The King Lear Glee Club

The only member of the King Lear

Glee Club and Dancing Society

meets this morning on a bus stop bench

in the Kroger parking lot to perform

the Off This Mortal Coil Shuffle.

His hair is ruffled,

his mouth is agape in an empty O—

O! O! O! O!—

while only his own fingers

play on his xylophone ribs.

He rises to scuttle crabwise among the Pontiacs

and Chryslers, peering into their windows

to sneer at the food wrappers and baby seats,

occasionally keying a perfect car door

with a precisely inscrutable line.  He bends

to see his hair-choked face in a side view mirror

and weeps to find it there.

The grocery store draws him in

and he makes his entrance with stiff pride—

the magical doors open at his kingly command—

but no one looks.  He bellows, retreats,

going out to go in again, sure this time

that the muzak plays for him,

that the florescent lights shine to ennoble his royal brow,

that the silver linoleum has been laid for his own bare feet.

He orders his sullen subjects to shop, 

to pick vegetables and push carts,

to edge away from him in silent awe 

and well-deserved respect as he stomps

and titters, rehearsing the arguments

proving his divinity—which is evident

in the cereal aisle where angels find bran flakes,

in the meat and poultry section where he sees signs

forked into the bare bodies of dead animals,

in the perfumed pharmacy stinking of corporeal decay,

in the candy treats on shelves too low to reach,

for what sane king would bend for mere sugar,

and in the narrow-eyed stare of his fool

who gathers baskets and mocks his own mockery with secret love.

Or does he?  What is the bottom of mockery,

where is its top?  Peel back the ordered linoleum tiles

and the abyss crouches, scissor open the roof

and find empty air, entangle the nerves with bargains,

and you will save nothing.  

Nothing in the parking lot

nothing among the vegetables

nothing in the dairy products

nothing in the empty registers.

He stumbles outside where a storm gathers

above the automobiles.  I forgive you, lightning,

he mutters, but not that bitch Cordelia.  

By his mad decree the winds roar

the sky boils and the clouds hurl their cataracts

till the power lines snap.

And then the darkness comes.

Crazy proud blind Lear staggers a two-step 

and opens the first unlocked car door he finds,

sits dripping on the plastic-covered throne,

places knuckled hands on the great wheel.

Turn, he begs.  Turn.

9-28-16