Many Musics, Eighth Series
Posted: June 9th, 2015, 10:36 am
continued from here:
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Many Musics, Eighth Series
When did it matter most?
When I smiled at another & believed.
i. New Work
On high, where the mountains snowy knuckles
& the roads deep veins, the pressure lessens
& a hope elevates.
Chatter on the plane is what
some reck breathing for. If I disagree,
then nothing for it but to make
like those veins & new rush heart & mind.
******
ii. And Again
You were come new, & I had my gift
ready for you. But something, &
then something else. That smile,
something, something else. I chased,
again, a little, a little more. That smile,
something. It was only a dream,
that smile, you were come new, &
I had my gift for you. Something I kept.
******
iii. Myths Breathe—
These glaring beasts of night, still,
the softest touch in my breathing,
the hustles with new sun. I'll start
explaining myself by simple numbers
when any of you can nod & smile &
finally account for the remain.
******
iv. Spring Thaw
Winter dawns in that strange youth,
tossing newspapers at locked suburban
doors, talking myself through inner worlds
finer than the day to come. A pretty girl,
a pen in hand, even the simple gesture
of a smile & a handshake. Big, simple,
inner worlds I did not yet know how
to conjure. I’d come home, fingers & limbs
numb, & the sharp yips of the thaw.
Thaws hurt, then & now, & bigger
inner worlds still call to be made.
******
v. Sobornost [After Herzog]
In his cage, he remembers. The scent of unknown
flowers, chemicals really, the wind from
the window he’d quickly come through. Two
quick breaths, then his, the gentleness
he crushed, but then let go a little. Maybe
it was God’s urge, he ignored the chemicals.
In her room she smokes. There is music
on the radio, too soft for lyrics, as she likes.
She sees stars through the ceiling, always
has since, even more now. She’s learned
new ways to laugh too, less personal,
more forgiving for the many hands striking
empty air, & again, & again, & somehow yet
call this a life.
******
vi. Render
New work seems best to root from
the rest, the stars themselves tools
to remind of that banking melody,
day the old enemy for reasons too
familiar to sum, night the welcoming
thighs, the encouraging beat, smiling
hurried breath, & so on. And yet.
And yet. There is that older than
my paths & songs, roots dangling for
a hold. There are liners in those skies
tonight, tomorrow, beckoning for a ride,
maybe just for a song. There’s sexy
glare in the gratings in the ground,
& three possibles for any smart denial.
New work is bedded through each new
hour, & a willing to still feel leaning
way over the edge, a willing, a hunger,
a slave to it maybe, to what
great notes can be found in that
next moment of balance between
possible fall, & wild ascent.
******
vii. Just Play Through— [After Burke]
If I can see also ligaments & light
where I now see just tits & ass,
If I can feel the man’s love of his
personal savior as much as I love
my pen & a tree to write near,
If I can embrace to hold my heart’s
urging truth that the vastness of any soul
is on the far side of coin & office,
If I can act with humor, with doubt,
with hope, keeping beat & breath,
If I can learn better to give it &
take it, & accept the brutalest beauties
of this world,
Perhaps I can live long & come to my end
with an easy smile like to your own.
******
viii. Temple of Dreams
Found in a clearing shaped like a temple
in full moonlight, potent without
flesh nor bones, a place, a portal,
a tool, a salve, recked ancient by men
yet dreams do not bide by miles or hours.
I wonder over this as I marvel too
that the Universe on luckier nights
seems most like sugar sprayed wildly
across a darkling canvas. At my best,
I think there’s space enough for metaphor,
science, for every slight & unsure passage through.
******
ix. That Slender Myth
Tonight, again, I know nothing.
I am nobody. Singing to manifest,
crawling the dust. Recking the web.
Praying the hours hit the same vein
that preacher does tonight, spittle
& fists, sucking the moving sidewalk’s
attention to his gesture & word,
the word, next word, he’ll hustle
another to his unhappy explanation
by night’s end, loose eyes from
that slight skirt, those misshapen green
leaves, irrelevant stars above,
yes. “Only suffering defines this human
dimension. Suffering & submission &
the relief of letting another direct
your path hereon.” I know nothing.
I am nobody. I cannot say you
are wrong yet I will not sing your song.
What lights my days staggers me with
wild, uncertain music, & what caterwauls
my dreams sexes my mind even better
with the possibles here & hereon.
******
x. From a Dream
And again I’m in the classroom
And again that old bookstore job
And again this courtyard, this black pen,
Which are dreams, which to keep?
And the few meals remembered from years
And the click-clicking chess-clocks
And the faces that remain unknown
What else is passing by too?
And again it’s springtime, mercy’s cool air
And again I watch the homeless man prowl
And again, & still, I know nothing
but still add to the noise
I’d walk home tonight, from this courtyard,
with each & every one of you, if you
could breach my dreams at last, & land inside my skin.
******
xi. Two Men
There are only two men.
One sells the fire. One blazes.
Will you purchase your days with one
or learn how the other burns?
