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Taming my Excesses
- Red Hen Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
51 TAming mY eXCesses “It may be that his verbal talent needs containment of some kind to tame its natural excesses.” —from a review A single spotlight hits my sequined suit, showering sparks into the crowd under the billowing red-and-gold silk tent. bass viols grunt the Jaws theme. Tympanists thunder. my rings—sapphire, diamond, emerald, ruby, Tanzanite: one for each finger, plus a robin-egg-sized pearl on my thumb—spit fireworks as the cage door clangs like doom’s guillotine falling. hey, it’s hard not to feel doomed, alone in my hoop of light, only de sade’s favorite whip and louis Quinze’s most rococo chair between me, The great Talento, and my excesses, rumbling and reeking in the dark. haven’t i worked years to train them—speaking softly, offering bits of prime rib which they slap away, then chomp my hand? haven’t i sent them to juvie hall, county jail, state penitentiary, yet they still mock authority and won’t learn a trade? haven’t coaches, drill instructors, shave-headed guards made them sprint till they collapsed, flogged them bloody,hung them by their heels and sprayed cold water in their faces,left them in “The hole” with rats and lice for company , yet they’ve emerged less repentant than before? haven’t i dressed them in uniforms and bussed them to Catholic school, where they blew stink bombs in confession, chugalugged communion 52 wine,hailed mary in tongues so diabolical three exorcists turned into macaques and fled screeching? haven’t i sent them for years to Twelve step programs, yet they stay moral paralytics? haven’t i fed them truck-loads of Valium, plus enough neuroleptics to teach all China theThorazine shuffle? haven’t chemical castration and gene therapy failed them utterly? haven’t i jammed them into sonnets, villanelles, sestinas, sapphics, rondelles, pantoums, skeltonics, and clerihews, from every one of which they burst like rodan from earth’s flaming core? i hope, then, i may be forgiven if my chair trembles,and my whip falls limp when every house-light suddenly slams on, the crowd gasps, and my excesses— ”part basilisk, part blob, part medusahaired criminal defense lawyer, part hydra-headed Congressman, each head the size, and exhaling the atmosphere of Jupiter,” the papers say—when these excesses appear to each spectator as his or her larger, better-looking twin, who grabbed the best of everything, danced flamenco on the golden mean, hogged all the fun, yet has the gall to grin and nod hello, and then—as if out for a morning constitutional—strides from the cage into the crowd who, feeling themselves shrivel more and more, tear down the tent and trample each other in an undisciplined stampede out the door. ...