The Challenge
What do they want?
What do they want?
My flesh torn. My blood drained. My heart strings straggled like cords around this seamless neck.
For what?
For what?
They deride me. The Graven One. The Fisheye in intemperance. He too derides me: The Paradox to the Human amalgam of time, of place, of self deception.
Go back to the old ways!
Go back to the old ways!
They declaim in bloggers prose. The disdain. In alluded reference of a city filmed, voice dropped, head lowered.
They want the past.
So they cry.
Go back to the old ways! To the lives of squalor. The Square Corner of earlier times. The pain of lost men. Of lonely dames. The Square Corner of a different place. The lucre of fame a distant dream. They want somnambulist souls crying in heartache and numbed sorrow. The drunken dead poet visited upon a yellow page. They want his presence.
Not the now!
Not the now!
It displeases us. Marshmallow roads with lemon drop tears. They stereotype. I know. Ignore the darkness of the present words. The ascendancy of followers, they say, has cheapened my true voice. No longer clarion in obscure echo, I call your names. I call you out:
The Graven One!
The Fisheye!
The Paradox of Humanity!
Prove it to Tortelli's name. No more roguish comment, please. No more snide reference, please.
Blog it!
Post it!
Be the men you claim to be.
Blog it!
Post it!
Let your views on me be known: The Square Corner one. You shall see the new old me. Your voices silent, and you shall hear this drowning sorrow. The Square Corner like an island sinking into a dark sea.