CARNIVAL

These ancient narrow streets, once dark with mad legend, now crawling alive below twisted, cursive wrought iron. Looking down into chaos and falling through the long hall back to memory of her, sitting late at the bar, saying, how could I miss it, the smorgasbord of pleasure. I spoke words of leaving to her smile and her eyes told me that my words were lies. Below my feet are spirits of many worlds and faces, dragged up each time to meet in this weird pageant like the drunken contents of lost sepulchers spilled together onto littered streets. The howling of tears and song, of laughter and of minds lost, of lovers found, to be forgotten. Wine and spirits pour like blood at some fantastic mass communion, the wafer of our very flesh consumed on altars of desire. All ghosts are holy here and vestments, glorious and vain, tatter in the pulling hands of the blessed and the damned, falling together into bliss or to burn in eternal flame. The call rises to fever pitch and turning back, I step inside to find my feet upon the stairs. Treading down deep into dark, I see a light that lies ahead. Following my walking feet, the iron gate is all that holds the street back from this inner sanctum of sanity and calm repose. Swinging open the bars and stepping out into the crowd, immediately I am lost and swept away by relentless current, feet no longer touching ground, laughter ripped from out my mouth so loudly, yet I cannot hear it nor can I recall my name or where I was before this time of twitching orgiastic dance or why those balconies look safely down with distant faces like I once knew, when just below them hunger reigns and I have fed myself, at last, into the mouth of the beast.