Icicles Like Fangs in the Devil's Smile
by Joseph Armstead
Something between us is broken.
It is too much like
music video imagery,
surrealism and cinematic cliche,
commercialized dreaming,
watching a silhouette
solemnly play piano
atop the ice of a frozen lake,
against the backdrop of endless
winter, and yet there is Truth
in it, a plaintive statement
of isolation, elegiacized
and
romanticized,
pomp and perniciousness,
but robbed
of the excitement
from any hint of scandal,
a scotch advertisement
depicting a dandified
Lord Byron
holding a gun,
striking a James Bond pose...
The words are not coming out right.
The message stays caught in our throats.
We stroll in silence when we should scream.
Separately, we each wonder if bleeding would help.
We walked through a field of fallen leaves,
the ground loamy and moist beneath our feet,
and we listened to the fading calls
of distant birds
and
we did not speak
for fear of tearing a hole
in the fragile fabric
of loneliness
hovering
between us --
such cowardice,
a lost opportunity,
such melodrama,
stupidstupidstupidstupid
the falling snow, muffling the music of bleakness,
and we, afraid of the music, wearing masks
like jaded Venetians parading the streets
during the costumed festival
before Ash Wednesday,
the costumery of the alienated,
bereft of shadows,
the snow and ice
an albino carpet
blanketing the road to Hell
and
visions of icicles,
festooning the trees,
like fangs in the Devil's smile.
Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Winter" by Vojtechvlk (Vojtech Vlk), dreamstime_m_5190690.jpg
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