Checking Out Of The Punch And Judy Show Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

to Rod Serling
to the Russian people, forever the guardians of Poetry

to all the Americas in my heart

to the poets of all lands, seen and unseen…

"since in a net I seek to catch the wind."
-Sir Thomas Wyatt "Whoso List to Hunt"

"Never forget! ...I love you all, from the bottom of my heart…
Forever! "
-Van Cliburn, September 8,2012, Fort Worth, Texas

(and to my Mama, this small bouquet is rendered)

it's all candy striped at first you think and carouseled;
you gladly give your hand
and laugh when the others laugh at the same scene
in the movie.
and love the wafting of the buttered popcorn;
sidewalks where petals strew the soda fountained stoop; . blue twilights-
and treading carefully because you still can't see
your soft red leatherette shoes in the theatre dark;
you're waiting for night vision to set-in
gemstoned like Christmas.

but when the score's your own they turn and stare
and you're aware the line has suddenly turned surly
for the larkspur ticket torn in half

is you in your own stories
thrashed candy striped oh not in jest
and sotto voce off-camera, always,
spurned lark beating at a thousand windows

so that it can't be proved in court or to main street
glitterati who thought why, everything was fine in study hall
with the one book only and the music stand
stuck to her hands just the way we glued it on in accessories
or was she born yesterday

you know how she is
living on her own at the doll house museum
near the Carnegie
now that she's the jester that can't find the grey-eyed king
in the stereoscopic parlour pacing tinily.

but lingering with her pianoforte,
melting in colour in the final frame.
pure pink spun sugar, vanishing, where?
in a sweetheart neckline in this weather?
into the greenwood.
one could well wonder, unwrapping the paper cone
only holding air now, a bunch of pale blue ribbons
brought far from the farther fair
oh dear, and promised it looks like
only to you in her last letters
on lavender paper.

oh vellum pressed flowers in a volume of Keats
or Akhmatova or Barrett-Browning in Moroccan leather
slight tissue of India ink.
pressed pleats pressed out forever in my poem.
dear pink linen words, keep wrinkling.
(and with eyelet embroideries) .

or you're on the other side of the house-front and it's sprinkling.
put out in the rain, bad prescient cat, no cream and no gelato!
observe the directorial gleam
on the puppet face smushed in or is it carry the day, dissolving
in the hose green town with its toy train circling back
from the water tower for you forever in your best black velvet
winking out with the Giant stars…

you're at the interview within the hour without
another dress to your sunburnt name
sent home to the mannequin station
we've just a thimbleful of dream to sell you
but you know you were there
on your one semi-formal occasion out,
oh party-frock laden lament
in a pencil skirt from work that will have to do and a notebook

when the child dissolved in the magic spring
blows in again on your sound stage kitchenette
with her black cherry warning: " it's not what you think, remember? "
she washes the Haviland in the sink.
stir the double boiler cocoa double-quick she says
I want a raspberry phosphate...

why didn't you listen when the sun melted on the canvas?
now there's no Time, I wept for the flickering.
and the Cross lifts shakily from earth as in the painting by Dali
on the necklace of this dizzy universe Christ,
what did they do to you I cried
in our lost episodes by the stained glass props-
the rhinestone summonses.

but you'll pack early by moonlight
this time, Titania,
ill met by sponsors everywhere
if only they could find you
and just as rich suns are creaming in your mind…

the cocoa boils over, scalding the milk
for the lilac ticket-holders massed outside
thick pure green shutters.
you're in the wrong line for the aliens they shouted.
reality cried in opals.

when suddenly you were asked rose-red to dance:
wistful in voile by the cake and punch:
by whose list to hunt.

there's the little girl with the fetched pink handled scissors
from the dressing table,
the gauze spooled bandages, ticked off-
the baby's breath, . a tiny drop of tea-rose perfume…: :
old marionette, with your cold strings beautifully bleeding
through the fabric of His maritimes she sighed lightly
here's my corsage for you, a hallmark snip was whispered
and the rose rose tear of it is shed to let you know:
oh, flee! for the soul's white night has come too late here
to the children in their dreaming; it's Christ, in the
windfall of all our twilight endings
light years beyond the countries of
their rending of the storybook rich tick tock
of the fairytale lacquer through the evening skies…

for you, the clasped hands with the sweet peas
Cliburn's last Chopin
and my red-rimmed eyes
and all this misplaced creaking in a jewel-box lock
of the soul's strange, lovely lovely light.
God rest your pearl-drop music its swan-crested flight
sweet, sweet is the night air when we walk out
in a kingdom where they will not hunt again…

mary angela douglas 26,27,28 february,1 march 2013