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El Diablo Chicken
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Date Posted: 14:24:16 04/05/01 Thu
Author Host/IP: NoHost/62.6.88.134
It's a first draft thing. What now?
Mary of Laconia
Gossamer horses graze beckside
up upon Orion
There is kilterless, unspoken honey
in the playground
down, down
where oblivion is found
Head-held anguish
listless
drowning, drowned
upon Orion
The diffused stupor...broken
tactile and disengaged
The perch beckons
the carrion stare back
***
She was a dirty little laggard
whose loquacity of idolatry
bred shock and shame
among the good people of Bavardage
It was matched only
by the brazen poverty
of collective spirit
she spat daily in their faces
They said the Fraulein
did her namesake disservice
in soliloquist arrears
Indiscriminate truths
in many disregarded corners
showed that Mary of Laconia
dearly adored her Ave Maria
The morose solemnity she exuded
fed distrust to the sour avowal
among the good people of Bavardage
But what did she care?
In elementary repose
the taciturn one heeded less and less
their ignoble and liturgical attentions
The words of Plutarchs
soothed her in evenings
knelt before the orange rage
Devoutly to the Kyrie Eleison
she set about her lonely task
with a castaway's enshrinement
and cryptic zest
And we -
those few vested onlookers
among the good people -
so silently so proud
beneath our garrulous sheen
And we -
those carers, always there
among the good people -
we lived deceived
misrepresented
by our own private Ciceros
***
The hair-brained chatter
of irresponsible frivolity
varnishes nonsense
with the charms of sound;
Wisdom points to silence
on requisite occasions
for regret is oft post of speech
yet in silence, is rarely found
The Spartan of Bavardage
lay soothed by her unfaithful Plutarchs
who spoke distant bliss into her ear
Enlightenment adorned her secret retreat
yet these men of light never appeared
And Mary sighed once more
while the good people's hearsay
lamented her breathy mystery
***
The Capital of Laconia is a grand and fine city
Tercentenary gadabouts seek outs its hospitality
famous feasts
beside its cinderbox
beneath the tranquility
of its leafy watchtower
Laconia names
for a satellite or a star
each one of its forest thoroughfares
Mary lives in the tawdry house on the peak
that she names for Cassiopeia's Chair
And Mary would remain in definition
but for the vertiginous demands
of the good people of Bavardage
Mary is bittersweet
about her infrequent sorties to the secret retreat
so mercifully devoid of verbiage
The Capital of Laconia is a grand and fine city
Mary treks the peaks
where the vistas brush teardrops in her eyes
An incomplete stair
where the prodigies sing Babel into her ear
and regardless
she seeks her settlement there
***
Ebullient in a disjoined hole
one day
the sun poured in
Mary turned her face to the bloom
her features flushed in a lovelorn eve
unlocked of the momentary, reproachful flow
where she had sat too long in ceaseless hope
As her one true love wandered carelessly by
he walked power, carefree like
the impossible flowers in Mary's sky
She stretched out to him
clutched at the rays of the sun
pouring in
Just when she thought
she had wrested the rim
she slipped
her butterfly wings snapped
wrenched beneath her ceaseless hope's burden
He hummed soft paucis rebis
in the air that bristled of close evening
He glowed a true love's glow
in Mary's vainly youthful foresight
In her dark, he was light
She had spied him alone
hidden from the sight of the good people
and Mary dared
to hope that he might...
He walked on past the hole
but for one moment's discontinuity of step
one involuntary turn of his head
toward her...
