The Fabulist (edit 3)

[dukealien]

Poem for Philip

The fabulist wears a mask,
laughs easily, but his eyes
tell you he’s not joking.

When the fix is in, look
beyond the tricks of his eyes
where lunacy and rhyme
lay the suicides in a row.

Between the fabulist’s wrist
and his unspoken name
worlds are made and unmade
across fields of unready nerves
forming cities in your brain.

My first impression connected this with Chandler's Philip Marlowe, reinforced by "Black Mask" mystery magazine (Hammet's Continental Op, though, was the nameless one).  In that spirit...

First stanza:  excellent,  the fabulist's eyes are what the reader gets behind and inside.  There may be jokes and small talk, but at every level (from making a buck [off you] by selling his story to the grim making-you-believe of make-believe, he is serious indeed.

Second stanza:  I had a little trouble with that phrase, "the fix is in."  To me, it refers to a corrupt verdict or determination - the judge or referee is bought,  what seems unknown or yet to be resolved is in fact predetermined.  (OK, that actually works for a mystery writer/teller who has actually written the last page before you turn the first.)  The tricks of eyes, again, making the reader see imaginary/imagined views.  "Laying the suicides in a row" is, in that context, very neat:  the writer conjures you (the reader) to breathe life into the characters, make them part of your consciousness... then murder them - now a part of you - on command.

Third stanza:  the unspoken name is a nice touch.  Even written in first-person (like Marlowe) the writer is the nameless source behind everything that seems to happen.  Also touches on the surprise in each turned page or digested word, and again, those myriads created in the theater-city of the reader's mind.

Okay, that's my impression.  Likely wrong... but how can it be improved and amplified?

The speaker in the poem is, ultimately, warning the reader of the fabulist's story about what is being perpetrated on him.  There is no admiration of the fabulist's craft... could that be added?  Or could the speaker strengthen the warning tone, perhaps alluding to all those suicided characters as if they were not merely resident, but working to alter the reader's mind?  To, in fact, *change* the reader's mind while its disbelief is artfully suspended?  A brain hack.

Of course if this refers to fabulists who create unreal worlds purporting to represent reality - dishonest reporters, for example , or politicians and their handlers devising slogans - that could be made more distinct.

Marlowe himself (if an imaginary character has a self) was always very self-conscious.  He'd likely appreciate the poem, wherever he is.

The other use of "the fix is in" that comes to mind was in M*A*S*H the novel (don't remember if it was in the movie):  when a wounded soldier on the operating table looked like he wasn't going to make it, the priest administered extreme unction as a sort of precaution.  The surgeons found, or claimed to find, that patients so treated always recovered.  So they joked that once the padre had done his bit "the fix is in."