For Stacey
Shall we dance, then, in the night
Of stagnant fog and smoke which move
Nowhere, eternally obscuring the tender light
From our petty little orb?
Shall we dance in the streets
In the rain and in the thunder
As the blind man eats
His own soul?
Shall we dance to forget
The unbearable truth
Of living the torturous lies,
The tormented lives
Of the Ambitious in our youth?
Do not ask, "What do you mean?"
You dance without emotion as a carved,
Stone figurine.
It creeps like a storm
Settling like dust upon an ancient idol--
A crystal skull
Worshipped by multitudes--
Over the subtle whore at the corner
Falling like a lace tablecloth--
Torn and yellow from age--upon a table
Over the Murderer of souls
Drying like bestial mud--
Rancid mire of the primogenitor--
Over the skin of Man.
Tell me, if you can,
Of the bitter years in your memory
Of your murder of you father or
Your brother or your wife or your progeny.
Tell me of the albatross
And your suffering upon the cross.
And the subtle whore consumes
Her victims,
Her customers
In the cold blood of the falsifier.
And the motionless strife
Of silence
Destroys our tender life,
Soul by soul.
Then we shall gather together
As one
To die slowly, never
Noticing the lies
Which chip away at our lives.
For the lies were, are
And always shall be.
We have lost the time,
Lost our youth,
The truth,
To the Ambitious who smile gaily
With unwrinkled faces
As we cover the places
Where our ensconced age
Burns blatant.
And our bodies atrophy
In avoidance of the unbearable truth,
The blasphemy
of anguish--
The Ambitious
I shall live these wicked lies
(As will ye)
Until the day of my demise.
Our goodness has departed,
Withdrawn from our joyous lives,
Retired from our love-filled unity,
To take her house far away,
Fearful of her foes, the lies,
Now chaste and retarded.
It would have been better
Were I, were we
Borne unto a life that differs
Somewhat or killed when wallowing
In innocence.
We have festered for eternity
Playing false games
Stoking the flames
Of the lies
We so despise.
We have counted the lies,
The artifice of our family,
Suffocating on numbers, each
Too large for truthful mouths
Coughing an amalgam of phlegm and blood
As we preach
To the deaf the truth.
And the subtle whore
Shall weave her lies,
Shall sell her home,
Her son,
Shall marry her brother,
More and more.
We are the pawnbrokers
In their mighty eyes
Of deceit.
We are insects,
Dung beetles,
Lice.
They topple our house of cards
With shards
Of glass words--lies of the Ambitious.
They shatter our crystal ball,
Our crystal skull,
With all
Their fabrications
And implications
Of false truth.
In their world of lies
They revise
The True into False,
Love into Hate,
Good into Evil,
Life into Death,
Man into God,
Heaven into Hell.
I do not think I will go to Heaven.
We have stayed in the lies, our lives
Playing mental games
With the subtle whore,
Ambition,
Ourselves.
And these games that people play
Amongst themselves,
Life and Death,
Lie and Truth,
Consume our every attention.
And the coin shall forever land
Upon heads--Lies.
To the hands of the victor go the spoils--
We die now in flames.
James T. Hsiao