the fulminous pentameter of pale pink artistry

Who's clothes are we wearing now?
The blackened coats of filthy foot soldiers
obeying the orders of mad generals drunk on whiskey,
or the petticoats of ladies who blessed us with
clownish love, the ornate decorations of vined
embroidery sufficing to make us laugh as we
made fools of ourselves in the Veterans Day
parade? Who's circle of a belt are we wearing,
is it the one that we tanned ourselves after
stripping the leather off of the cattle,
the one that we sewed with our calloused fingers
in the dark heat of some Asian sweatshop?

I might ask the same about your mask, the one
that your father gave you on your fifteenth birthday,
all rosy and cruel and delicate with features of
some idle bank robber's sentimentalities, fitting
like a glove across the face, that old slap that
weakens our bonds to what is familiar.
Where we wear masks, it is obvious, where we go
without them is not.

Shawls are terrifying, the ghost-wraith fabric
wound around the wind in fumes of threads,
the beggar's breath that with undulating tassels
speaks of charity, companionship, silence, and
what more, curses. But they demonstrate the
way in which supple form maybe be accentuated
by a mask of silk, of coarse cashmere curving
around humane architechtures like wisps of willow
about a branch.

Who's clothes do you have on?
Who's mask have you stolen?
Who's ancient angelic hopes have you rotted with
the symphony of decay, with the secret sublimity
of control, with the dangerous spirits of intoxication
and with the vespers of power's praise?

What dance do you prepare yourself for?
The old plague rehearsal, that child's game
where they all fall down in a ring and giggle
but for the posies? Or is it the office party
where you imbibe and demonstrate your talents
at hanging lampshades across their heads to
mask the light of the eyes, the parties where
insanity goes unobserved but for the inevitable
hangover that crumples the weapons of the spirit
into nothing but ash smoke? What fulminous
pentameter calls across your musics, what
passion-play has made you sick with longing,
what innuendo's reminiscence has broken your step
in dark desire's theatrics, where pirouhettes
aren't practiced and the orchaestration is tied
by strings and thistles to the machineries of
the gulag?

Do not ask me any more questions about myself,
you who have posed so much in the artifices
of joy like a gargoyle lying in wait for sunset
to extract its stone from your veined flesh.
Do not command me to obeyances of urn's formulation,
to the machineries of meaningless transience
where routine becomes a blessing, and do not
formulate me into a receptacle for your insecurities,
for I have had the same, and fought my way out
instead of waiting for some flitting whim to
curtail the miseries of modernity, instead of
hallowing the artificial angels languishing
in brain death on godless pews strewn with the
langour of authority's lack of vision.

Where the people make nothing themselves,
nothing shall be made; the simple and stupid
equation that belies the truth, that animosity
towards the creative is like a death-sentence
of self-destruction, that antagonizing the birth
of pale pink artistry only antagonzies the future
of security and peace, that developing the
darkened manipulations of gears within the pulsating
flower of mind foreshadows sinking in the great lake
instead of being floated like a blossomed lily
upon the water gardens of an Impressionist master.

You do not believe me
because you do not believe anything.