[Newspoetry] Jellyfish Power Failure

[William Gillespie]

Jellyfish Power Failure (title links to:)
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/jan2000/phil-j07.shtml

Quezon City (Associated Poets) On December 10th, a power failure plunges
the nation into darkness. At the tip of the economy, a cocktail party
goes black
and silent
and the anxious whispering of the senators begins. Watch the president
pale, ghostlike in the night.

President, dispatch your liason to allay your guests
because fifty truck loads of jellyfish
are going to flush you from office

Have another cocktail chancellor, while the servants stumble through the
mansion lighting candles. The constellation of flickering cufflinks
looks like a circle of torches. In the black oceans, there is word of a
putsch. Minister, murmur something to the ambassador that makes her
giggle while the president passes the bar nervously glancing in your
direction, wringing a pained smile from his wrinkles.

President, dispatch your liason to allay your guests
because fifty truck loads of jellyfish
have seized your nation's infrastructure
and bent it to their whim

You promised houses to the poor, who carried you to the election on
their backs. A year later they surround your limosine with the angry
articlulate brevity of labor union leaflets. As the lights go out and
the whir of the airconditioning dies, your heart drops from a veranda
into an outline on the tiled mezzanine floor. Blinded by the headlines
of your undoing, you long to pass back through the silver screen into
your unassailable persona. Don't the trees appear sinister through the
candlelit curtains? They are whispering secrets of a military coup.

President, dispatch your liason to allay your guests
because fifty truck loads of jellyfish
have come to reclaim their islands
from the International Monetary Fund

The poison tingle of a poison tentacle with a white glove emerges from a
strapless gown. Her skin is glistening iridescent and blue. She is
fabulous. Ignore her undulations. Focus and recite your litany of
denial, president,and get it right.  For we have come to take you to the
depths.


[note to compensate for email weirdness: the "President dispatch your
liason" stanzas have line breaks and are all italic. These are the
stanzas the jellyfish recite. The other stanzas are unitalicized prose,
with the exception of breaks after "black" and "silent" in the first
stanza.]