Attitude One: Anticipation
On a desolate street, the dingy neon
sketched a lady lewd with lighted tits
rudely blinking. A blended staleness
of beer and smoke, of smut and rot,
greeted me at the door. The greying proprietor
let me talk as he smeared the tables
with an unrinsed rag. He raised a sneer.
“No warrant I guess? You’re wasting time,
but I’ve nothing to hide, so have your way.
Look all you please. I’d like to know
who stole the tarts.” I turned to my search:
dressing rooms and dreary nooks,
the tawdry stage and narrow stairs
that led below. I’d laughed before
at my sister’s belief in superstitious tales
of girls who disappeared down those steps
not to be seen or numbered again
amongst living or dead. A dampness rose
from the windless dark: a winding caress,
the last weak breath of a broken soul.
My deception felt thin: no detective in truth,
only a woman seeking a sister and peace.
I had made ready for mundane ugliness:
for a grimy passage and grisly secrets
not for this naked feeling, this nauseous sense
of standing poised, one step from falling.
My heart staggered with a hopeless lust
to cast my soul into the sensate void.
Black stars rose at the stairwell’s foot
and a sudden wind whipped through my hair.
One wanton step, and the world was gone.
Attitude Two: Incomprehension
I gasped and staggered in the gaping air.
A fetid field gave my feet purchase,
crusted with dank and crippled weeds,
overlooking a lightless, brooding lake.
A towering barrow was built on the shore
on which a lordly figure was laid in state,
draped in royal robes as red as blood.
Another man stood, crowned and starkly pale,
his hair a halo of high-flown clouds
that dog the moon, his clothes milk-white,
near to my side. He said, with a smile
more fey than kind: “That is the King in Red.
He buries himself in heedless slumber
dreaming of your life to draw his mind
from sorrow’s grip. He sacrificed all
the ones he loved, and lost just the same.
I was his doom. I took daughters, sons
horses, halls, even his haughty queen:
laid waste his world. No wonder I became
a hated thing that haunts his dreams.”
He might have spoken of sports or games,
so casually he talked, so calmly he smiled,
but it hurt me to think of hatred and love.
I said, “I am seeking my sister and others
who came here as I did.” He cocked his head.
“I told you: your talk, in turn my answers,
even the airy stars are all stuff of his dream.
There were no women. He’ll wake and then,
you’ll cease to exist.” I saw no truth
in his murderous logic: “I live and am more
than a fancied shadow: I feel my reality.”
“You remain a part, whether real or not,
of the king’s dream. You cannot deny
only the dreamer is real in the realm of sleep.
That makes a syllogism, only solved one way.”
I saw neither solution nor sense in his words
and replied, “I will rouse him and reveal the truth.”
His locks shivered. “A shame,” he said.
Attitude Three: Bravado
Down I went through that dismal place
treading on rocks and treacherous thorns
to the barrow that shaded the bitter lake.
As I climbed aloft, the altitude swayed
and space distended in dizzy perspective.
The earth receded; the edifice stretched.
There lay the king all lost and lorn,
his face a study in stricken lines
no gentle sleep could slur to peace.
I put out my hand, then halted in pity
thinking that, waking, he would be sure
to relive once more the wretched despair
that carved his face in furrows so cruel.
Yet he lay so still that I started to think
his features formed: a fanciful design
as if he wore a mask or was made of wood.
“Where are the women?” I wondered aloud.
“Just disappeared? Is my doom like theirs?
A forgotten woman: who wonders about
one more marked down missing or murdered?
Is the price for letting my precious sister
succumb to hardship, for hating her need,
for saying I hated her, the same dark fate?
Did I learn too late that I loved her?”
I closed my eyes and clutched his arm
but hesitated to speak. A hellish fear
coursed through me of things unknown,
and my resolve faltered. Then rage in turn
drove back my fear. I faced my weakness.
I meant to act and make an end.
I wanted my life, my world, my sister.
I shook him, shouted, then taken by a shift,
queer and quiet, a quickening and death,
I woke but not to greet the world of bustling
joy and sorrow that once seemed so real.
Attitude Four: Despair
I lay on my back, and back to me came
my true memories marching in step:
the dear, dead demons of my distant past,
the old happiness all hewn to shreds,
the land and loved ones lost forever.
I screamed aloud. I scratched wildly
at my loathsome face, too late knowing how
to wit the words of the White King.
My dreamworld was a wish and no more
to live another life, love other kin.
Now they were nothing, nobody, nowhere.
There were no women, not even the one
I had dreamed of being; no dreadful stairs
no sister unburied or hope of salvation
nor the scant empathy of an enemy lingering
to meditate on the pain of the man he abased.
I was the most miserable of mortal men
recalled unready to regrets and the cruel
curse of knowing I was the King in Red.