When The Ugly Fiends Of Hell Sally Forth (from The Songs Of The Erinnyes, Sonnets, Odes, and Elegies by Jay Noya, Brigantium Press)

1

The Stage Manager nods and points and I’m off from the wings
I count my steps and struggle to breathe and can’t
It takes ages to reach the center of the stage and to step back
When I lift my eyes and squint
There’s but an abysmal space
As meaningless as a moonless and starless sky
I can neither see nor think
The whispers and coughing and restless shifting
And fretting of a disheartened invisible audience
I’m the spectacle and stand alone as a progeny of the human race
I stand alone as an architectonic marvel in skin and nerves
And capillaries and the miniscule ducts
Fold upon fold of membrane and tissue adjusted round the bones
Tucked and stitched and glued and sealed
Rolled up and strapped and knotted and bagged
It is a cumbersome creature advancing onto the stage
I represent to my invisible audience the spectacle
I’m to be the clue and meaning and reason and mirth
Panic assails me and my lungs fill to capacity
And it’s the throat and the voice next
The words?
What are the words?
Who am I becoming?
Who am I to be?
And through sense and sentiment
Rigid and blind with anticipation
Half-singing and half-snorting and all petulance
It’s a tentative and rough and undulating cadence
The actor has inferred and feels suitable for the Thomas Kyd text
The effort is maddening and partly absurd
It interposes itself between him and the chasm of darkness
Widening from the foot of the stage
Towards the back of the theatre
And all other life beyond the front doors and the streets
The actor knows the way and falls back on his tricks
Slurring through the speech
Coating and reinforcing Heronimo’s words
With shrill lilts and a tremor and a sweet sad randomness
The night sad secretary to my moans
With direful visions wake my vexed soul
And with the wounds of my distressful son
Solicit me for notice of his death
The ugly fiends do sally forth of hell
And frame my steps to unfrequented paths
And fear my heart with fierce inflamed thoughts
The cloudy day my discontents records
Early begins to register my dreams
And drive me forth to seek the murderer
Eyes life world heavens hell night and day
See search show send some man some mean that may


2

Like a spider I sense the tension on the thread
And follow it and having taken possession of it
Extract what nourishment I can from it
Sometimes less and sometimes more
And sometimes one waits in vain
For the sky and the sidewalks to change from bright to dark
The street traffic augments and dwindles
And people hasten up and down the avenues
Crossing streets and lingering outside restaurants
Lingering by doorways and subway station entrances
Lingering to chat and harangue and stare and keep silent
Lingering because some have nowhere to go
It’s the stress on the line the stress on the invisible thread
That summons me to the spot and alerts me
It has guided me to this evening and this stage and this play

3

The actor is to be arrested in his changing-room
A car and three men wait for him outside the theatre
And the theatre shall empty as it does after every show
And the unhurried patrons will set out for dinner
In restaurants nearby while others will go home satisfied
That the evening has turned out so splendidly
The night is mild and the sky is gone and moonless
The actor is beaten up and kicked and nothing is explained
He’s dragged out along a passageway
He’s brought out into the alley
Where the black car with the three men wait
The evening has turned out splendidly
And the night is mild and the sky is gone and moonless

4

The assassin belongs to the shadows because he’s a nobody
He’s got no name even when he’s recognized and identified
The assassin serves his masters well and is meticulous
About his business and takes pride in his accomplishments
The assassin is logical and looks upon his jobs
As the long minute arm of his watch shifting positions
At eleven thirty-six Saturday evening he strangles a woman
It’s an actor he’s to garrote Monday morning in a cell
Wednesday he is joining a twenty men team
To dispatch over fifty men and women
They’re to be shot and burnt and buried in a wood
Some of the women will be raped before they’re shot

© J.Noya 2006