fleeting, then dead
It exposed in full to Mary;
his quandary
and the irrevocable efforts
of concealment
The reconciliation he bartered then -
submission to the loquacity
at the expense of taciturn harmony with her
And Mary knew of no way back
never to another
could she trust her heart again
Mary did not curse him
as she skulked away once more
just the good people
whose heritage he could not deny
whose veto he could not defy
***
A soft caress
look up and see
A sudden arrest of attention
wary strolls
then hammer blows
and emancipation decreed
Mary's dread
Soft steps to absconding flight
and Mary fled the now sickening light
that was cast
by the mirage of his face
The wasps of her soul stung
then gave lurching chase
Her yelps, evolved within
were culled to a prejudicious destruction
in the ice age
of her proper comportment to the world
And we saw her
one morning
coffee cup and book in hand
waiting there with a weighty stare
for the good people to drag her
behind them
The muteness
of her frantic steps
was alien to us
We spared our interest
nothing plundered in her silence
***
One afternoon's release
Mary beat the path
to the grand angel arch
she so admired
Of gargoyle and Goth
at the cathedral;
the apex and the lane's end
Of precision and forgiving the good people
the angel attends patiently
Mary's eyes flashed upward
as she passed beneath
She appreciated the peace and disguise
of musty weekdays
and the plethora of good people
in absentia
proffering elsewhere God's mysterious ways
Mary took root there
not for the Lord's parley
but for relief
from the impassioned desert summer
of another oppressive heart
To hide
in the cool, dusty foreboding
To blend
into holy darkness
her dispiriting predicament
To bide her forever
in the smell of beeswax
Mary stood briefly before the cathedral's figurines
she puzzled ritually for a moment
why the good people banished their God here
why God hid his good people
outside
amid the laced intensity
they never even sense upon their faces
Mary shrank, turned her face
to the high ceiling, and asked
if she might be left alone for
a while, before she retired
to a pew
***
Beautiful girls all in a group
headed into the even town
for the browning and fetes at twilight
The circles of Bavardage
They waylaid at the angel arch
to garner platitudes from
the man of vestment
who had attended to and blessed
Mary earlier, in her quiet
dedication, and mentioned it
in passing, while Mary sat in the dark within
The beautiful girls latched
onto the curious coincidence
of the subject of their vituperative
gossip, their mocking curses of
that same morning and Mary's presence
now...
The doting servility she held in
gloating provocation over them;
The lonesome saucer eyes of
Mary unwitting; to jades -
despised - and jealousy ate
at them
Then, one such fair luminary's
shrill spitefulness erupted
goaded into righteousness
out and out, at last, as the
beautiful girls poured into
the cathedral to see Maundy
Mary once more;
And the paucity of spirit of the
good people washed over them
One trumpet-tongued tone
boasted of how the jade had
spied Mary in her laconic
wandering; overheard Mary
mouthing her witless tunes of
The morning; the tricky Pilate's
harlot frittering among the trees
of her grand and fine city;
such a silly girl, they cried, so
unloved and blind; the freak in
the night for the millionth time
Such high and mighty sentiments
they feverishly opined, upon
a jewelled hilt...
And how they laughed, until
the anger aligned with the tongues
Her impudence, the insubordinate
lilt of her styleless creations; her
sinful audacity in usurping the
hierarchy
of the good
good
people
of Bavardage
Abysmal breaths
and bird song filtered beneath the angel arch
as April showers tapped upon
the stained-glass panes
***
We always saw
our Mary of Laconia
as a headstrong feather
grounded in the rock
yet always flitting free
up high in her unique antiquity
And the onslaught -
time and again
and nothing unfamiliar -
crushed her this time
It broke Mary's peace
like the straw of proverb
It infringed upon the silence of Mary
at last
she cried...
***
One day, she'll come splashing down
real disbelief in sleep this high
Eyes wide open as the bales rupture
and blow
High, high, frail and unbound above
into a torrent of bone-dry dust...
beyond the promontory
the last standing outpost
of the dominion;
from here, where
each precedent
is a sunset
***
I think
this place
they call God's sanctuary
is nothing
but a mortuary for the souls
with which God blessed you at birth
Souls corrupted
beneath the girth
of your debauchery
and vitriol and dearth of compassion
Souls for which you mourn
here at the cathedral
good people, each Sunday
one of spurious atonement
for six pilloried
And I think you hide nothing
behind the demon eyes
for there is nothing there
in which to begin
under the breath and cowering
there is nothing beneath the layers
you prize above all else
I think your circle is foretold
by your self-imposed
horizon of inhibition
and that the love of Laconia
is what you can never let in
The love rots
beneath the self
And I am sad and ashamed
***
Indiscriminate tears that Mary shed
for her Ave Maria that day
were the first she had known
within
The black stone rests
beneath the leafy watchtower
in the grand and fine city
Ten thousand days and devotees
had always encouraged in the past
the place where she walked
Mary crouched there this time
looked nowhere
The sighs and the prodigies
greeted with a nothing
the grey stabbing nothing
that Mary's laconic fellows dare say
***
We awoke the next morning
harried as always
blurry eyes gave way
to a miniature evolution
upon our faces
Where is Mary?
The search was brief
the blood was dry like dust
the tearful plea is ever more
***
Rarefied reverence as of now
in Bavardage
hushed in plush quilts
to chronicle Mary's story
and gloss lightly the edges
Time sped perspective
from the good people of Bavardage
and feckless remorse
shed fond light on her memory
Gossamer horses graze beckside
beside Mary of the Clouds
She clutches Laconia's legacy
to her breast
and looks on
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