Terrestrial Illumination (2014) No. 380
I.
The garden ticket booth wet by rain.
Minute stone chips
Loosened from old asphalt
Rolled from roof
To fall on slabs of cement,
To fall on
A fallen world
As the world has been libeled for over two thousand years.
A string quartet was to play in gazebo postmodern music.
II.
It was as if the downpour was a new flood to cleanse the world
Of its past fantasy enchantment and its false beliefs.
For over two thousand years the people had misled themselves
By mistakes, and lived by lies.
The had lived by illusions
Of the theological and the scientific circus and sideshows, and now
With the transvaluations of mostmodern people were on the threshold
Of salvation and finally, a relationship with reality.
The music would celebrate the new dispensation of postmodernism.
III.
The rain was the heaviest of the year,
But the people not having read the program was to be postmodernism, set
As it dry, awaiting the usual trivial and petty amusements.
The old beliefs and living according to the old axiology
Had made the people obtuse
And the people could not feel any more natural sensations
Such as the wetness of rain.
But they were told by the TV set that it was raining. The commentator
Read from a script that outside was a heavy downpour.
The report resulted in everyone putting on raincoats.
Over their unnoticed soaked tuxedoes and evening dresses.
IV.
For over two-thousand years the earth had been turned into an insane asylum.
Causation was the theological and the scientific minds
Echolalia was the normal way of communication,
Communication had ceased to exist under the old order before postmodernism.
The clean and distinct had failed to communicate,
Postmodernism discovered profound and meaningful communication
Came only from poetic opacity.
V.
Now in raincoats, some started to pass the time by reading.
The scraps of paper turned from page to page
Are seen as graphic elementary designs, straight, cursive lines.
Blurred by false memories of their blue blood,
And the curls under the hoods of nuns. Antic,
Their fingers whirl car keys. Some have in bags
For gifts toy replicas of anorexic tiaraed royalties
Posed as the tiny white globes that roll over numbers
On roulette wheels. All eyes spin as do slut machines.
What is there to be read is never read, content chased
Away by vague desires and inherited meta-narratives
Of angels painting their fingernails gold as tattooed
On hairy arms or shaven legs. Books written to be destroyed.
From the shrubbery comes the song of the wren,
What is unconcealed by the wren's song is vaguely heard,
And quickly reheard as something else, as something
That was believed to exist but never existed. And
The current fractured, fragmented, faked life
That began in ancient time with the original lie
And original sin still reigns, comforted by the thermostat.
VI.
Adorno observed how faith in logic and reason by
The Enlighment's white wigs, bows on knee pants,
And white stockings prepares for Auschwitz
And the Marquis De Sade. But the Enlightment
Was already corrupted by attitudes and habits
Implanted from the Middle Ages. Logic and reason
Were the clowns whose acts took the peoples' minds
Off the fact that there were truths.
VII.
The musicians have not arrived, a nightclub comedian is substitute.
Champagne is distributed and the audience is in ecstasy.
The applauded comic weeps as the audience laughs.
The comic has sensed the responses to his stolen jokes
And how these responses will lead to the destruction of humanity.
He knows that the inferior quality
Of his jokes is what makes them such an outstanding success.
VIII.
The wet chairs in the park await the musicians
To play the music that celebrates the return of enchantment
And the return of truth that postmodernism will bring to the world.
The musicians' instruments rest on the chairs,
The musicians have refused to play.
The musicians refused to play
When the musicians learned they were to play a composition
That celebrates postmodernism.
IX.
The comedian was informed, so he had to tell more dirty jokes.
Duane Locke lives in Tampa, Florida near anhinga, gallinules, raccoons, alligators, etc. He has published 6,763 poems, including 31 books of poems. His latest book publications: April 2012, DUANE LOCKE, THE FIRST DECADE, 1968-1978 (Bitter Oleander Press). This book is a republication of his first eleven books, contains 333 pages. Available at www.bitteroleander.com or on Amazon.