******
xii. The Red Bag
When the glaring lights have left
When the music has slowed to smoke
Where there is sniff of good blood & then no more
When touch brittles maybe to break
When best taste is old & cold, hurts
The red bag, doorway, back to dreams
The red bag, the path, come
The red bag, come, trust, come here.
******
xiii. Tomorrow’s News
When the ships overhead descend,
if they were to slave, use the world
as crops, as men do now, but badly,
would it take no more than a flash
of glowing wings, a hard bark about
judgment & punishment, to subdue
resistance & fear to submission? Who
would challenge God’s arrived minions
but some of the children, a handful of the freaks,
& a scattering too few to whelm
the millions well-raised for the lash
& unexplained condemn from the skies?
******
xiv. Emandia
I fell asleep, sad again, & looking far
into the darkness I could see the cankerous
shaft in me, its veins twisting maybe deep
as blood, oh yes, could see how it bore
through, then, the most lost, secret
sweet of thens, barely a seed with limbs,
unaware my unspent life, to now,
taking in all it could, a blind, unhappy,
frenzied mortal feeding, consuming
& yet not all, for there was something else,
an opposite, what?
Another shaft, of music, culminating music,
a shaft of forest breezes, ocean waves,
leaves, curling inward, open hands, even
closed ones, the coming harmonies of
mutual gain & get, putting on another’s
dream to understand, the pink & purple
& green colors of want, & I wished, seeing
both plain now, to near the one & dismiss
the other. But I woke this morning
with both still. Knowledge of the canker
does not free, nor does the music diminish.
Each feeds me still, of each other, &
the play is mine to let the canker
thrive or follow, yes, I am nobody,
yes, I am nothing, yes, I still sing.
Become again, anew, the wild violet shaft
crying, thrusting inexorably into the
twining grasp of this great gaping universe.
******
xv. Claude Monet
I wish I knew you, Claude Monet,
as your teachers did, & as you
knew your colors. How many cities knew
you too, as you painted their churches & canals,
Claude Monet, I wish I knew you as a friend,
to sit & watch the day with,
know your rustling breath, study your
beautiful hands. I wish I knew you,
Claude Monet, as your dreams which recurred,
as the canvasses you stretched, your paints,
your brushes. I wish I’d been a wheatstack
or a water lily you studied for hours to figure,
to find where eye & colors & the movement
of hand might coalesce now, & forever.
I wish I had known you, Claude Monet,
as something you loved enough to keep.
******
xvi. Carry Me Back
Later there was a film about her,
the dead girl traveling north where
all comes from, it had gotten easier
since she’d been dead, the pressures
were fewer from body & clan, & the scene
that really convinced me was when
she’d made it to the shore & it’s snowing,
big chunks of snow, like cottage cheese
or something, & she begins to disassemble
herself to understand, at first
the pleasure of watching her vague
garments reveal a slender torso,
pleasing breasts, soft ass, even shaved pussy,
but then she uncouples them from
herself, they had come later after all,
& the skin softer as she news & undoes,
her blood unremembering its hungers & imperatives,
oh yes, & the glisten of early songs,
first songs, it comes apart easier around her,
as the cottage cheese snow diminishes,
& she is left just with the wish
to understand before she even knows why.
******
xvii. Atop Mt. Cloudy Day
You reach the top or end of
something & all there is
is to look down or back.
******
xviii. After a Time
[F.B., “Hot Air Ballooning Off Normandy,” oil on plywood, 20th cent.]
When you start losing your legs,
the world seems more ferociously moving,
& you find yourself looking up,
more & more, for an offer of wide wings,
a soft ride in a striped air balloon, or
maybe that long swim to the bottom
finally coming due.
******
xix. Manneport near Etratat
The plaque to Monet’s paintings tells of
this great rocky gate but another view
says that it is a leg taking a long step into
the sea, toward something new, greet
the far landless depths, learn some things,
remember others, great rocks dream too,
& the sea will enjoy the visit, tales from
new company, yes, I think it’s time
everybody saw this too & accepted tis
a journey begun, more steps to come,
& at the stateliest of gaits.
******
xx. Homer’s “Weather Beaten,” 1894
“For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
—Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things,” 1969.
I wish to crash with your waves,
not against them, not ignore them
for not being man-shaped or talking like men.
I wish to uncouple from my simple ideas
of dawn & dusk, as though light disappears
entirely, feel like the sky my colors changing,
wish to disintegrate like driftwood,
without woe or metaphor, & eventually
spread what I hark out to every point
of the globe, wet & dry, feel every pulse,
every breathing, now a fiber knowing
its weaving, no longer harried or hanging on
because I know everything needs me too
& is seeking to keep me my place.
******
xxi. The Tangled Gate [Sketch #1]
Remember some things. This is the lost purpose
or forgotten, obscured, of the tangled gate.
You will enter as a group, pretty dancers
offered as a king’s sacrifice, but I know
what you will find. Each of you will arrive
but alone, but only by heeding me in this.
