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.

- Lord David, 1995, after taking LSD for my first Mardi Gras