” … morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in Flask. … ”

[Herman Melville as Ishmael, narrator of Moby Dick, in Chapter 41]

Upleaps my heart into my hands around
silk-handled saingeom. We flow as one,
me and my spinning edge. Without a sound,
my linen feet cross market stones. I lunge
like forest fire in a crystal night
to shatter demons left aft fore and right.

Upleaps my heart as goblin eyes roll up,
as welted tongues roll out, as horn-ed heads
I slash in two. With perfect poise, I sup
on righteous victory til all my foes are dead.
In every season weather clime I train
to rid the world of evil and its stains.

Upends my soul. I can’t contain it more.
Divine spark diffusing all through my space
of conscious time, infused now with eyesores.
Strange jagged lines in purples pinks disgrace
my perfect form. Where do I begin,
and where do these blasphemous patterns end?

We lived alone, traveled to the hinterlands
sustained ourselves on wild locusts honey and
God’s redeeming grace, such as it was
in that holy land when the desert bled into the sun
and the sun into God and God into a bright white forever dream
that held us all together forever in the pause between action and reaction
a nice time
a time for reflection
a time to find the edges, to unfold and fold up back again
but now
what now?
Now we’re old tired brittle
too many years pretending
that evil can be banished to the outsides
too many years upending
apple carts and money changers’ tables
too many years out of our league
too many years of uninterrupted prosperity and never-ending success
too many great intellectual victories
too few glimpses of the Ghosts of Christmas

If friends leave loving me when catch they me
deep down, where demons reign in jags and zags?
If love won’t love what I turn out to be?
Three share one eye, three ancient hags
who see, who know, who feel everything
that ever was; as now beautiful maidens they sing.

The truth about humans is that they are noughts.
The truth about people is that they’re empty
of everything except God, who with the shake of thought
both shapes and Is everything. And God’s sent me
to disappear as I speak the truth.
Same job as everyone else in this big old kissing booth.

Author: The Ancient Curse
Production: Bartleby Willard
Lighting, Sound, and Snacks: Amble Whistletown
Copyright: Andy Watson