At the Coroner's Ball
by Ian Krieger
Up the grand stairs of the fading Elks Lodge
march the grandees in their formal wear
or perhaps art types lost in the archetype
of dark gardens and tumuli.A storm full of amnesia blows outside
while the mirror slick dance floor
fills with the anodyne or nameless.Tall coffin shaped windows reflect
like candles in the viewing room.The dark eyed woman who will be murdered too soon
and the man who will live halfway into forever
eye each other.Grieving mothers who seek forgetfulness via sex
and the victims of oncology's cruelest summation
vie for he musicians attention as a cruel tango
entangles in the errant results of replication.It is not the entropy of sleep, though nights without end
might show up at any time, as the refreshments are late
and the kind of natives who are most fascinated
by how things still, who chart the how and why
are nevermore as resplendent.Knowing the gloomy storm outside
shall never pass and every dance card shall fill
with the last dance or burn like autopsy
they take lonely mechanical tasks
in the formal white gloves of their hands
to make a sacred secular text out of death
or reconstruct the sequence of its last commands.
© 2005 Ian Krieger
Born (South) Bronx, New York. Long time resident of Venice, California, currently living in Dunedin Florida. Former CEO of an international logistics company. Books, Pavans (Ommation Press) and An Unnamed Aesthetic (Stolen Images Press). Founder (emeritus) The Eternal Recurrence of 1957 Movement, Southern California Chapter. Proud member of The Jack Benny Fan Club and The Harry Stephen Keeler Society. Itinerant metaphysician, one of the last of the last of the great romantics and currently following the path of The Fool in the metaphoric totality of the Tarot.
