The Clown

The garish pasty visage of a corpse;
Greasepaint smelling more like formaldehyde;
Red hair reminiscent of Banquo's gory locks,
Lipstick that's been smeared on too thickly,
As though applied by a drunken mortician.

Clothes that don't fit.

Is it any wonder that we recoil in horror
When a clown in its oversized shoes
Fixes its hideous gaze upon us,
Then clumps its exaggerated gait toward us;
Grotesque goosesteps of malice,
Hands outstretched like a zombie
In search of brains to devour.

It's a visage that is meant to entertain us,
Yet it's the face of death that we recoil from,
The unnatural rouge of funeral cosmetics
In a carnival setting.

As the horrible harlequin lumbers toward me
I laugh, feigning the mirth that's expected,
But I have all I can do to restrain my impulse to

RUN!

Child's Play

Had I known
When I was a child
That as an adult
I would have so little time to play

I would have reveled in my time
As a child at play

I would have spent fewer
Of those irretrievable moments
Pretending to be
Or wishing to become
An adult.

To His Civil War Comrades

Andrew Koon's tribute to his comrades in arms
Stands watch in the Vermont, Illinois cemetery.
The bronze sentinel leans on his rifle silently.
The bivouac of the dead that he towers over
Isn't likely to be roused til Judgment Day.
The white Grand Army of the Republic markers
With their curt Joe Friday "just the facts, ma'am"
Inscriptions are mustered in obedient ranks
At their positions in block, row and lot.

"The war years were the best years of my life,'
Andrew Koons would sigh, longing for his lost youth.
His practical farm neighbors in rural Illinois
Measured success by harvest and crop yields,
Relegating the War to Independence Day.
They laughed at old Koon's yearly ritual.
He'd fetch his uniform down from the attic,
Struggle to squeeze his bulk into the faded blue,
Maybe pop a button or two, polish up his boots,
Then go to march with the vets in the big parade.

The sword has been sheathed, and the tempered steel
That had once made Georgia howl has lost its edge.
Garrulous ancients now talked of the War of the Rebellion
With affection, as if, on the brink of entering Valhalla
They've reshaped what had been a youthful commitment
To serve their country into a lifeline tied taut
To an outcrop of youth and camaraderie.
The testosterone-driven adrenalin of confrontation
That they'd felt in combat still surged in their memories;
Easing their inevitable rappel into the abyss of death.

The old vets harbor an affection for war.
It's the fat old Rebel General Joe Wheeler
Waddling up a Cuban hill with the U.S. Army now,
Wheezing "Come on boys, let's get them damn Yankees!"
It's the bitter, asthmatic old gringo, Ambrose Bierce
Heading south fifty years after he fought at Chickamauga
To seek his youth again by fighting with Pancho Villa.
It's Johnny Clem, the drummer boy of Shiloh.
Now seventy, begging President Wilson
To let him serve in the ranks, a decorated hero
Who longed to fight again, this time in World War One.

War is the rejuvenation of old soldiers.
Who cluster round the rumbling medicine wagon
To purchase Doctor Mar's Feelgood Tonic.
They pass the patent remedy concoction among each other,
Believing that they've rediscovered their youth by bellowing
Like young bulls, cavorting warlike and howling for blood.
The audience works itself into a frenzy to buy,
Waving the lives of their and their neighbors' children
Like dollar bills as they vie to purchase the patriotic lie.

Andrew Koons tried to sell us the lie as well.
He came back from the war alive, unmaimed;
And on the victorious side of a struggle
That had cost his Nation a half million men.
The serene pose of a sentinel at ease one sees
In the serenity of an cemetery, can't be found
In the smoke, cries and chaos of a battlefield.
Walk over to the statue.  Examine it closely,
Then give it a rap.  It will resound,
Depressingly hollow.
As empty as the rhetoric that urges men to war.

Jack the Ripper's Star

"Every man and every woman is a star."
                                      Aleister Crowley

As the Earth's population continues to swell
Toward the tipping point of its axis,
The showers of stars spraying out like diamonds
From the fingers of creation multiply as well;
The Universe is constantly expanding.

As new suns illuminate the heavens
Old shining orbs flicker out and die,
Becoming cold desolate chunks of stone
In lifeless solar systems.

The Star of Shug, the inventive cave-dweller
Who first fashioned wheels to lighten his load
No longer gives off any radiant light.

