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.”