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Shadowman

Alan Catlin

Even asleep, he dreams of being awake,
unable to sleep, sees himself on stage,
an audience of thousands at a black and
white movie of someone else’s life watching
him as if he were both the subject and the object.
Senses his life is a series of perfect Kafka
moments: in both heaven and hell at the same
time with closed doors to chose from, each one
offering an escape to nowhere.
Then he seems himself in court, defending himself
before a Congress of Insomniacs, all of whom
are threatening to fall asleep. Feels as if his life
is being held together by strips of duct tape
and that his brain is trapped in some kind of
ongoing fugue state suffering a series of psychotic
reactions like mini-strokes, each one more
debilitating than the last. Hears the morning
room mirror crack as he shaves himself with
the honed edge of a clam shell, feeling Giacometti
thin and shrinking; just one more drunken angel
hitchhiking from Gospel to Gomorrah.

In a studio he records Martian music,
reads from scores dictated directly from God
whose presence is manifest in all the messages
scammed from street vendors and gravediggers.
Proudly claims to be directly descended from
a long line of Resurrection Men, “ A dying
profession, even then”. Said, with a straight
face, and meaning it, as the black sheep stricken
from the family tree with an axe and a bludgeon.
Makes do, with others of his kind, as a leader of
a team of disaster tourists, who make their living
pick pocketing dead people at mass casualty scenes.
Takes morning strolls, in his dreams, in minefields,
using prisoners of war as sweepers. Says he wants
to film the interior of his mind but all anyone would
see is shadow men painted on outdoor graffiti walls,
chalk outlines where the bodies had lain.

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