Through the tangled gate, neither left nor right,
on & on & on, now into the great mouth,
the great beastly mouth. On in, one by one,
heed me in this. On in.
******
xxii. The Tangled Gate [Sketch #2]
I watch you roaming the tangled gate,
& you try to understand, where were
the dance steps I taught you? Which color
thread is the clue to which path?
You sniff & pause, & press your hands &
breath to the walls, those of clay &
other vines. You wish to know, to feel
your blood walk calmly the gate as though
through the stars themselves. Heart’s
deepest feeling the map to all
the worlds of creation. I watch you.
You sing, you talk softly. You move slowly,
you run, you stop. Nothing orchestrates
you, Ariadne, not you nor the stars themselves.
I watch you, note by note, glance, glare,
green leaves blow places you don’t know
within, where lead & know & how let off,
& the gate untangles past all ceasings of cease.
******
xxiii. The Tangled Gate [Sketch #3]
You wonder who let the elixir in,
& you look around for a face or
office of intent, look back, far back,
now far on, beyond your station,
the stars in your night skies.
You wonder who let the elixir in,
& marvel a little at how time & space,
how foolish, how funny, now let it
some more, look far, look back,
beyond your station, your roots, your dreams.
You wonder who let the elixir in,
as though the plan, its masters,
their secret book, its language
to master & teach, stare harder into
the fire, grow blinder, listen till you see.
You wonder who let the elixir in
as you wonder on want & what will delight
perpetually a moment’s sugared laughing,
what will calm the many tongues & their guns,
oh tell how, sing why, by the beg, by the pray,
you wonder who let the elixir in when
look, your hand is on the tap & see it flow.
******
xxiv. The Tangled Gate [Sketch #4]
We sit together, you & I, & at first
our breathing distrusts, because
this room isn’t big enough & it has
no windows. But our hearts are listening
too, looking for the music even as we
still tangle in tongues. They beat,
there is the beginnings of music,
there is silence, how music continues.
We sit together, you & I, & this is
ten thousand years ago & this is tonight
& this is when the earth has blown all to light.
This room isn’t big enough but here
we are & the music between us has begun.
You call me ugly & I return yours with
a nod, & we both start laughing.
This is how I remember those days best.
We sit together, you & I, & you are
gone some years now, & your laughter
remains in my mind. And this room still isn’t
big but I can see now the possibilities
of windows. Make them with fists,
or maybe open hands. Every day’s deciding.
******
The Tangled Gate
(for JBIII)
She Returns to the Island
Remember some things. It’s what put me
in this small boat on this great
blood-remembering sea in this melancholic
month of the year, near too cold to sail.
I’ve left the Pensionne as though not to return,
but look at that blue bag. That’s all.
Remember some things. And what choice?
You neared me in my dreams, nearer than
any man had, at least meaningfully.
You neared, you lured, you made off.
“The Tangled Gate. Find me through the
Tangled Gate. Will you choose? Will you?”
It is hard sailing to get to the Island.
This boat won’t get me there, I can’t make
my friend risk his livelihood. I’ll swim,
despite his looks, his friend’s wish
to protect me somehow. The Pensionne had
recovered him too. But I am prepared.
I’ll swim. I haven’t in years, in the sea,
but it’s like I’m more fish than girl.
My bag is sealed, hauls from my waist,
I wave a thank you at him in mid-flight
to the water. These blood-remembering
waters took too much from me to ask more.
So I thought. Architect, I thought you &
your prick-addled son both swallowed in
its deep. I thought I lost you to worse
than your uncertainty, your willingness
to take me only with your eyes. No,
it seems. You survived, you live, so say my dreams.
The shore is rocky, no beach where I half-
collapse breathless. The sea lets me leave
but slow, as though something more,
something else. The grey-etched skies, too,
prod me restless, go. Return. Remember some things,
something’s ticking harder, little to do with time.
******
She Remembers the Queen
Working my way along the rocks
I remember the Queen, my father’s
jealous wife, with her herbs for fidelity
& her witchly cult’s screeching songs on
full moon nights. Was this sparkling foamy
beach where my own path began to begin?
The story was foolish but nobody would say
otherwise. The King & his reckless plays with
the Eternals, gamblings with one & another
for bits of power. Agrees to slay the magical
white bull in tribute, then switches out
another. Fool an eternal? Some don’t learn.
Fool an eternal? Feel an enraged fist. Now
see the mesmered Queen sneaking off by night,
rouged & primped, a servant carrying her
sex box. I followed by shadow, I watched,
the crashing waters, the bull’s wet roar,
the beguiled woman’s ass fit high for cracking.
Now gorged with her punishment, now
unseen for weeks, she called me to her
rooms, she touched my hair, my new breasts,
lied & called me beloved daughter.
I waited at the very edge of her bed, ticking,
naming & counting constellations in my mind.
“Don’t lead with your heart, child,
it will betray you,” she growled.
“How did you cause this? What was your
wrong?” She smiled, a woman handsome
like a man. “When they near you, child,
hooked by your luring blood, do what I didn’t.”
