Tridentine Shadow

…….The candelabra’s purring harvest in the forest

…..The silk grooves in the church basement

Evasion….

I was rung by the concierge at the flea bag motel where we began filming.
I was told to bring bring vestments and a prepare a semiotic hymn. “Don’t bother me”, i said, paying the taxi.
The clouds are unalterable at 3:00am. They lift from the ground
rainless, glory filled and irrepressible as a horizonless gouache nudely staring.
The coat i wore held particularly to me: a gold lattice cloak laced in hooks to my flesh and a small hairshirt of emerald briar.
I knew by the smell where the set was. The director and the pale
room keeper snorted and laughed together. “I have the semiotic hymn”,
I whispered with a zealot’s arousal. “i hope Silas, or the woman playing
him, likes it too.”
The cat o nine tails was purple, studded with pearls, and i genuflected in the spindle of my own shadow, facing up to it.
The plaster cast of St. michael’s hung from the wall, and i was told he would fall soon.
I carried out the mass in my makeup, scourging often, rapidly. I held
a laminated photo, black and white, as the rite would necessitate the sacred scripture held.
The image was emblazoned with a reckless dispersal of shadow, and just one tacky bit, a hat rising, a candle by his face.
“On every photograph, anything in man’s image, is soiled by a diurnal shadow, or an arsenic filigree.
“Even the happiest images, which I know nothing of, are moratoriums mocking any other pretense. . A shadow pump. . . .”
“Tell me more,” a voice rang, near the pipes, near where my double danced in front of the tabernacle.
I wept, and the plastic organ began blasting.
I was given a carnival handbill and snuff.