A Comedy for Corpses

Being

A dirge theurgic for the demi-urgic, Word-absurd if so preferred, A Play polemic, Poetic omenic, An alle(z)-(go)ry,
A mortatory, A Metaphor (or Mata-for) /I’m/mortal(s) or . . .

. . .all of these and Nothing more.

PRELUDE
Sublune
To Set the Scene the Dreamer Dreams when Dreaming Dreams Beneath the Moon

Night.
Abed,

a’dreaming, dreaming, dreaming . . .

Here we go -

*PART ONE
The End*

(Incipit)

Sleep.

then. . .

Dream.

(Cue the Dreamer)

I dreamed last night (or was it real?)
that Death came calling at my window,
gravely dres’t (his best), bare bones
got up in midnight formal.
Black as void,
he came slowly, s...l...o...w...l...y,
pregnant with this undertaking,
groaning,
burdened with the weight of promise
irremediate as birth.
Onward, onward, on He came,
calling out the dead -
A nativity in negative perspective.

INTERLUDE:
Death (P)rattle
Soundtrack to Last Ri(gh)t(e)s
A Threnodeviation

(House lights down)

There. Coming.
Close. Closing.
Shreds of rippling night
on a withered patch of lawn.
Astride an organ of oblivion, a
(c)old conductor, (d)ark director,
bone-bright in night
beyond the window,
ashine in pin-pricked starlight,
taps point, now counterpoint,
keeps time by timeless measure
while dancing moves macabre.
By Couru keeps the cadence,
In Fouetté follows flow like
a dervish in a daydream
made malicious by the music.

INTER-INTERLUDE:
Interlune
Between Death and a Moon, A’mourning

Name that Tune:

Canticle of Cancer,
Psalm of Plague,
Hymn to Hell,
Song of Sickness,
Paean to Pain.

This is music meant for endings.

Grievings shriek
like coarse-voiced crows
turning circles in a gyre
above a grave.
Stone towers sing,
book-bells ring
in candlelight.
The dead, dead lie
beyond sight or sigh,
deaf to rue and rite.

Listen. . .
Can you hear?
You will.
(in this) You
(have no) Will.

Crack of bone and beat of blood,
thrum of muscle,
flare of flesh, (ex)static heart
(in)tone-less terror,
resounds a tuneless,
tenebrous
lament of life
loathe to be abandoned!
A show exclusive to the almost-ghosted
is this Comedy of life riposted.
In audience, ye costumed corpses
attend,
applaud,
and die.

INTERLUDE:
Quaaluddite Delight
A Recumbent Ovation

Malicious Maestro!
Villain! Virtuoso!
Friend? Foe?
Brava! Bravo!
Encore! No more!
No. . .
more. . .
Death be damned,
Death be cursed,
as end to endings, worst of worst!
Command performer for lives out-played,
sings sorrow, sadness, serenades
with songs that carry from the stage
on breath that stinks of carrion.
Beautiful,
so beautiful,
but barbarous as murder.

*THE DREAMER IN SOLILOQUIETUS

“Cut!
Curtains!
Stop the show!

Through tear torn eyes,
with sobs and sighs,
I took the stage
to Death engage
by roles reversed,
this play perverse.
I cried,
I cursed,
wild-eyed,
I raged,

“I am mis-cast!
You have mis-took!
I am not writ within your book
of death!”

Led by fear, fed by fury,
taut tongue twisting tales a'fluent,
I spat soliloquy,
I railed reprovant,

“I am no thespian
dramatizing suicide
on stages set
with skulls a'drip with cyanide.
No Prince to-being,
or first crush bleeding
out a cure for poisoned love.
By hosts above,
I craft no crime
to Death-defy in tact or time
as Cain defied the eyes Divine.
Not I to risk in self-cessation
cease of sour life’s vexation,
and all life longly-lived,
life wrongly-lived
consigns.
My act, in fact’s owed no applause,
tho’ earned no hook by case or cause.
I am a hack! A Ham!
Of age, yet of an age undamned!
An understudy un-auditioned!
A walk-on wanting for ambition!
Farceur!
“Unfit so far to be the star,
tho’ loathe to leave the stage.”