Silence. Ticking. Counting. “Sniff.” “Sniff?”
Silence again. Breathing more complex than
it ought. I should have felt something, or
at least these years later. I remember the advice,
& think only the stupid woman learned one thing to say.
I remember her dragging her sex box home before light.
******
She Visits the Dancing Grounds
Eventually to climb, the Castle on its tall hill,
my father the King & his spy-glass to the seas,
his insomniac patrols in the weaker hours of the night.
He’d say, when I was small, “They’re all out there.”
Always looking high, in love with night’s shiny stones,
the musical patterns of gulls in flight, sleepless too, I’d ask: “Who?”
“Where we come from, the ones who would take all
this. Our heritage & home.” I looked hard toward
the star-speckled horizon, seeing the dark waves only
in my mind. Answered his fears with my only powers,
touch & kiss & the breath of few words. Embraced,
sighing, he’d say: “There are other weapons, stranger strengths.”
I come now to what he built me later, a remain
of those years. He knew I moved quick like
my white bunny, & light like my many butterflies,
& said I must dance. Showed me books with patterns
he’d kept as he kept little else. Stranger strengths.
We’d study. I’d imitate. He shook his head. I’d try again.
The grounds for the dance’d be raked every evening,
the stones set in place. I’d come before eating.
Some water, a gown, but me nude. Alone, all quiet,
I’d let the waking dream come, move my feet,
shift my body to sing its pictures & noise.
Only companion the morning’s movement into light.
The rocks would stray from my feet, the raked
sands scatter. By when the others joined,
the grounds would compose my song & message.
They would smile, pretty & clothed, I would let them.
Not my friends, just other pretty trinkets of the court.
My father the King liked the contrast. Had his choice.
Only one understood, knew as we did.
Friend sister rival, she smiled & danced for noone.
You built these grounds, now savaged by kind time
& human neglect, & let me lure you a true love
by the collision of the magic in my dawn’s
erupted dream & the girl who knew no patterns in the stones.
******
She Visits the Castle
When last I saw you, brother, you were in
this doorway, on your way to the games,
convinced in that sweet, soft, thorough way
of yours that you’d win. The pretty trinkets
of the court admired your shoulders & thighs.
I worried as always about your limp.
It happened when you were young & sick,
& I don’t know how, but thereafter you grew
quickly, so graceful, & slightly off. You treated me
tender, indulged me brush your hair, sometimes
carry your bag to the sports fields. You excelled.
The limp came & went, an obsession of some seasons.
You mentioned my dreams that last time
all of us gathered here. The Queen tightly
crated in her several best colors, new haughty scraps.
The King my father with the sweet demon’s glint
in his eyes, her spread sleeping in a private chamber.
Even the Architect, who saw the limp too.
“Will you tell them all goodbye for me?”
you whispered as we embraced. No louder
than a breathy thought. I nodded. I knew
I wouldn’t see you again by daylight, though
I wondered about other hours. It was the last time
we all stood together. You sprinted alone to the boats.
The Castle is returning to field, perhaps even
forest one day, the one which covered most of
this Island long ago. Many stones fallen,
rooms collapsed, I climb stairs half-gone
& think: this is truer life than all those
anniversaries of the Crown & its stolen secrets.
Finally, to my room, at least the chamber
that held it. There’s little of me here,
even less than ago. I lay out my bed roll,
my brush, my totems, my knife. I’ll sleep,
finally, but likely not dream. The place in the wall,
its tunnels, its caves, won’t open again, no matter my tears.
******
She Passes by The Tangled Gate
A few steps at dawn on the dancing grounds, just a few
for now, to see how it feels. Strange is a meager word.
My blue bag is waiting, & the next place to see.
Places, really. What remains of the Tangled Gate
now, the one in my sweetest of childly dreams, &
the one you, Architect, would not let me pass.
Find you in there? Time’s hand has been no less kind,
human neglect again her partner. Just a few steps in,
the great Fountain that greets all, insists a drink,
looks half-swiped down by the years. Not just a drink
but a decision: left or right? A crux to distinct
paths, each a phantom hand, reaching, encouraging.
And yet the Gate itself is not fallen, little rusted,
a stubborn collaborator in the matter of its passage.
And its small legend still clear, a lily’s glow:
”For those lost.” I read it, & read it again,
as though my pout or my wink or what mind
I’ve gathered to me could loose its first riddle.
For those lost. Someone read those words
to me the first time I saw them. In my chamber
through the hole in the wall in my dreams,
yes, it was strange. Yes, I was small. Yes,
it was real like important & beautiful things
in this world are real. Yes, this belief wears
& wearies in my mind. Yes, it’s why I’ve returned.
And yes, to find you through the Tangled Gate,
Architect. For minutes & then more of them
I stand here stupid with griefs, where
I come from, far from home. I try to remember,
claw into my heart for its old wounds & stars.
The cold sky bends me lower, & I let. I release.
