(MURAL) (MONDO) (NULFRESCO)

In Shakespeare's Last Supper the
disciples (you, me, all of us here)
are depicted seated alongside where
He stands at mid-table and grins
down like an MC at our expressions—
are we shown, the goblets gleaming,
gloating as they goad us on to toast
the centrality of this spokesperson,
the notional character whereby
everyone has been sketched vis-â-vis
the honoree we can only eulogize,
dependent as we are on His
moodswings. Astonished, confused
by the ultra ups and downs of manic
means, now we watch, we lean, we pout
(the whole propitiatory repertoire)
worried about our survival, inert
(like a frozen rictus facing its fate)
unless depression drafts and draws
us forth the extempore pose, myth,
puppetary projection, limned mobilary
mosaic that apes some drab-escapist
syndrome, imagination. Which is why
each evening we pray for a chance
to cross the ditch-penny distances
between the footlights and the fear,
vowing to allow each guise of role
to kill us, to raise us from the dust, to
guide us like magi toward summons,
obediently steered by the stock star
the marquee, believing our need—
such faith could pass those deserts
of farce to find this upper room.
Sensing the inn beneath us seethe
with indifference with doubt, we
concentrate harder on His remarks
and jokes, trying to make up for all
the audiences who've failed this test.
Never quite reassured by any overt
wink of His assessing eyes into
our ranks (are any of us missing—
was castcall taken?), we keen forward,
eager for our cues, nervous knowing
that if there is error here, at a signal
the maitre d' will find replacements
for this testimonial "Eucha-Roast"
from the rabble stabled downstairs
where the tavern yawns into its beer.
Life is rescue from such anonymity.
Their situation is death, is subject—
those groundlings can never guess
how much it crowns to end up here,
costume-chosen, endowed by makeup
with certitude, form, identity—
Who wouldn't be jealous to know
how blessed we fictions are!
And yet every member of our
Dramatis Personae wonders if s/he
was jotted into life as whimsically
as Emperors choose sacrificial
victims, as any Divine Ruler or
Hollywood Player and whether
with a fingerflick Hamlet Portia Timon
's erased, gone, again. This banquet—
how many have we attended like it?
Daily we wait like napkins to get
opened, held to the face like a mask,
stained and used then tossed aside
like paper towels, paper disposables,
paper identities (similes/metaphors)—
like the paper whose headlines fade
around our names/our fame. Our bits
done, our pieces recited, oh it's bits
alright, it's pieces it crumbles into,
and yet how avowingly we cry, foils
corrupted by one front-row cough.
Exit as trash, as avid Kleenex exiled
in a breath to the canteen of lost
turns, the greenroom of oblivion.
Now if there were respite in such
neglect, a grace period with no need
to perform, but both in the wings and
on one's caught, regardless of what's
true. Far, near, (hall or gallery) that
mendicant theater is pursuant always,
lugging and luring its wares:
wherever we are, wherever here is
is also an entrance, a set of false steps,
(bright-lit pratfall-pit) a trap for fools,
a stooges' cage, every scrim and apron
prinked with sham, props, champagne
buckets doffing their caps in fealty—
Even the proscenium's subservient
arch bows and begs a platform for
actors trumpeting loft-aired routines,
voluminous effusions or, what's worse,
kingly-haired creatures washing
the feet of their inferiors, sudsy
obsequious declamatory eruptions
filled with the rehearsed lava of
bold slaves, the bald brimmings
of an improperly-public humility
(unlike the servant who never spills
his waiting master's entree except
in the pantry when there is no-one
to witness his extravagant remorse)—
All these openly-imploring apertures,
these theme-cut bubblings-up, paeans,
(akin to pale critics' acclamations)
would crack like a laughtrack at
that imposture, that pastiche, applause:
who'd pity these pathetic devotees,
advocates haunted by nothingness,
by that same humanhood to whom
white placecards validate each plate.
Who sat us here? (Athwart this portrait
the descending order of our dinner
ranks auditions more disdain,
every hors d'oeuvre daubed with scorn)—
In our state, our omnipresence,
to which can we aspire? Sometimes
we think: if only there were Someone
somewhere, somehow, though of course
that's impossible: Someone outside
this frame—an absent self, a spectator
vivid at duress, who can feel
the real joy and pain we mime—
who sees the sun setting out there now,
the approach of a nighttime unlike
our curtain: Someone who lacks
the judas window wherein we acolytes
recognize ourselves, the betrayal
portal we have all portrayed so
plausibly it has at last retained us,
replaced us with stainedglass.
(Through which, on rare occasions,
that said Someone fills us with light,
illuminates us.)—Overcome, undone,
we feel ourselves vanish, we dwindle
to a painted panel. We fade, we die.
His stasis renders us too slenderly.
Or is this endless attendance
the promised purgation, the shedding
of every emotion, every weight?
Is it gain, this loss, this usurped,
staged starving, this repast-of-reruns
upon a menu whose full-promised
delicacies remain a manna dream,
backdrop glamour (milk-and-honey)
a feastless Eden, a heaven hunger's
expelled whole from. Why aren't we
at home here, in this plenty, this
supernal supper—why this finicky
desire to avoid the silverware, the knife
paler (because it reflects us) than
the poor fork that renews whose flesh
and encores veins across each dish
until its unction-urged tines impale
spearlike and nail the cacodaemon
that shall huzzah hail our Hostmaster . . .
See: the chair He occupied is empty—
expecting the miracle or bloodcrime
through which all of us must assume
His part, the mummers-meal, the sealed
communion. Bard bread, scene wine,
unyield your transubstantiations:
beyond that superceded throne
lies the utter ubiquity of the known.
And so, viva, bravo, boffo, olé,
so each paraclete's performance moves us.
Cheers! echoes the pledge, promiscuous
each voice ID's the oath. The mic
on the dais quivers, shook by our cry,
sole intercessor of this ceremony.

Copyright © Bill Knott, 2000.  All Rights Reserved.