Tickets to the Murder Mystery Show

Here on this dimension, blinded by sparks, men kidnap all the free oxygen which innocents are entitled to; the oxygen that infuses all livelihood. 
Right now, side by side, there are dual operas performing- matching in volume and in impact.

On one end, we watch seemingly angelic creatures outstretch their arms; welcoming the morning dew with a dimpled chin. They remind me of religious statues in their doughy mass. They are grandmothers with loose arms. You feel safe here.

To the right, the audience shivers in unison as we’re forced to survey ghouls writhing in tableaus. They’ve emerged from some grounds, somewhere, from far beneath chipped headstones. They’re mingling and snickering, forming a circle, hungry fangs dripping. As they move toward center-stage there is a prepossessed conviction to their steps.

On the surface, the two appear flagrantly opposite in nature. However, after enough time seated in the maroon theater-chair- after my drummer-boy naivety fades along with my vigor, I can see. I can see. The tender lamb smiles begin to contort; the way flickering candles left overnight will. Colored wax drips, trickles, morphs into lumpy shapes of Poseiden. These candles are usually perched upon a companionless window sill. The adjacent circle is now hissing louder. These post-angels wear shirts marked with shreds that begin expanding as their arms raise up and at my throat; arms which I thought would be sliding through space to hug me. Their thigh muscles are bestial, stones dragging up a hill.

I am surrounded by a shield of ceremonial candles in glass jars. My skull whips like abandoned kites, as the mad halos are reaching climax: We are interlaced. The cotton holes of the self-proclaimed saints continue tearing, shredding; the fangs of the others still dripping, their mugs, still whirring. I beg the sheen of candlelight to bathe me in its nurturing, wet cheeks and all, but my Lucifer showgirls are inflammable. Ballooning calf muscles webbed with veins are trampling closer and closer toward the barrier of my protection.

I am now enclosed within two circles: the fisherman’s wolves and the clownish frauds, which are now harmonizing in African ritual-rhythms. The fading candlelight casts a brick shadow against my forearm and I squint my eyes, holding on to an idea. One tribe I’ve loved, the other, I’ve attracted metaphysically: It’s color, gunpowder, it’s sound, chewing glass. I fold into quarters and pray to white-star sisters to offer me a chunk of moonbeam (in hopes of saving my last rainforest from hunters; from burning up and into ash instead of a moderated sunbathe).

Crueler than the manner in which humans treat house-mice, with lack of rationality and understanding, nobody warned me. I went up in flames with the afternoon and Abigail Williams.