I remember one thing, small, but a place
to put my steps. Deep in the Tangled Gate,
we faced a cave, a featureless maw,
the Beast just two more roars & a crash
away. My friend smiled, took my hand, said to me:
”No way out but through,” & we went. We went.
******
She See the Tower, Again Trebles in Time
Was the King my father who first brought me
here, to meet the Architect, see his chambers.
I felt tree, I saw Tower, I dreamed star craft.
Are there still rooms along those impossible stairs?
Are the faces in the stones still clear, some crying out
yet some smiling? Some not men at all.
They set me on a stool before a spyglass too heavy
for me to move. That day I saw what I’d see
again in dreams, the innards of the Tangled Gate,
its branching roots, its shadowed-out mysteries.
And movement in there? I looked & looked,
not yet knowing what thing this was.
A noise behind me in these half-lit chambers,
I turn. A branch pokes up through the roof,
behold a patch of speeding stars. I open my mouth
but another cries out. The King my father
is angry, waving off the Architect & his plea.
They are long words, somehow clung to bark & earth.
We leave, I am roughly carried, the stairs
pass more like dropping straight into water.
I do not return for years, am told not to,
not just by the King my father who forbids
me nothing otherwise. Those I love in
the caves & tunnels behind my chamber wall:
They say I treble in time. See was, is, &
to-be at once. Our last banquet, every kind
present to honor my birthday. I talk of the Tower,
of other dreams than these with them.
Hundreds of noses raise & sniff. Silence.
I’ve decided. Or maybe my new woman’s blood has.
They forbid me return, my love for them
their only power to protect me. I shake
my head, I go. Fear all of this for days
until I am standing again in this place,
looking up. I will move your spy glass now, Architect.
I’m ready to ascend your tree, your Tower, your star craft.
******
The Architect Remembers the Boy
They say the boy’s waxy wings melted &
betrayed him when he too neared the sun.
They say the boy was my son. They say
the boy was an ordinary boy. They say
The Tangled Gate is just a maze-prison
with a hungry Beast-bastard within.
He was hungry when I found him, terrified
of me, neither Beast nor boy. I fed him
from my bag, he calmed, he studied its color,
the sky’s, though I thought him half-blind.
We talked by touch & I learned it was not
The Tangled Gate which he feared, but the voices.
They spoke in words but he received them
as clicks & noises he could not run from.
We listened together, & he understood,
& he smiled. Yes. They had brought me to him
& now we would leave. Eventually, for him,
the Island itself too. This wasn’t his home.
The voices led us from the Gate &
I taught him the human tongue. He lived
with me in the Tower, & I schooled him,
though not in the dull samely histories of
men’s wars & gods. I taught him how to let
& release to those voices. Steer through many worlds.
And other ways to reach The Tangled Gate.
A day too soon & it was time for us to go there
again. The King prepared to take the mainland,
& he commanded every boy & man clapped in steel.
Though this boy could have fought & ended the war
for either side himself, we left before dawn.
We flew together many places that day,
I showed him the beautiful world of trees,
& mountains, the many seas, even the works
of men. Many pointed, later made statues
& songs. When the sun approached its fiercest hour,
I signaled to him to rise & to rise.
There were feathers & waxy drops all around me
for a moment. He touched my mind & said goodbye.
I dreamed for years of his final plunge,
perfect sexless body. All I had taught him,
what he would learn. They say this boy was my son.
But men still clap for war, & say many foolish things.
******
The Architect Watches from His Tower
It’s really true men once grew from
spasm & spit, from the awkward twist
of torsos, the fevered collide of breast
& pelvis, suddenly the prick a catalytic
bomb, suddenly the cunt to which sought
& resisted & sought for its planting ground.
How did we finally stop? Was it the wisdom
desperation contrives with a conceding cry?
I don’t know, nor why I am here among
these men. Negotiating for other outcomes.
I was sent to serve a King whose lusts
are boring & easily filled. A bed & a torso.
Where she comes from, suddenly, I am aware.
She is no daughter of this King. Her dreams
are not dreams by any reckoning. Brought
to the Island, kept to her chambers,
her singing to rags & flower vases, she finds
the Gate immediately. She enters.
Night after night, I watch her dreams
from my chamber, watch her enter
the Gate deeper & deeper, no maps,
not the tools I have for its feistier,
slipperier places. She makes within &
the Gate responds, smooths & opens to her.
I don’t intend for her to meet me but
when her brother’s dead body is returned,
we honor him as one. Though I alone
know the boy’s intent was not victory
in games but peace making, I put on
my robes, share the chants & the ground breaking.
She spies me from among her grieving parents.
We exchange nothing, no nod, no smile,
but thereafter I haunt her Gate wanderings.
Like I was the answer to a question
she didn’t have, & now it consumes us both.
Across stars & centuries we will ask this question.
******
The Architect in Exile
I wake up in a dank tent to the noise
of departure. Recognized, not knowing
even my name, I nod inly & begin
to assemble my facts. We’d lost the last
key battle, & are going. Our enemies
are blood-close, the worst kind, but
are allowing us a war-less path to exile.
