The Story: Trickster

A trickster does not announce himself as danger. He arrives as color, as a laugh, as a face painted so openly that no one thinks to look behind the paint. The wall is already peeling. That is the first truth of the picture. Nothing here is as solid as the smile.

The Trickster comes to play his tricks on unsuspecting fools. The line is old, and it is still accurate. The fool is not a stupid person. The fool is the one who wanted the game more than he wanted to see. Watch his eyes when he holds the cards. The mouth is the performance. The eyes are the ledger. Or else the tricks on you. The poem does not soften that turn. It puts the cost in the second person, where a warning belongs.

A demon taught him all he knows, and exactly what to do. This is not a ghost story. It is a name for the instruction that charm receives when it is put to work against a heart. To break a heart and steal a soul in less than a lifetime, or two. The last phrase is the coldest kindness in the poem. A life can be spent learning the trick. Another life can be spent paying for it. Time is not on the side of the unwary.

The paint knows this. Red runs where a smile should end. Blue sits in the eyes like a held card. The letters of the title are worn, as if the name has been on the wall longer than the face. A trick that lasts is no longer a joke. It is a method.

Trickster is a Painted Poem about attention. It does not ask the viewer to hate the figure. It asks the viewer to stay awake. A heart that can be named can be kept. A soul that knows it is being played has already left the table. The laugh remains. The warning remains beside it. That is enough to walk past the wall with your cards still in your hand.

Collection:   Restraint and Resonant Grace