With victim’s vigor
(tho’ sore ashiver)
I proffered pleas
for lengthened lease
on life,
and toward that end, endeavored,

“This cannot be. . .
or, if it be,
it cannot be for me.
I am alive, alive,
tho’ asleep,
alive,
by sound or shake will wake, revive!”

I sighed,

“So, that’s the grief!
In sleep, relief!
I am the God in this machine!
Deus! By Zeus!
Down deep, asleep,
I dream, I dream, I dream.
Thrice thought’s the magic
that will make it so,
a spell should sleeping dreamers know.
So,‘Death, Death, Death,’
I think you thrice to death in life.
I dream you gentle, soft as breath,
as fading as a dawn.
Now, Out! Delirium!
Et in Arcadia,
I deem thee dream! Begone!

Death did not speak,
by aim discreet,

“What need have I of
that conceit?
Look alone fulfills that feat,
Old eyes give voice to verity.”

EXTRALUDE:
Intraviewed
Mesmer Eyes Immortalize

Inside those gaping, cryptal caverns
see happy hordes in seven Heavens
hung with halos Godly given.
See heated, howling hosts of Hell
in heaving, harrow’d sinners’ wells.
See lamps across the light(less) void,
that flash with fire,
as port
or pyre,
hopeless to avoid.

“No myth, mirage,
Fata Morgana.
All who deem me
dream’s
Chimera,
should doubt life alike
and call *that* dream.
So, dream, and dream, and dream,
and still it is not so.
The IS of it remains
as tangible as pain,
physical as fever,
irrefutable as flesh.
Name me what you will
in fear, in anger:
Baneful Beast,
Sanguine Stranger,
Perish Priest,
Dread Deranger,
names are novel for the nameless!
So, come now, be creative!
Bestow your best
Nom d’abative:
Nox Invictus?
Soul-gilt Croesus?
God of Rot?
King Diseases?
Good.
Still better, debtor,
hail me humble Toll-Collector.
For every life, to be, must die.
Each You, each I*,
owe Death before the soul can fly.
For every Me, acclaimed or cursed,
the show will stop,
the curtain close,
the orchestra disperse.
For every moment, past or present,
One thing is, then one thing isn’t.
Every stone, each piece of Earth,
old as Time, new as birth,
will be, as everything at last,
unbe’d (undone!)”.
“So it is, so will be,
be done protesting, come with me.’

Having thus contended,
Death, his hand extended
slyly as an advocate in Eden,
reached to take my own, still living.

*THE DREAMER*

I laughed,
and laughed.
At Death,
I laughed,
(Thrice done, it gave not clue nor craft. . .)
Though silence better served by half,
I said,

“So, tho’ Will be free,
the Live must lose,
and cannot choose to be?
In this verdict, most decisive,
you strut and cut by words derisive,
refuse refute,
deny dispute
from fear of mortal’s wit incisive?
Are you such a Tyrant, Death?
At this hour of a life near ended,
will you take it uncontended,
mute of voice, of chance, of choice
to dance with Death and die,
or stay in step with Life,
and live?”

*DEATH*

The smiling Spectre,
droll deceasling,
rattled laughter,
mocking, grinning,

“The mortal think themselves so clever
believing that a life’s worth keeping.”

*THE DREAMER*

“Of course we living want to live!”

said I,
in sleeping, leaping to the lie,

“We cling to life by trade or trick,
by mortal mettle strive to stick.
By hand, by tooth and brittle nail,
of one more breath ourselves avail,
that darkness should be held at bay
by miracles or man, the end delay.”

*DEATH*

With a coroner's cold beration
Death clatter-clapped ovation,
in acid affectation,
did bow to my oration.