There are several hundred of us, though
there’d been many more. They are grim
but strangely not hardy. They are leaving
because the army is gone. Like a pretty head
with no body, unable to compensate, to be other
than a pretty head. The King makes them hurry.
When I enter his tent, he starts, wonders
why I am not gone to the Island.
My new life solidifies in that space,
I am here to survey & ready our new home.
I pack my bag, full of tools from a nameless
future, & arrive before nightfall.
When I see the Gate, I nod, unhappy.
The time beyond time is crumbling back
through these centuries, it makes no sense,
but here I am again, here is the Gate,
I am trudging through summer mud
toward what I know I will find.
In myths, the Tower is portrayed as
my prison, where the King kept me
in punishment & service. This is a hole
in the story, & the truth is absent
within its absence. It is no prison
but my home in every place & time.
I do not serve the King but he wants something
from me. I am his necromancer &
he believes the Gate will prove his
best weapon. This greed gives me time
while I contrive a way to fuse the cracks.
I am tired of tools & travel. I wish
only for my tree revealed, a day & a night
without end. She will help me find
what I need. She will inherit my tools
as reward & join me in the Gate.
******
The Architect is Her Teacher, Her Hummingbird
I first appear to you in the Gate as an invitation
to believe. Your dreams of this place are still new,
a game you half-remember by morning, seeing
as you have been trained to see, that there is no hole
in your chamber’s wall. I invite you to accept two truths
about one thing. There isn’t a hole. There is.
You have a picture book, a simple telling
of the hummingbird story, he who gave men
music & taught them to sing. You breathe this book
through many days, memorize its few words
& many strange pictures. I see my chance
to twine with your path, & softly take it.
One spring day you return to your paints &
large sheets to find the hummingbird on
your page gone, as though never made.
Waking next morning you discover it flitting
upon your chamber wall, as though always.
In later days, moved again, the Queen’s half-wild garden.
You ask the King your father but his smile above
his maps is mirthless, a thing of abstract love.
You even ask your friends behind the wall
but they do not know what a hummingbird is.
Strangely, they do not care to try. As a child,
you nearly leave this strange mystery quickly as it came.
I let you but one. You are walking the path
in the Tangled Gate to the place you call
the Carnival Room. You are singing the hummingbird’s
song, about how one day mankind will remember
its first song again, & fly away. As you make
the last turn, I appear before you, set upon the air.
You gasp. You look. I am my question to you.
This is your test. You hold out your finger to me,
half-smiling. I accept & you walk along, no words,
just the potent of touch. As we both wake,
I am humming for you, & then we share this too.
My bedchamber is as dark as yours is plush
with light. We each nod, & know. You now twice believe.
******
The Architect’s Record of the Time Beyond Time
You found, you read: “The storms became constant, wordlessly violent; the daily life of men & markets, ideologies competing mostly benignly, churches vaguely explaining their fences & roofs to the cattle within, new seers smiling with fresh ancient visions of humanity waking & rising as one, was over.
“What remained for most was the leash & a stingy bowl at nightfall. Hope was a little more light in the day’s grey sky, less snaggling wind at night. Where possibility still lay, at least for a few, was far below ground, in the great darkened halls of the sleepers, thousands of them clicking song, fed by tubes & awake less than an hour a day.
“The men of science, magick, & spirit had joined with the men of Art to contrive a solution. What remained unfouled of the seas & mountains & forests had been blended into this work, not to save the world but undo it, find the place beyond the Dreaming, by scavenging through history for the clue all believed was there, the thread out of time.
“If this all sounds lunatic, or a beautiful plan but far too late, or you dubious wonder that such diverse men were able to work together even at the end, you are right, you have read well. The minds of men did not contrive this plan, but others whose own world had been lost. They had tried & failed to convince, to help, for centuries, & it wasn’t working now. More sleepers would wake up dead, or simply disappear.”
What you did not read is what I did not write in those pages. I came back not intending to return. You are the thread. You are the clue. The Tangled Gate will seal the world, close its cracks, & those back then will not live nor die. My Tower has snapped the link back to them. You are the chance I follow.
******
The Architect Sees Her, & Again
At first we dreamers traveled history like shadows.
There were few of us, drinking the foul potions
to cross beyond the Dreaming.
We scattered through times & lands,
& returned to report the details.
What we found was morass, not pattern.
The lives of men are governed as much by chance
as will. By blood’s strange inheritance,
& the way desires will twist & deepen & half-rabid
survive the years, by shell after shell.
Wars were fought over land, women, cankerous
want for power & control in a world that
buries or blows to breeze every large man &
his castle, every pauvre & his cup, every God-thing
& its statues & its followers & its very name.
More of us joined the first few sleepers,
& the chemicals got stronger. We slept more hours
of the day, surrendered lives & loves for this obsession.
We began to invade & maul history, but nothing above improved.
Powerful men built grander edifices over dead soil,
ranged greater seas of armies against each other,
queered mortal desperation into frenzied faiths.
