Mike Maggio

A Little of Nightmare Music

(after Dorothea Tanning)

 

O this endless night!

drowning in these Pavlovian holes that rule this unruly sea.

 

O Pandora!

What a mess of this shipwreck we have made!

The mollusks roam untamed through these monstrous rooms

the starfish mock me with their vicious minds.

 

O mother of pearl!

O father of plasticine trapped inside my Achilles heel!

Why have you abandoned me?

I am mad with melancholy!

I float among these gasping waves

snap at their mewling jaws

a million mincing swords

tapdancing above my severed head.

 

O this damned endless night!

When will it come to pass?

I rise and fall inside this gnarl of time

careen into the graping abyss

and watch the cellophane platoons march by

abliss inside this curséd sea.

 

And so the flowers!

The psychophonic flowers!

They dare to symphonize their death.

They arrive with their waspish eyes

mourn me with their sadistic stems

smother me with their ghastly scent

as if I am to blame!

 

I am insane!

 

I wilt in the distance.

I spin like a whirling dervish.

I foxtrot like a crippled walrus

whose tortured legs will not allow the climbing of the golden stairs.

I am paralyzed with despair.

I am Neptune drowning in a sea of salt.

I am an open wound desperate for a reason.

I am sky palpitating beneath the sputtering sun.

I sleeprush through time, basting in this sizzling sea

while Hades crackles with blistering wrath.

 

I plunge forever

forever into this maelstrom of destiny

evaporate into a crescendo of lamentation

evanesce unrepentant

as this midnight night of music insists on unceasing its tragic song

and I watch myself blur in these untoward waters that refuse to let me be.