
a displaced salmon.

Oh the wrong side of the curtain
where skyscrapers stand like sentinels
And watch over cities that only perpetuate a continuum
of death, death, death
Where tired raindrops pound upon broken window panes
and snowflakes are scarred by battery acid
Where the hunchback strains every muscle
in an attempt to keep the planet’s orbit on course
Where we enter the ballroom wearing boots
of debauchery
Where we tear at a parasite that will never leave
the flesh
Where havoc is created beneath a tree of candles
Where white crosses weather like rotten teeth
in the mouth of humanity
Where the generals are busy conspiring a new nightmare
Where the song being heard on the airwaves
is the age old apocalyptic blues
Where we can no longer walk out into the light
of breathing ivy
Where green expanses fail to overgrow archaic
battlefields
Where the laurels of the past are nothing but
a lonely tomb
And where I sit here in some dark compartment
of my mind
Scribbling a black litany out into the Universe
in the hopes that some alien scientist,
some until now unseen messiah
or some radiant cosmic child
Will reach beyond this unacceptable malaise
and with a translucent hand

RIP THIS

ILLUSIONARY CURTAIN

ASUNDER.


A contest entry
An Original Thought by Mark Spencer. 1000 points, ended October 24, 2007, 17 entries
Gold trophy winner
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Entertain Me by EmeraldDaze. 600 points, ended November 6, 2007, 51 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest