Fairytale

Fairytale


A pale, scrawny child, barely there at all.
Not even real, a trick of the light you might tell
yourself.  A haunt long buried in the trivia of getting
by that takes momentary form from your weakness
of spirit.  If it matters, no, I am not the avenging
angel of your sins.  The price I take is not your payment,
but my theft.  Or, better, if we come to terms, our mutual
gift, ritual sacrifice to the gods of guilt and shame, to stem
the suffering they demand.
We each achieve relief in this instant.  Perhaps it is a
kind of grace.
I have done what I came for here.  The night must provide
active entertainment to ease, spend this mania I have
become.  I seek out not further satiation, but release,
abandon of reason, the freedom from selfhood that
narcotics fraudulently promise.
I am drawn to loud music, decibels of vibration that
thrust through chains of rumination, break punishing
patterns into kaleidoscopic delight.  There is plenty of
darkness in this underground temple of sound within
which I unseen freely gyrate, thrown in with movement
of ecstatic worship.  If only this were endless reward of
eternity, to catch hold, entrain in shifting, uplifting
rhythm.
Underground, daylight is no threat.  Yet, time will call
an end to the tune.  The organizers and their intended
audience disperse near dawn.  When the music’s over,
the cover withdrawn, I must scramble to safety.
Autumn has brought me books for my hours of indoor
solitude.  She wants to share stories that have solaced
and thrilled through forbidding hours.  I rereread
Andersen’s “Snow Queen” for the simple salvation of
fairytales’ faithful love.
The Queen, evil’s incarnation, she loves too.  She of
enclosed icy soul, with screwed up values, only feeling
alive in ravages of Winter callousness, she loves the boy.
And she has always been faithful lover to that burning
pain of frozen desire, the power of the dark side.  She
doesn’t know that human love is different.  She has no
reference for the expectations of a mortal child.  She is
cruel because she has no other way to be.
I fill my psyche with this beautiful heroic story of a fiercely
brave young girl who grows into wisdom through adventure,
always focusing on love for the foolish boy who got caught
up in a prison of dark enchantment.  It is so exquisitely true
while I read, alone, in my own improbable imprisonment.
There is no magic task to set me free.