Marlowe, Marlow, and Marlowe
Preface
Being touched like a flame lit twice afire,
I ran to the illusions of three characters I knew well,
Marlowe, Marlow, and Marlowe.
Though they knew little of my faults, their intuition carried me to them.
Then, the wisdom of the future, heralded by naked angels, touched me.
We embraced each other, reflections mixing our roles,
never our ambitions for adventures.
Amid an absence of sanity and security,
we considered the uncertainty of time,
existence was now a plan
a playing field of absurdity.
Seduction
for pleasure, not honor.
Immediately, I searched for the remedies
that would unite the past with what was once the past
but is now
at the center of what can be imagined.
My feelings went astray as sensations courted all things moving forward,
forward in a circle.
How do I
define loyalty?
By
disgrace
and embarrassment?
The whereabouts of desires glistened
as I waded toward the underbelly of reality.
In the distance,
where logic cannot overcome fear
God, the Almighty,
yawned
as Hera flirted with him.
But his eyes were fixed
on
beautiful but dangerous
Aphrodite,
bathing nude opposite herself.
I became the difference between myself
and who the evil spirits thought I was.
With the world in turmoil, my mind sharpened,
effectively becoming a destructive weapon.
One – Christopher
Sailors, soldiers
and veterans without optimism
on warships
headed to those mountainous beliefs
a thought away from a fall.
Both
commitment and rage
gave a sense of camaraderie
to the blood-doused euphoria
of
redemption.
A word without meaning
to those without meaning.
After a war party
I undressed an ageless goddess in my bedroom
and smelled the aromas of comfortable past entrances.
The eager men and the women before me
now, just melancholy ghosts
reflecting their regrets from colored liquor bottles.
Impatient from our liberation from conformity,
uncomfortable with delusion,
but in harmony with the obvious,
I licked the sweat from her breasts
and legs and turning her gently around.
There are many impulses
but the foremost crime of humanity
is to waste hours
longing for a continuation of life.
I said
simply to Marlowe,
“I am passionate about my ambitions.”
His grin became Faust’s smile, “If she’s a goddess, shouldn’t you spread her legs wider?”
Exceptions more than expectations are forgiven
when unwanted expressions are spoken.
Devoid of boundaries,
I never considered any alternatives
to succumbing
once again.
As per usual
at the trial, I was found guilty
of loving
of living
and of loving and living with a lion’s roar
convicted by a jury with venom in their eyes.
In the nightclub next to the crematorium,
friends’ wives with the scars they bear from trysts
recalled times when we were thought to be
mythical models
with a hated impetuousness for life.
As the power drained,
the lights dimmed, and we gave an icy toast to the exultation
of man’s counterfeit concern for his fellow man.
Foxes and flies entered from the back door.
I heard drunken eagles swoop down on doves dressed in corsets,
their plumage more golden than cinnamon-red
and their nakedness
open to the pampered
but
never to the dreary day laborers
who thought themselves tortured martyrs.
I listened as those in lines of their own making
cried when the whips
struck their backs.
How repetitious,
their
self-serving stories
about the holiest of nights
in the most dank and dreary places
where death played with the horrors of existence
was little more
than a morsel of
marshmallow self-forgiveness.
Never be fooled
by the
pungent mistrust of thoughts
thinking about thoughts
and being
misled
by thoughts
unthought.
I left Marlow in the last booth of a
celebrated pub
with Diana, the Huntress
where I knew he would strangely
disappear.
Two – Charles
The wedding ceremony was incidental.
Attendees formed a stairwell of disbelief.
An armistice of sorts
for those who thought
freedom
was a consequence of lethargic behavior.
My ashen date, a scholarly Norsewoman, Sigrid
believed
Orpheus should travel to Hades once more
but
this time with the Minotaur
to save Eurydice.
I was asked to come along
but I suggested Marlow,
a storyteller
who believed in reaching
for something incredible
and missing
was better than playing it safe.
