By: Hunter Christian
A sandstorm bleached lungs dry in wartime Morocco by day;
By night; The Great War waged on in a caustic landscape of browns, crimson, and grays;
An aged cityscape depicting old Marrakesh,
A femme fatale dybbuk stood at the ready;
A lustful apparition lying in wait for warmer flesh,
Her faint arabesque; firm and steady;
The lost shadow of she -
Elongated, stretched edgewise,
Awash within the somber night of the bereaved - trampled underfoot were dead and fallen leaves;
Her lustful eyes,
Her muscular thighs,
The plane the craftsman toiled upon end;
Oh, and how in erotica the dancer\'s back did bend,
Drilled countersink allowed delicate toes to glide swiftly and smoothly with right away;
Hanging posters of drama\'s lost; blanketed in dust - aged-like and gray,
Top screw heads held steadfast stage planks onto mighty joists while she did flit, slither, and glide;
All the while those screw heads did hide,
How swiftly over the craftsman\'s countersink her extremities did slide;
The master who haunted she; the male lead at her side,
Intense shafts of dead light coddled she as a demon symphony urged she to bow before onlookers seated on a wooden bench;
The exorcism of one, the one who\'s drenched, drenched headlong within death\'s wretched stench,
The craftsman sat in awe; within earshot of the hatter\'s menacing guffaw;
Third row center stage he sat, to shirk presumption - to minimize assumption,
The mad hatter poisoned by mercury; seered with eyes grayed by rage - all the while - the craftsman sat center stage,
Accosting his apprentice in kind on that lonely cold stage;
The mad hatter\'s madness boiled over - the animal captured, taunted, starved and caged;
From hues of reds and yellows, to steady shafts of blue, the house lights did fade,
Hanging stealthily from the entablature; the blue hue washed evenly over the dozen colonnade;
Tightly laced brunette locks adorned her trailing view with a flaxen fishtail braid;
The gentlemen who courted she, lingered briefly, but refused to marry or stay,
Bouncing, dancing, and scorned; with time the braid tattered as the rope that frayed -
Ghastly ghostly howls treated the craftsman\'s curiosity as the hatter\'s blade swung straight and true;
Slicing the windpipe of the dybukk\'s dancing partner as he stood amidst a wash of gray death hues and melancholic blues,
With a curtsy and with a bow, the dybukk dancer girl rose hastily into a swirling twirl;
Oh yes! Twirling with debauchery whilst spinning within her sensual swirl;
Into the hatter the ancient demon entered to possess he, as stench rose coughing proudly from the innocence of the virgin brown-skinned girl,
From three came one; and in a leap of fury, the hatter plunged third row deep; and the craftsman was done!
Gray lay the stale dust as stale scents rose like velvety perfume of wanton lust;
Where life and death throes lingered in a transcendent dance within lost dramas of space and time,
The aged wax on planks of pine, that turned brown with aged grime, the dialogue spoken loudly, loudly spoken, yet devoid of rhyme;
Three hours of stagecraft complexities unfurled before bewildering eyes who could scantily spare a lowly silver dime,
There - past, present, and future collided in lockstep with the players of the day,
The warm hues of yellows, oranges, and reds faded fervently to muted blues - and then downward to morbid grays -
The blues lingered for a moment, shook loose of obligatory stations, like drunkards at a wake, pouring downward to hallowed ground their honored libations,
The blue lights lingered for lingering sake; the smiles of hypocritical truth drowned the smiles of the players so evidently forced and faked;
The light designer tread lightly sporting a wry smile, and with the counterclockwise turn of a creaking dial -
The blues faded away, from its cooling prominence, to scant shades of deathly grays;
Blanketing that one living soul drawn to an advertisement that promised he stagecraft nostalgia; and the solemnity of simpler times of yesterday\'s;
In the dust that settled on seat backs heartily, the playbill rested on some, and there, for decades it stayed,
The mad hatter, the femme fatale dybukk, her partner in stride; and all the lured fools who gave life to the aged stage, who sat in awe of her beauty;
Who fell victim to the hatter\'s rage -
To wit, all craftsmen hired, toiled in earnest, sat three rows deep, sat in earnest at center stage,
Each watching the dybukk swirl, twirl, and glide;
With bloodletting fury, came the judge and the jury, the lives lived, the lives snuffed out, those souls persecuted, arrested, jailed and then unfairly tried,
The mercurial smiles; mingling with mercurial cries,
The saline tears upon soft rosy cheeks quickly dried;
And, alas - the players played the haunting cast -
From the first ticket bought; until the box office sold out of its last;
The cash register chimed open, a tortured voice relayed the fateful ticket\'s cost -
For a final presentation, the curtain call, the end of a run, for The Grayer Drama Lost?
Until soon wandering eyes\' purview rested lowly to a wanted advertisement for \"a craftsman,\" from which they could not refrain,
The candidate had to possess a traditional carpenter\'s acumen, a sharpened plane, the desire to toil, to tinker, and to sit still in vain;
While seated third row center stage, as the sacrificial lamb, the vehicle for the demon dancer, cometh hard did the hatter\'s poison induced rage -
Rain down did the bloodletting, the death blows, the sun setting,
From his body the blood completely drained, from the windpipe of that season\'s hired hand, the wind howled, driving hard coarse and blackened sands;
And the consequence for the craftsman who read an advertisement for which he could not refrain; blood flowed crimson into a cellar floor drain;
Another craftsman was sacrificed by the dybukk, the femme fatale apparition who could never bow and leave the players\' stage -
And, each season\'s new hire - lured to the theater, within reach of the mad hatter\'s psychopathic purview and rage,
Seated erect and proudly in row three; clearly centered, sitting as the hatter\'s blade slashed and entered;
And sacrificed was another season\'s craftsman, who answered a wanted ad from which he could not refrain, and downward blood flowed like crimson rivers into a cold cellar drain;
Within a haunted theater\'s belly, where time and place were lost; and each season\'s new hire, lured with a heart full of wonderment, and endless nostalgia gained - ignorant of his mortal coil, or its inevitable cost;
Sacrificed to the God\'s of the demon dancer, who willfully lured in her victims, who were drunken by wanton lust;
Lastly, the victims were fixated, hypnotized, entranced, and then ranked out and slain within an ambiance of truth, loyalty, and trust!
Death comes to us all; and all die we must!