The Fisher king mad

It began with a smile

The Fisher king mad

Chased

While

On the day, hot, humid
Words hung

Heavy in the atmosphere

Yet

From a background

Of bedlam

Her eyes cut

Laughing

Through the chaos 

And the caressing gentle breeze

Created by her simple wink

At

The Fisher King mad

A road for a King

Sting: Desert Rose Remix 

             It happened yesterday.  As I had missed the King’s Highway, the royal road, I found myself traveling across the Meadows.  Fields passed in a green blur as my car glided forward.  I was on my way to the bibliotheca.  An archive of tomes and treasures to enchant the mind.  Yet as my car pressed forward, when I had gotten off the thoroughfare to take this way, I always thought of her.  Rather than a sensual tendril, this was actually more of the mundane.  I remembered her words in passing that one should pass by the green village if traffic should ever appear.  There it might have stayed except there was a black car in front of me.  Well the problem wasn’t in the sleek sportster that was in front of me, it was in the lumbering yellow leviathan in front of it: a garbage truck.  As this slowed our passage, it gave me time to think.  To dwell for a moments reprieve of the trace from the past.  It reminded me of a dream.

                The dream was odd in that I remembered most of it.  Usually, it is only fragments or frozen images of scatter shot narratives that survive my passage during the night.  A flash of eyes, the shattered glass, the collision of ice cubes, a wilted rose on a broken boulevard:  just images.  This seems to be a defense mechanism put in place by my brain to protect me from my own madness.  A bind placed by myself, to save me from myself.  Perhaps.  But every so often, my mind is merciful in that it allows some of the visions to pass. 

                I was in a house.  It was one of those dream houses.  You have never been in it but from the wooden interior frames, soft lighting accentuated by candles, the wooden floors--it was a fashionable place.  The guests were dressed in the plumage of the upper class evening wear.  I can’t argue.  I was also decked out in the haute culture.  I don’t know why the party was being held except it seemingly was an open house for people to meet and greet each other.  Sadly, all too often it’s not what you know, but who you know.  Anyway, I was engaged in one such conversation.  Well not really.  It was one of those conversations where you are present, but only half-heartedly.  I had other things on my mind.  I knew that she was here.  She was somewhere.  I had to find her.  While the person I was talking to continued in there rambling, I took a champagne glass from a silver tray.  At his pauses I would fill in with the appropriate “uh, huh,” “really,” and “ya don’t say.”  My eyes were furious in their scanning to and fro.  My senses were racing trying to pick up where she might be.  Seeing a doorway I excused myself to go into the next room. 

                I entered the next room to find myself in a crowded kitchen.  Now one might expect it to be full of the hustle and bustle of help making sure the party continued to flow.  Replacing the sound of colliding cutlery however continued banter.  As the blue colored tile on the walls served to amplify the bedlam of the banter, the sound was crushing.  My eyes scanned furiously.  As white cuffs capped with links of the finest stones rose to the air in an unceasing and unending calls for cheers.  For who, for what, I never was truly sure.  My eyes scouted. 

                The delicate ballet of courting couples had begun.  By this time sweet words of whisky had replaced the shy wisdom of wine.  Be they groups in their fifties, forties, thirties, twenties, or even the uncoordinated youth… they were all reflections of the others; shy studied curious or explosive in bombastic bravado.  Women adorned in the finest of pearls swirled them around fingers in a slight seduction to those they were talking to.  The silent laugh as a hand was pressed to the chest.  White jacketed maître de rushed about blocking faces with trays or upheld arms before the face could be fully grasped. Where could she be?  Where could she be?  I sat on a chair trying to figure out the next step.  In the cacophony of smells of roasted flesh of rabbit and lamb, arose a trace of her distinctive fragrance.  Immediately I leapt from my chair.  Like a bloodhound I followed the scent through the throng of party goers desperate to appear animated behind the suffocating masks they bore. 

                My eyes fell upon a sudden break in the crowd.  In part of the magic that only dreams can provide, a doorway that had been hidden from my vision earlier, appeared on the back wall.  With each step closer to the doors the scent grew stronger.  I did not have time to look nervously around, this could be her, it could be where she was.  I opened the door to find a wooden staircase going up with the hall bathed in light.  I locked the doors behind me.  I began to climb the stairs unsure but hopeful.  When I reached the top of the stairs I came upon a great room.

                The only thing in the room was a huge bed.  The roof of the room glass open to the sky which allowed the bed to be bathed in the warm glow of the sun.  On the bed itself was a huge white comforter that hid a diffused shape below.   Her arm lay palm down on the bed.  Through an opening in the comforter I saw her beckoning eyes smile.  I ran to the bed, pushed back the comforter to reveal her face, her smile.  In her savage beauty a part of me died in return for life perpetual.  Tears of joy softly swept down her cheek as I leaned in to deliver a kiss that had been building for so long.  At this point the dream broke down into images of shapes and skin erupting from momentary openings in the comforter.  Words unspoken burned fierce on unrestrained lips as passions gave way.  The silent sighs were broken only by purrs of pleasure under the twisting protection of white.  The elusive reflection of nirvana however was just momentary... the black car began to move.

                I laughed at the sudden vibrancy of the recollection.  As I swerved into a passing lane I was caught by the humor of the situation.  Though I might write a short story about that.        