Of actions unfathomable,
he considered it ludicrous
to invent tragedy
when it was blatantly a
portrayal of reality.
But he was sometimes found to tell lies to preserve
the perception of individuals as noble;
shielding the listeners from any disturbing truths.
Lying in bed
with a nymph,
high on the Oracle of Delphi’s appraisal that
wealth prolonged adolescence
I realized
if you dream,
if you wish
then make promises, the end becomes the beginning
and the promises become
an unquenchable serpent around your neck.
Faith is always in the distance, and though you are amazed
you are dwelling in lore,
prayers, like gratitude
get trampled.
The privileged passed, whined, and reflected on the enigma of monetary sorrows
as being the reason
Grendel’s mother went mad,
not the murder of her son.
With tears of surrealism,
I became what I was before I became what I could never be.
Passing the Asphodel Meadows,
Orpheus recited Hamlet’s soliloquy
to Hecate.
She stripped, and both dissolved into a myth of their own making.
The Minotaur
decided to kill Perseus before
he beheaded Medusa
and
Marlow approached Teiresias,
the blind prophet
and asked how to
return order
to a chaotic world.
He petted the vicious three-headed dog Cerberus
and smiled,
“Why?”
I realized despair had no wings.
Against the grain, against the turmoil, against the odds,
seeking the self-portrait behind the mirror,
I leap
through diamond-shaped crystals
that
irradiated irises
so, whatever there was to see
I would see
without penance or absolution.
A woman forever in a prism, bathing in infinite beauty,
dripped from shadows of memories I had forgotten.
Hearing church bells,
I ran to the line between life and death,
where Eurydice lovingly opened her arms
to hide me.
I glided into her
resting upon all the effeminate
virtues.
Horror and absurdity
abound
beyond the satyrs’ chorus
in the souls of the
ravenous.
I revealed myself
to Eurydice
as being
who I am
because there was no one to follow.
I exited,
without a kiss
landing uncomfortably
in the dark
where Marlow
began the story.
Three – Philip
Language is raped every day, and the rapist goes unpunished.
There are prisoners inside puzzles, trying to locate characters lost in scenes.
I see their disappearing trails through the maze.
Restless accusers scorn me for exploring
among the split tongues of war
and the fortune found in the asylums of women.
Craving that smell of feminine power that wafts from between their legs,
cubist women curl their hands around my neck.
Laughing at sanity,
I remain searching
where time and fate ride
that line of horizon and sea.
If I needed someone
she would be found here
where curiosity
tempts virginity.
Prophets say that tyrants triumph as meanings disappear from words.
Though the wind has no enemies,
it never rests.
The wind
and the seekers
of the wind
live in a world without
ultramarine and vermillion.
They question whether a life is worthwhile
without color
or ignorance.
I, though, have no quarrel with those who question
their crucifixion
without
hope or fear.
Relentless in my pursuit to find where I stand
I call Marlowe,
who always
plays hunches in emotional landscapes.
Crafting experiences and perceptions
he tells me,
“Darkness only remembers pleasure’s smile.”
I follow him
down the paths of confusion and madness
until we set sail
for places without boundaries
where
convention is extinguished from conviction.
We watch as language is blundered, ravished, and tossed aside
to rot and die.
Marlowe,
who sees beyond the big sleep,
preaches that
you can never take back what you have heard.
Still, some find comfort in nevermore
disguised
as evermore.
But we adventurers, always on the fringe
of knowing
of finding
of believing
are strangers even to the ones we love.
We understand the violence of our own feelings
and see beyond
the visible appearance of the world.
Epilogue
Days later – not yet now,
but far from then.
I sit in a comfortable leather chair at the workplace
of
Marlowe, Marlow, and Marlowe.
While my mind is unraveling a myth,
an unrelenting myth
a beautiful woman
with straight, long red hair,
cold-piercing green eyes and black business attire
states smartly,
“The playwright, the narrator, and the detective
will see you now.”