The Star of Swack, the brave nomad
Who shaped the first spear that successfully
Pierced the hide of a wooly mammoth
Has dimmed to darkness as well,
As have myriads of generations of suns
Of those who lived and died unremembered.

Red dwarves, red giants, even supernovas
Such as the beacon of Bethlehem that led
The Magi to the manger behind the inn.
They had their moments, then expired,
Just as Jack the Ripper's star will as well.

A hate-filled unrepentant psychopath to the end,
Saucy Jack, the sex-crazed stalker, fervently hopes
That when his star finally does give out,
It explodes with a resounding  "BANG!"

He's hoping it bursts like a swollen seed pod
Hurtling forth lethal asteroids of extinction.
He envisions one cutting its way through the void
Like a finally-honed surgical knife
Until it slices into some smug little world,
Severing the carotid artery of its existence
As if it were some old whore's neck, nothing more.

Sixteen Blinks from the fall of the Blade

It was as though those who held the scales of justice
Felt that they had to whet the blade of the guillotine
By bathing it in blood.  Snarling like rabid dogs,
Teeth bared, foaming at the mouth with class hatred,
They wished to destroy anyone who had risen above them.

Membership in The Academy of Science was suspect,
A liability in a society where ignorance held sway.
Antoine Lavoisier, the Father of Chemistry,
Was arrested, brought to trial, and convicted
By the bloodthirsty brigands who were "The Republic" now,
Vindictively flexing its power over those who before
Had oppressed, vexed or simply had intimidated them
By reputation and ability, by sentencing them to death.

Lavoisier, a nobleman, had pleaded not for mercy,
But for time to complete an important research project
That he insisted would benefit and bring honor to France.

"The Republic has no need of scientists, Citizen,"

Was the curt rebuff uttered by the judge, who instead,
Had him hurled into prison to contemplate his end.

Eyes wide open in horrified terror,
Mouths gaping, blade-stifled in mid-scream,
A severed head held aloft by its gory locks
While a bloodthirsty mob cheered and applauded.
Apparitions of execution, terrifying wraiths
That his imagination had conjured forth to dwell
In his mind's charnel house of death and cold stone.

A visit in prison from a trusted friend pulled him
From that maelstrom of morbid contemplation
Threatening to pull him down to drown in madness.

"What could Science learn from your final moments?"

His friend asked him.  They discussed Charlotte Corday,
The brave young woman who had stabbed Marat,
A crime that left the same mob howling for her head
That now demanded his.  Supposedly, after the blade fell,
The executioner held up her head and then slapped her face
To demonstrate his personal abhorrence of her crime.
Witnesses said that her face flushed red with anger,
Not blood, and that it wore an indignant expression.

Accepting his lot with stoic resignation, he resolved
To determine how long a brain could still function
After the body, its source of blood and oxygen,
Had been severed from it.  He vowed to his friend
That if he could do so, by sheer force of will
He would force himself to blink continuously
As long as his brain could command that function.

When the scientist's turn came to face the blade,
The mob's favored form of barbaric justice,
Lavoisier's colleague later swore that he counted

Sixteen blinks.

What force of will, what concentration
Must it have taken to surmount such pain.

 Sixteen blinks.

One

Pain

Three

Fear

Five

Rage

Seven

Self-Pity

Nine

Despair

Eleven

Regret

Thirteen

Light

Fifteen

Release

A Prairie Storm

The wind has picked up, and the weather is tense
With the anticipation of coming rain.
Dark clouds billow, bulging and flexing their biceps,
Muscles of the storm, rippling with power, taut
With energy that's roiling to be unleashed.

Lacking inspiration in the flat landscape, the artists
Of the plains paint portraits of the people;
Their faces weathered as ancient mounds, furrowed
Like plow-torn fields, their eyes squinting at a sky
That can bring moist salvation to their crop,
Or the hail that can mean its destruction.

With flash and thunder the dark grey biceps
Pummel the window, their wet fury unleashed.
The man moves to pull aside the curtain, his face taut,
When he's moved to speak, his voice is no longer tense.
"We're lucky, Anna," he whispers.  "It just looks like rain."

Another Cynic

You've heard the tale
Of Diogenes, the Cynic,
Who walked the streets of Athens
In daylight, clad in a dirty toga,
Carrying a lamp.

When he was asked
"Why?"

He responded
"I'm just looking for an honest man."

Meet Rich Hanson, the Cynic.
He's just looking for "hope."