The Far Side of the Room (most recent version)
Dullness is
Wisdom breaching, trembling, C R A C K I N G under the
foundation of
a
woman
scorned by many
tolls bleeding shades of
desolation
over and over again,
popularity that F A D E S away
tranquilized by buttered-down power
that grabs the wickedness of a serpent's spite,
giving life in fragmented reckonings
with vain pleasure.
I know the ballad of a woman you've probably met:
It doesn't end the way you might think
with a fat prince's kiss
with a wicked slipper
with a golden apple
champagne on the wall
and piano-plump behinds scratching in their seats
and antique, solitary gowns
with smeared-down lipstick
on
her
hands.
That woman, communed with her heart saying,
"Look, what I have attained . . ." (fill in the blank)
with the bread of silence pulling on her chest
without mercy, without privilege
and prick her fingers against thorns
as she escapes into the syrupy-sweet of lost dreams
to the half-deserted, swallowed quiet keeping her awake thereafter
until she lays her distresses against morning,
to pamper the sacrilege of her tear-flooded bed
and stained-sorrow tissues dashing her floor.
She is clumsy, a medieval, maimed cancelled plan
that crashed surrended affections against a dwindled gaze
that never cuts the jazzy-flavored paradise like complex,glowing scars.
She runs, she walks, she smiles, she freezes
like . . .
a cake splattered on the ground
and blotted, dreaded, smashed sincerity
covering a blank mind in a state of shock
and screams alone
and praises the illiterate barricades of tomorrow:
the unexpected, imperfect messengers welcome
her
to
the tangled road of uncertainty.