We below were forgotten. Didn’t matter.
This is why I’ve chosen not to return,
to meet you at the Fountain near the entrance
to the Tangled Gate. I see you approach
& keep my cover until you enter. You still carry
the blue bag I gave you. You never change
through the centuries. I still shudder as
you hesitate, kick the golden leaves at your feet.
Your breathing quicks, mine does too, & you enter.
******
The Queen & Her Beast
There are forces in this world no man taps,
no man harnesses, no man controls.
Yet mankind, a living thing, roots from these
forces, the plays & persecutions of its history
bides within their grasp, & though invitations
to study their roots, grasp their trunks,
set lightly upon their leaves to read the pages
better, are offered to each & all, few wake
from these, bray wildly for this more satisfying
food, & make for the boundaries.
I watched the young Queen often. Stolen like a treasure,
by agreement, from her kin’s palace in the sun,
married off to the King to maintain a peaceful war,
she moved quietly within the halls of his anguish
for his dead wife. Unnoticed that she imported
her seers & witchly craftswomen from back home,
& these piddlers in magickal currents that
hardly knew them extant aided her to mesmer
the royal bed, conjure in his eyes, to his touch,
the dead woman’s lips & breasts, fingers & hips.
I watched her as she came night after night
to the beach, to hidden spy the chained cows
cry in fear & hunger for their starry fields,
instead lures for powers from the seas,
victims of men’s belief that blood’s only choice
is spending or spilling.
When I galloped from the waves, I snapped
the links & bid them away. She trembled
too, but did not move. I approached her, huffing
& snarling. Reached in, crumpled her mask,
calmed her down deep. I showed her unfurled
power that night, sang for her scraps of
the first songs, drew her beat & breath
far from that nocturnal beach, its celestial
foolishness above, speckled riddles to mock
those wide-eyed with arrogance.
We crafted a pact, a new truth that would
birth me into her world. She agreed to the lie
that we mated, & an unholy thing emerged,
a shame to be caged, & slaved to new
bloodspill. She even commanded her tinker
build her a sex-box to receive me. In return,
as we twined, I lit her every cavern with knowing,
loosened men’s harness upon her heart,
revealed its better stars, its fenceless limits.
******
The One Woods & Its Beast
There is a maw to the heart of the world
& from it I emerge. But you will find it
everywhere there is a far edge, a man,
an idea, a shattering storm. The world
is no more still than any of its creatures,
its music the transformation none will resist.
This morning is peaceful, I stay near
my best-known oaks. I think about where
I’ve been, where I am now, I am nearing,
I am trembling to quiet. Later there is feeding
all around me, a sharper-tongued wind,
the beautiful violence of mating. Far edges.
Close my eyes & I am the near-blind man,
my remaining sight still fluttering with
lilac & lily, moving with their scented light,
scratching up a spark by glint & petal,
behold my colored silhouettes shaped like a God-thing.
Open my eyes & I am the scrawny prick-hard
singer, finding my music beneath the night’s
sweeping skirts, insisting the oldest idols
totter forward & people my lyrics,
grind bloodless hips new with the next hour’s
unspent semen, its high crackling juice.
Close again & now the tall professor, behold
my sepia-washed pictures, their hard press
at your jaw & shoulders to justify now
your own sanity, resist this years-long game--
Again & now the dark man kneeling
with my horn & shredding time--
The tides, the quakes, the rosebuds in
her cheeks signaling blushing new love
or how her sickness consumes--
I am quiet this morning near my oaks,
near the beating, breathing maw & yet--
I would warn you from the far edges inly
& others bitter far, but hope you do not listen,
grow your berries over the cliff, move your herd
before the snows intercede, drink that potion
& watch your fingers make the world glow--
I would warn you find the far edges or
bray through your bars alway, grasp them
harder, love them better--little wonder what
happens to those who cry out--& climb through--
I would say nothing & let you be as I am
merely servant to the world, my task not
to preach but to rankle, stir the world’s power
elsewise, give history an uncertain path,
so no way to grasp what’s occurring,
& no way to know how it ends.
******
World’s Wish & Its Beast
There’ve been times, moments, places
I’ve relaxed, & begun to believe. Winter lights
on a long boulevard, a hidden shade of
cool salmon over low hills. Even battlefields,
yes, on moonless nights. Close to the dying,
or dying myself again.
In memories I find it & would show it all
around if I could. We danced that courtyard
through the night before you left, & you
showed me your whys, what rotting,
what still pink. Or the flex of an old king’s
fist, whatever kind of beast, the ways
power leaves, gently till abrupt. We runts
remain of the One Woods & men call us
great, urge several link arms around
one of our trunks for a picture.
Or a thing not a memory, because it didn’t
quite occur. The excitement of moving bodies
swathed in sweat & smoke. The drums now,
the words later, the way live eyes
sniff & listen. Among them I chase you
that night, I cohere, I wish to know.
