How it Really Happens (1st rewrite)

A Poem by Nobody.

Drinking at the Amoebic Pale Horse with nimbus misfits brings the rain down harder and colder. Armed with musical razorblades, I perch on the broad self-deprecating shoulders of benevolence, whisper time into earache haiku sketches of an unintended universe and refuse to be the villain in any scenario. To be a villain one must act. I simply sit, watch madness choke itself and write down my own observations for the sake of posterity. Sometimes I sing a little, too. But, the notes rarely even break the skin.

Suddenly, as the monochrome flicker reveals my endless lies, I let the shame penetrate my bones. A bright little girl’s silvery ghost, dressed in a green tutu and a red fireman helmet, spins on a lovely reel of loss. As starlight from the abyss, she squirt gun snipes a Star Trek poster and reminds me why I’m still solid. Someone has to pay for what has been lost. Someone has to bang their head against this brick wall perpetuity. I couldn't have fought back death, but I should have been there to say farewell.

Let them laugh into their sleeves! Refusal to evaporate crucifies depressing jokes, and stays the hero’s icy sword when graceless personal bonfires sing Hell’s own regrets. Pallbearers come trick-or-treating dressed as friends. Hatred even paints a smile over its vicious maw. We all pretend we understand for the sake of our communal sanity. But, the truth festers beneath the plastic surgery scars. The cadavers sleeping under our pretty green lawns squirm with malcontent.

With little notice from the undertaker’s twitchy eye, the sweetest corpse has been shoplifted by shapeless salvation, and soaked into the totem pole hierarchy of scars and scabs. The tombstone has finally stopped weeping.

And, we all share ice cream floats and personal pain at an artistically charged suicide picnic. We all fill our cracks with empty styles while an electric DJ exposes our mutual holes from a rat-tangled crow’s nest throne. Each lyric trickles from the tear duct secondhand. Each beat is a thump to the skull.

So stop guessing. String your paper doll Christmas nooses from the meat hook hopes that keep you from falling into a slow-mo dramatic end.

Let’s all just link our clever anecdotes and hallelujah-damning manners in the fresh-cut line that that leads through the carnival to the antique slaughterhouse chapel. Let the misfits connect once. Let the freaks out of their basement cages to feel the sunlight. Let them breathe the freedom like opiate smoke, and fall into a dream of true love.

After all, if my sources are credible, then we are all exceptional poets and beautiful tragedies. Whatelse can become of the b*****d children of God? "In the deepest canyons," the old ones say, "the ache can echo forever."