He is forced to stay

because an abrupt departure

would be considered impolite,

indecorous,

bad form,

even hurtful

(in private ways)

to some of the onlookers.

So he stays,

frozen in amber

like a prehistoric insect,

mutedly visible,

accessible only to

the roughest of tools,

and destined to be a museum exhibit

of passing interest only.

The enormous, laughing woman

rolled into the room

like a jovial boulder of

blubbering flesh, emanating waves

of saccharine good cheer

more insistent than the Great Boston

Molasses Explosion.

She oozed over to the black and white figure

slumped over in the unpainted wooden chair,

and bellowed in a tornado-siren voice,

"What's wrong, honey? You look flatter

than a roadkill possum!"

Not bothering to look at her,

he replied, almost inaudibly,

"I can't make the fear stop."

The gelatinous mass of femininity

next to him burst out in a good-natured

thunderclap and shouted,

"Well ain't that the shit!"

She wrapped a quivering mass

of friendly arm around his shoulders,

squeezed him like a Moon Pie,

and then snapped his neck like a Popsicle stick.

"Hope that helps, sugar," she chuckled.

Turning like a small planet rotating on its axis,

she exclaimed, to no one in particular,

"Some folks you just can't talk to,"

and orbited back out the doorway.

He stalks his prey

among the knife-edged rocks

of the bludgeoned landscape,

the circling pterosaurs screeching ravenously,

the death-gray sky stretched over him

like a rack victim.

Eyes brimming with formaldehyde, he zeroes in,

and the shotgun once again coughs out

its bored mutilation.

Trudging without interest through

the liquified remains,

he ignores

the satisfied cries of the reptiles

as they feast and gorge,

and rams two more shells

into the infinite chamber.

There will be no

joyous reunion tears,

and no one will take the newly arrived pilgrim's

trembling, expectant hand.

The beatific visions will dissolve as the

movie screen

fades to black one last

irrevocable time.

No scores will be settled,

no outrages will be assuaged,

and triumphant justice

will remain silent

and unexpressed.

No idiot tragedies will be undone,

no screaming obscenity of suffering will be reversed,

no lifeless child's body

will ever laugh again in sunlit fields,

no grief will be cradled in silken arms,

no Hollywood fantasies will be fulfilled,

and no union with the All,

the One,

the Ultimate, and

the Real

will be celebrated in

cascades of sense beyond

experience.

Their only consolation

will be that being consoled

will no longer matter,

and all that has been

will no longer be,

as they return to a time

when no time

existed.

The elderly guardians of the ancient gate

watch with wizened satisfaction

as the heart-shaped young acolytes

clean up its rust,

fix the hinges,

give it yet another

coat of paint,

and once again make

the effusive signs of greeting

seem fresh and

anticipatory.

Their kind has stood by this gate

night and day in every battering

tempest, through every howling

battle, in every

blistering drought,

and through every earth-ripping

upheaval.

They have watched over it

from the moment

the Persecutor's brain

was flattened by the

electrical storm that

transformed him into

the Fool,

the Slave,

and the Prisoner.

The gate stands ready to greet

the only One

who will ever pass through it, the one whose

arrival must surely be waiting

on the cusp of the

morning,

the one whose long-silenced voice

is even now

readying its

glorious proclamations.

Faded invitations pass

from elderly hands to callow ones,

and all gaze toward the

heavens once more,

waiting for signs

and miracles.

He wanders through the jagged landscape

of the 3-D asylum,

its inmates wrapped in shrouds

made from solemn, decaying manuscripts,

redolent of dried blood,

suffused with the color

of dead seas and prayer-filled

deserts, and

steeped in wrathful love.

They look at him

with pleading, piteous eyes,

hoping to save him from

the worst sufferings of their

fear-saturated

imaginations,

calling out to him

to join the cloud-destined

procession, urging him

onward toward the ladder set in

majestic isolation in the

heart of the windswept field,

its cobbled together rungs

boldly reaching toward eternity.

It is all he can do

to not simply

give in and clamber up

the steps and leap

off the top,

hoping to ascend to

unimaginable dreamworlds

of transcendent peace,

rather than finding out

just how unforgiving

sun-hardened clay

can really be.

The trees are resonating

to the sounds of the sweet voiced

little dinosaurs,

the most earnest of them calling

I am here

I am here

I am here

into the twilight of the caldera,

convincing the credulous apes

that the song is for

them,

that its delicate urgency

is for their benefit,

and that the airy songsters

have no darker purpose

but to convince the apes

that the world is meant

for apish ears alone.