The biggest boss that you've seen thus far.

I am.

Vamos, vamos...

Parade.

Very sturdy rogues.


Several have exploited your worlds.


With no needs, and in no hurry to make use of their brilliant faculties and their knowledge of your consciences.


What ripe men!


Eyes listless like the summer night, reddened and blackish, tricolored, steel studded with gold stars;


Features twisted, leaden, bloodless, gutted.


Burlesque hoarsenesses! The merciless posturings of tinsel!


Some are young--what would they think of Cherubino?--with bloodcurdling voices and some dangerous equipment.



They are sent to town, tricked out with nauseating luxury.



O the most violent Paradise of the furious grimace!


Not to be compared with your Fakirs and other theatrical buffooneries.


In costumes improvised with the taste of bad dreams, they enact sad songs and tragedies of thieves and demigods more uplifting than history or religion has ever managed to be!


Chinese, Hottentots, gypsies, nitwits, hyenas, Molochs, old lunacies, sinister demons, they mix much-loved old-time maternal ditties with bestial winks and caresses.


They would interpret new plays, "romantic" songs.


Master jugglers, they can transform both the scene and the characters: they use magnetic tricks.


Eyes glisten, blood sings, bones swell, tears and little red trickles flow.


Their horseplay or their panic terror may last a minute or whole months.


I alone have the key to this savage side show.

Uno, Dos, Tres.

Anatomische.

because I do not hope

Your sister was there. And your mother too.

We watched together, the whole family.

It was hot in the poor places.

Houdini, murdered by suicide.

Unrepentant.

And just desserts. Or, "If I had any idea of what justice is, it would be more than I deserve," mumbles Oldham.

And so. The champions reign. The old blue lady. The cobbler's wife. Son of a television repair man. An orphan raised in the seclusion of the mountain retreat. Champions.

All of them. And yet. The rest of us. Our fists white, bloodless. In solidarity.

Don't Step.

And again, so. That inscrutable joy returning when we rebuild his transgression under a flag of defiance,

into a gift we don't unwrap, nor desire to - maybe accepting, some of us, of Eliot:

"because i do not hope to turn again
because i do not hope
because i do not hope to turn"

And finally, then, so. Two unrepentant times around the sun. We begin again. What's left of his legacy coalesces across the continent and goes on. the. attack. our telekinetic vision, repaired, guides the ball away from the line on which we stand, the one we've drawn ourselves. then we just start running, screaming, certain of the Totality of this movement. we know of another, outside of the their sights, doing as we are doing. so we give the moment over to him. but there is no him. it is us. the moment is passed again. and by now, we know

not to hope

to turn again.