One Man Bandwagon Of Harlequinade Poem by Norman F. Santos

I, inebriated by a saccharine mulling of the elapsed
Melee amidst the clock’s sabers and now moored
By a pensive anchor that rattles with every mishaps
That whittles inside my ashen bones which chewed
Upon my scarce viscera; what disparity between poles
Could be more farcical than not one iota at all?
.
For in the surly leaf of the final page the verity basks
In a prissy repose apt for a surreptitious usurper
That I am, after all, a harlequin guzzled by a mask
Of a crystal ball, reflecting and deflecting, to pilfer
The unnamed mirth in every drooping environs
Siphoned by the reeling exigency of self deception
.
Ebullience is ephemeral only for the reason that
Death is a stealthy phantom immortal in the ethereal
Grounds of a grotesque carnival ensconced in a hat
That I wore to subsist with the grotesque quintessential
Hamlet, teeming with a surfeit latticing fangs of beasts
And an infinitesimal number of vicarious pessimists
.
Truth is, I lose myself in this insuperable loquaciousness
As I grope for what I desire and how the death is casted
Forlorn as a reticent lion’s ought to be, I do behest
And plea for a hand to rise in the sea of the oppressed
Maudlin that I am; I kneel every night to haggle for my craving
To be in the bassinet of lovely people, or to efface this aspiring
.
The thought of your pity smothers me and, in my gaunt nakedness,
I know well that I deserve it, earned it, for I am truly devoured,
Like a hapless gazelle gnashed by a tiger, by vicious loneliness
That I inexorably severed from these golden chains, a melancholic discord
I’m ailed and dead-beaten from riling, from cloying a maneuver
And in the muted times of its rapine, I, alone, mournfully flounder
.
I, alone, wallowed into the graves of my thousand deaths
In mausoleums stalled in the quagmire of my chambers
Igniting the wick in my bloodshot eyes and slathering tourniquets
To dab the wounds to rebuild the skyscrapers you love to slander
So that in this parceled desolation I can become a writer
And assert my existence in this laconically fiendish winter
.
I’ll bleed again before the eulogy of this poem tingle the schmaltz air
And reiterate my cacophonous half-breathing quintessence:
I am bleakly alone and I cannot stand it, sometimes I do not care
But it’s only a sedating stratagem; I want to be with acquaintances
Whom I’ve seen clearly and held in the stark pitch blackness
And who have perceived the one man bandwagon inside the forlornness.