Femme Fatale

You could meet one anywhere:
a lounge, maybe. Where she stands
leaning on the bar, one foot on the rail,
bright red dress slit up the thigh,
showing a lot of leg like Kathleen Turner,
before the weight gain, cranking up the body heat.
Or she could walk into your detective agency
to report a missing husband in Act One,
who would turn up dead by Act Three
and a whole labyrinth of graft, corruption
and murder would be revealed by Act Five
like the insides of a cadaver used in an
anatomy lesson, and the woman who had
the most to lose, whom you loved, would be dead
at the wheel of a convertible while you
watch, unable to prevent what must happen next.
Or she could be a seductress who killed,
not so much for pleasure but for profit:
is a black widow in an off–the–shoulder dress
who could deflect even the most moral man
from his sense of right and wrong.
Part Veronica Lake, part Mary Astor,
part a blonde Rita Hayworth, holding a gun
she won't be afraid to use in a hall of mirrors
like some demented Lady from Shanghai
on a kill or, to be killed, mission.
Or she is the wife of a short order cook
in a diner on the edge of some death valley
desert and she, like all the others, wants her
husband dead, and before you know what
happened, you are caught in a honey trap
with the murder weapon in hand, and there's
no way out, and you think, "I'm in hell now,
but it was a long, wonderful road to paradise
getting there."

The Trial

The boarding house room is
claustrophobic with so many people,
so close together, asking questions
there are no answers for.
Men in suits represent The Law,
the Men in Robes, who preside in
dark places, lit from above by focused
spot lights interrogations are conducted
under.
All decision rendered are final, even
before charges are filed, as guilt is
assumed simply by the fact the accused
has been summoned.
All business is conducted at night in
locked rooms where all the bailiffs,
lawyers, inquisitors and jailors faces
are hidden by cowls and their voices
disguised.
The trail's transcripts are read once
the judge's gavel signals the proceedings
have begun thereby simplifying the process
to its basic elements.
Execution seems the logical conclusion
of all that has transpired, but no official
verdict is issued, or recorded, once the rooms
have been emptied of all who are involved.
There are no gallows, no chambers of horrors
where the final act takes place.
Still the end is a shock, an unexpected deliverance
meted out from behind, by assassins, in black
wielding knives, while others walk before
them speaking of trivial things.
The body of the deceased is left behind for
sky burial outside the castle walls where
other supplicants are making their way to
doors that will not admit them.
The ones who are admitted are guided to
their destination by men in black suits who
speak of trivial matters as they walk not
looking from one side or the other, but straight
ahead, where a locked room is waiting to be opened.

Under the Volcano

The restless souls have returned
to be cleansed by the light of torches
carried by penitents in a processional
slowly making its way on a well–worn
path down the side of a dormant volcano.
The dutiful worshippers carry a wooden
jesus, an effigy so sacred only fingers
washed in holy water may touch it on
this Day of the Dead when everything
that is unseen may be revealed.
In town, just the other side of the graveyard,
a staggering drunk is a truth seeker who
has lost his way, cradling a skull made
of sugar in scarred hands stained red
by cheap wine and death. His misbegotten
dreams beget insensibility, stumbling
as he is, as if chased by mad dogs in
his mind through the carnival side
shows and spinning rides, bejeweled
by electric lights, creating a confusing
maze of bright colors and demons–from–hell
noise. This waking dream in his wet brain
something from a spilled quart of mescal
inside him, the escaped–from–a–bottle
fat worms burrowing holes in his brain,
tunneling all the way to the bottom of the dark.