“For what token
would you buy that life,
to live, and live, and live?
A thousand years could I give,
or, would that not suffice?
Would you then ten thousand live?
I can sell it. . . for a price;
I can give and you will live,
immortal as a stone.
But, as Time will tend,
the long-living end
immortal and alone.
So, make an offer,
for trade or coffer,
Life costs less than you believe.
So, what is it that you would give
to live and live and live?

*THE DREAMER*

_“Everything!”_

I cried, thoughtless as a zealot,

“What cloth or coin holds more worth,
what castle, country, all the earth,
could I value more than life?”

*DEATH*

“What worth, indeed!
To watch those loved
awasting, wither’d,
in company of gravelings gathered
in their sickened sorrow.
Here today! Gone tomorrow
to shores of night beyond the cock-crow.
To tame by Time
lusts raw, refined,
and, to the loss of love assign
some dark design of faithless treason.
A red-rimmed wretch in winter’d season
of grey-shade moods, mourning
as every life you love adoring
fades,
then one by one expires,
and Love by Love,
does day by day,
with fickle memory conspire.”

*THE DREAMER*

I said nothing.
Judge me in that sullen silence
as victim of a hope done violence,
without the will,
or scrap or skill
to further our debate.
Death can with the dead converse
in living lines
of prose or verse.
Has studied as
debaters must,
parries, points,
feints and thrusts.
Has sharp’d his wit
to atom thick,
to better best
by trip or trick.
From spar and speak
with doubtless Greeks,
and Persians peerless
atop theoried peaks,
from sons of wisdom,
students, sages
famed from wiser, older Ages,
does Death
his darkling dogma preach.

*THE DIALECTICS OF THE DEAD
Apologia Mortuus
A Mortomonologue*

*DEATH*

“For every toil,
every striving,
I’m scorned by Men,
as scourge, as Sin,
reviling me as villain.
Give a thought to my vocation
and leave in life the expectation
of what you think you know.
I am not so vile as you suppose,
you, who Nature’s law oppose.
A deathless life is living death
all urgent purpose crushed beneath
weight of Time to Timeless slowed.
Now, think!
I am not the Why of dying,
but collector, counter, quantifyer
of dead of minutes,
dead of hours,
dead of days
done to death
by men
with wicked ways
of War,
By Hate of Man
or men or State,
for fear of fools
and canny ruse.
Acts appalling,
grisly, galling,
seed and swell
corpse fields fell
from shell and shot;
to fund a few, a million rot.
So, here’s a truth, told for gain,
‘Once a slayer ends as slain,
and violence, victor, is vice in vain’.
You sell slaughter,
hate and Hell
for taunts, for wants,
for worlds, for wealth.
Hidden back of honey’d words,
fine and flowing, unreserved,
waits the bite, for sport or spite,
that chews the hand the monster serves.
Generals, like gods, devour
children of an age entire,
while high in hallowed halls of power
safe will wake and sound retire.
Yet, on truth, not war, should they depend,
though lives been lived as fighting men,
for in the end but worms defend
them, godlings in their graves.
You may trust me undeceiving,
less free am I than you still living,
bound by what to be must be,
prayerless, careless, but never free.
I hold no anger for the being,
nor am I the dead redeeming.
I’m tasked to take
and not to break
a soul in need of swift escape.
I am kindness, comfort,
all (for)giving
Light for the no longer living.
I am, my Dream philosopher,
your Androgyne Elixir,
Greatest Work,
Greenest Dragon!
For pain of heart or head or soul,
I cede release,
Immortal Medicine!
What loss the left alone(ly) feel
may longly linger,
or burn but briefly,
‘til at the end themselves receive me.
So, Man, remember,
Life is loss,
in dying, Living pay the cost.
No one who lives eludes his ghost,
for I alone can make that boast.
In time I come to visit all,
the good, the great,
the poor, the small,
and lead them to eternity
in my Paradise of Death.”

Finis