I imagine a day

when all of them are gathered

in some place fragrant with

sweet flowers,

and everything is finally revealed,

as we might show a child 

the person holding the strings

on the marionette.

And many of them will nod knowingly,

perhaps saying, "So THAT'S what that was",

and others will bend their heads down and weep

softly, the grayish terrors finally falling from

their shoulders with a clattering racket.

And some will stare in shocked disbelief,

as the world they drove themselves into

like a tent stake

crumbles beneath their feet. 
And others

will laugh gleefully as they watch the

pained expressions of those

who were so sure that the marionette

was a real boy.

Even before it was visible

its brutal eagerness

made the unsuspecting earth shiver as

it cut through the ground's layers

like a thug carving open a mark.

It burst through the surface throwing

dense, thick wads of glutinous muck in all directions,

its metallic body spinning as it extended twenty

huge unfolding mechanical arms from its central drill.

A death camp sized searchlight emerged

from its top, rotating as if scanning

for escapees slated to be shoveled

directly into the oven.

A deep, iron-voiced roar emerged from its unseen throat,

and as it rotated its arms flung bricks of sharpened steel

with decapitating velocity.

Everyone else trembled in uncomprehending

terror,

clinging to the wounded ground in panting desperation,

but he stood upright and walked in wonderment

right toward it, the projectiles cracking

by his ears delightfully, the light sweeping over him

in movie-premiere glory,

the deafening roar his sit-com theme music.

He smiled as he wondered whether it would

first caress his head or snuggle in his midsection,

laughing at the delicious moment that was carried

on the freezing night air.

They sit on their respective ice floes,

tethered to each other
by a rope bridge grown tattered
and strained,
but still hoping to remain in
hearing
seeing
and
touching distance,
never wanting to drift apart,
and face
the unseeable currents
on their own.
They know that they will never live
on each other's tiny islands,
but they will keep the rope bridge mended,

even if the reason they do so

will forever remain hidden from their view.

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.