Carnival: the Final Frontier
Carnival is Storytelling
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| "They walk among us." |
CREATIVE PEOPLE will always take creative license ... and always get dragged over the proverbial coals by some for what is deemed shifty storytelling elements.
So Stephanie Meyer, of the Twilight saga sensation, got flack for making vampires impervious to sunlight.
Her twist was that
they shunned the sun because they would, to quote the pop song, “Shine bright like a
diamond.”
Imaginative, but inane. It was not thoughtless,
though. See, the saga was pure proselytizing for Mormonism and its tenets. As
such, the chosen people, the vampires representing the Mormons, could not be so
weak as to be undone by something equally God-created as themselves.
Nay! In fact, they
had to be as nigh well perfect as possible: so they were almost
indestructible, except by their own kind (and those pesky werewolves ... who
are actually shape-shifters in the Native American tradition) and, above all, beautiful. So they sparkle in the sunlight.
And that’s why
they hid in the dark all those centuries?
I point out to my writing
students, "That was then and this is now." Maybe it’s Maybelline’s perfect
coverage; or Revlon’s true match spectrum – “Do you have this foundation in
prismatic sapphire?; but make-up has “come a long way, baby” and can smooth
over anything.
Even if her
vamps wanted some fun in the sun, these days that’s all-how doable. Vampires would be able to hit anything from the Gay Pride
Parade, to Mardi Gras, to Rio’s superlative festival. After that,
they could work their way south and "jump up" in each of the islands in the Caribbean
with a carnival, culminating with the mother of them all: TnT Mas’.
And don’t tell me
Meyer may not have any clue about countries like mine! I see those
Mormons walking around my streets looking like sales clerks in U.S. all-white department
stores circa 1950s.
A pal of mine, as
a little girl loved telling the Mormon missionaries who came by, “God is a
spaceman.”
All those
things got me thinking, so I wrote this:
Carnival & Alienation
Man from Mars
you danced among
us
and we knew you
not
Rays fell upon you
This Caribbean sun
run down you, but
blinking, cold, like prey before driven snow
Mercury may be
your blood
But what colour is
your true, true skin?
I turn my head to
take you in
Only to end up
shielding my eyes
Thus, a peep-show,
you and I
There are no stares in space?
Man from Mars
you dwarfed us
Our necks arced
backwards to capture you in our lens
We will show the
world that you were here
Which is not to
say
we have proof
The pieces of you
that dress the
Earth with
what you hide
beneath
(Or are you
actually made of this?)
Faking that you
are feigning
All alien, after
all
Sprouting what
below the mask,
the paint,
the dust,
the wire
What is your true,
true shade?
Man of Mars
you carried our
world on your head
Cranial carriage
for human-made
pale
impersonations of
Nature’s
well-churned creations
Creatures donned,
to hide
the creature of
you
Horns, fangs, wings, tail
More, or less, like
you on your bones?
Tentacle, tooth hurled from your form
like care-worn terrible things
gnash upon the
skins of our
walk-and-wine
drums
with which we failed to warn
each other
“They walk among
us”
Never showing your
true, true shape
Shine on
"Only to end up shielding my eyes."
"Cranial carriage"
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For downloadable photos like these, link to: Jhaye-Q Trinbago
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| "Our necks arced backwards to capture you" |