 

In hesitation

In hesitation

She smiles

The nodded head

Departs

Only to return

With a gift

Wrapped in white

With stripes

Beckoning for

Me to slowly

Unwrap

Release

The building of

The heat
Of the fragile case

Of the futile cage 

The slow turning foot

The bitten lip

The known unknown

Beneath the wrapping

He smiles

In hesitation

Sweaty-toothed madman

Music: Keating's triumph

 

In the end, we always win.  Isn’t that the way it goes.

I would never know.

To be a truth speaker in a world that demands the truth… yet no one wants to hear. 

I would never know.

It was the summer.  The air conditioning had gone out in our house so my Dad took us to go see a movie while it got repaired.  The movie: Dead Poet’s society.  How that movie would affect my life I would never know.  Gawky adolescent staring at a screen unknowing of the challenge issued.

I would never know.

As a boy I was Neil.  Or was it Todd.  A student stifled; waiting only for the challenge of a sweaty toothed madman to help me rise above.  To dare.  To dream.  To tell the truth.  My truth.  To a stifled world slumbering in its complacency.    To release my barbaric yawp.  To give voice to the stifled stuffed words trapped inside my throat.  To beckon their release.  Damm you.  Damn youl

I would never know.

I would accept his challenge.  I would stand to be counted.  Despte the cost, despite the hardship, I would be true to the truth.  I had to.  It would be what I knew.

I would never know.

 
Against the onslaught of the world I could stand.  Whatever they might yell to me, I could respond with my barbaric yawp.  They would cast me into darkness, but I could sound my barbaric yawp none the less.  A bulwark of strength, if  was only brave enough to use it.  If one was brave enough to dare, brave enough to dream, brave enough to be a truth seeker… then the barbaric yawp would be their prize.  Though it may have been humble, it was enough to act as a torch to keep the wolves, the ones that sulked right outside the doorway, at bay.  They would not consume me.  Not today.  Holding aloft the torch of indignant truth, they would be held at bay, by god. 

As I grew, I could no longer be Todd, or Neil, no I had to become Mr. Keating.  I had to spread the light.  To be a free-thinker.  To get people to question.  What is right? What is wrong?  What is?  To question everything… including me.  All the while, the sweaty toothed madman was whispering in my ear.  Each time I was ready to let it down, he whispered in my ear… “to thine ownself be true.” 

 

Damn you.  Curses on you.   Rimming, simmering, sweltering, he was everpresnt; this sweaty toothed madman. 

I would never know.

It would have been so easy to run, to have hidden.   But that is not for us, this sweaty toothed madman and I.  If we are to do our jobs, we must teach to think; to question.  To rise above ourselves.  To aim above the norm, to be not only good, but good for something.

I would never know.

Beyond being a teacher, I transversed into documentary.  My latest doc was on Wally Linebarger.  A teacher who inspired and nurtured his students.  Come to find out, he announced his homosexuality.  Expulsion and defemation followed.  Being a servant of truth, I made a doc about this.  Although I am heterosexual, I saw Wally’s story was a human rights issue.  To release truth.  Foolish me.  I forgot; the world loves to adhere to its black and whites.  The comforting sedation of types.  Grey only confuses things.  I forgot; just don’t pay attention to my grin.  That one that is born of truth.  That one that challenges. It can take your beats, your anger of born of no consequence, only to challenge back… “Is that all you have?”  Well is it. 

My doc might invite the viewer to free thought.  I know… bad me.  Trying to get people to crush the comfort of preconceived notions that flow so easily from the mouths of demagouges .  It could come from both both sides.  I heard I was a homosexual,  I heard I was a homophobe.  “Is that all you got?”  Passing clenched teeth frozen in a grin, “Is that all you got?” 

Ahh what a messy world.  It doesn’t matter.  Such is the damage, such is the danger, of telling truth.  But it has to be done regardless.  Like a mad prophet I stand outside the gates of the city.  Shouting truths in the hopes that one will hear.  Don’t worry, some listen to this man who now has become a sweaty toothed madman himself. 

Some do.

These ones who will break the mold will grow to change the world.  The power they contain…

I would never know.

Sleep well, my sweaty toothed madman. 

The sun began

Afro celt sound system Eireann Remix

 

The sun began

A slow retreat

From

Growing shadows

So long
Hidden

Off the path 

Pierced

The light

From her eyes

Rose to reveal

The rose

Of the simmer

That had burned

So long

The smile brazen

Beacon burned bright

So long

Calling

Crying

As his arms surrounded

To pull

Her Close

The embrace

That had burned

So long

Heated breath

Left lips

In the savage soft lean

Preparing for a feast

As

Sparks shot

Static space broken

His hand

Began

A trekking travel north

Across

Her heated skin

A fingers trace

The bordered lace

Covering a treasure beneath

That had begun the rise

To the surface

Desperate to reach his touch

That had burned

So long

Lips continued to devour

As hips began to press

Desperately longing

To join

In a Union

Passionate heat

Desperate rise

In the fevered dance
Colliding hard and soft

Marked

Advancing retreats

Steps become fevered

Fever driven by passion

Inextinguishable as they are

Consumed by the fire of passion

That had burned

So long

As The sun began

Its slow retreat