Psalm of a Thespian

 

My soul, my soul, shall I lament thee –

A decaying Beauty breathing a thousand deaths

Upon the satin alter of a lively façade?

Shall thee, my soul, skim a thousand tombstones,

Drained vessels of sallow vestiges and ashes,

Before the icy nails of sovereignty slip beyond

The curtain that twilit glows art verboten?

 

Banned by battered wardens of tattered veils,

Who applaud naught a thespian’s carnival display,

They laugh the noxious laughs of proper éclat

Whilst this soul kisses the dagger of Saul upon

The rostrum, bewitching wardens with transgressions.

This shackled soul hath wronged the fairer state of man,

And shall now hang from the social justice limb!

 

This albatross of petty portico hath become cumbersome,

And the nine-tails upon this sandpapered flesh –

Textured as those immortal oceanic dunes –

Dangle this soul as a marionette, lest it cry unto Thee!

That Thee, a thespian’s Foundation, may bend down Thy ear

Unto this scourged creature, long drawn and quartered,

Marred upon the wheel of Time . . . .

 

Left beneath the firmament’s boiling judgment,

I have been braided upon this marbled floor,

That the shadowed beaks of guilt may peck the fleshy scars

Of sin rooted deeper than the tulips sprouted across loose soil.

Yet beyond the inky sky, I beg tender mercies to ascend unto Thee

From a tumultuous warrior, a restless slave forsaken within caverns,

And drowning in the depths of the eternal darkness of pretense.

 

Can silhouettes sing of Thy wonders, shall the mildewing Death

Lift up Thy name, or scarlet liquid mend the sundered travesty?

Oh Bystander, my strength crumbles beneath the scaffold of Disease!

As a skeleton without family, hast Thou forsaken this weary charlatan?

The eves hath been consumed like smoke, and bones burned to hearth relics,

The muscle of life is withered like smoldered grass, and pupils subside

Like the aged rasping of the Earth’s fading monologue.

 

This soul clings unto arteries, milking the fluid in a tragedian’s chicanery,

For I have become but a robin of the sea, an orphaned lark

Flitting about mounds of waste -- eating ashes as fine bread,

Imbibing tears as fresh water, and shedding clear blood as fears!

But lo’ dear Faith rests within Thy timing of the morn!

Thee, who hath hushed the stars at dusk by name, grant unto a worm

The virtue to rise at dusk and mute the learnt lines of platform prayers . . .

 

That these lips may be bound in the grave’s ghostly silence,

And tongue swollen, lest blasphemy it utters unto Thee,

For lo’ Thee hear the soiled whimpers of forsaken souls,

Chained unto the cell of Deceit, thespians upon hypocrisy’s stage!

But nay shall I longer lament the soul bowing before Morning Star wardens,

Whilst in crescendo they perform self-homicide with Saul’s dagger,

For veracity Thee desire, ne'er a parodist’s plank of duplicity’s fabrication

Reviews

[C.T. Bailey]

Bravo. Every line a treasure, no, a vestige of greatness! I salute you! The entire piece is majestic in every way. Every stanza, line, and word calculated and considered. You have worked this masterpiece into a spectacular, glorious and dynamic piece of theatre. Into my favorites it goes and there it shall remain.

In kindred kind,
Todd