Your eyes crackle with fear of want,
not mine but your own. You touch
my beard as though a pet. I tangle
your hair with my fingers, still wish to know.
Someone moves in the pile of corpses, sighs,
just a little, I hush him as though a night bird,
the wind.
There is what few kings age to understand.
The world is garden, or garbage, or cemetery,
by how you stride your days, how you command
me, your Beast, when a pretty, or a foe,
or something small you fear & would prefer crushed,
how we together bound in the wide wild field
of dreams as you lay there breathing,
& beating, & a thrash, & then still.
I remember the night, it was three, or a hundred.
You were one, or several, as was I.
We’d fought for kings we’d never meet, never touch,
& never know. We’d danced & I showed you
that boulevard, those trees, your smile, long & it lingered.
As we lived, so we died, there were memories,
more forgotten. It was a time for believing,
my maps, my uniform at first light,
the half-remembered lover in a photograph.
As we together walk down empty streets, still looking on, still looking back,
there is no final thing to know.
******
The Beast & His Partner
We walked the One Woods together in my
many dreams, you singing songs in your strange
own tongue, its clicks & noises, the way pink &
yellow & blue would burst from the trunks & bushes
around us. It is always dusk, when light blurs
& lingers, when a few stars peep out in the sky.
Then I wake. And you are far, as we agreed,
& I am silent again. You leave me signs of song
in scattered clearings, spears of your colors
struck into fallen logs. I read them
as they melt, sigils none other would know.
There is something you would have me do
that I hesitate. You believe I was once a man,
& you my partner. You believe we played too close
to the Eternals in our drive to control,
to shape, to break through their powers
& time itself. Those years for me obscure in shame.
But your songs begin to convince me,
& I wish you near again. The sacrifices
we’ll need to crack the maw will come soon.
They will not survive. They will fuel
the transformation. We will together
blow through the heart of the world.
My only doubt is the girl not a girl
who approaches again. I wonder if she
is a different way. I wonder if nobody
has to die. I wonder why I must choose.
I find your songs in more & more clearings.
I stand now where we first met deep
in the Tangled Gate so long ago, but
this is neither waking nor dream. I stand
here to call down the stars from the sky
& find among them a truth to hold & pursue.
I swap out handfuls, looking for the words
of light I need, crush & fold & block
their heat even unto themselves in
my relentless need. When they speak,
to guide my steps hereon, it is not men’s
tongue nor your spectral one. Their message
is clear: bind the girl, consume the dancers.
Break the maw & absorb its every
last dripping of power. She awaits.
******
The Beast & the Princess
You first came in lilies & soft morning sunlight.
You first came in the puzzles & formulas men call dreams.
I sniffed you, twice, but did not know if to call you friend.
You saw me & you jerked a bit. And you smiled.
And yet you were careful. And yet careful
had not been in your nature till you saw me.
I sat near you, & tried to look like a man
& tried to speak like a man, but you shook your head
no, no bother, in this Woods there is truth.
We played a game that morning, tap the air
& loose its notes, collect the notes & shape a thing.
Gently blow & lure its colors. Nod, exchange.
Last round you conjured a small white bunny,
pink nose, mesmering eyes, tranquil but
intent expression. I held it, felt its pulse.
You shook your head when I made to clap
hands, giving the creature back to the air,
as was common. Your smile bid me keep.
Did we meet again? Several times? Then fewer?
Then all I had of you was the white bunny,
who would sniff twice & be gone for days.
Soon I only had soft mornings trying to remember
the field where we met & played our game.
Where I did not need to conjure as man to please
your company.
You do not return in dreams this time &
I’ve long not shaped like men. I’ve long not
shaped & played the air for games.
I . . . hope . . . yes, I hope you will understand.
That you will help me with what I need to do.
That you will join us as we clap out the rest.
******
The White Bunny & the Beast
The white bunny returns, sniffs twice,
& settles in my lap, as though I am a man,
as though I am a rare & trusted man.
We still together, we watch, the morning
is full of small movements & light sounds.
Her long ears rest on my arm, as though I have arms.
I begin to remember. I am a fist of men
by a map, I am a volcano burying all.
I am many fish on many decks,
breathing hard, breathing last.
I am paintings in castles & in closets.
The white bunny nudges me return.
We sleep. I dream like a man & yet.
The white bunny looks up at me
& I follow. Faster than any man’s legs,
holding a . . . white thread? Through oaks
whose leaves remain despite the winter light,
through places dark & unfinished in the Gate.
Now walking, but no longer a man’s form.
A girl’s slender carriage, wispy torso,
& the bunny is waiting near a hole in
the earth. Even though I am too large yet
we crawl through. A long long scrabble in the dark.
My thread gives out but I continue to follow.
We come to an ancient structure, burst
through a half-fallen wall, stand within.
Words in my head say: “The Carnival Room
is near.” I am afraid, I am not afraid.
Which is truer? My face in many reflections
is hard, soft, hers, his, its, nobody’s, all’s.
The bunny hops quickly, ears flashing, & I follow
on my girl’s light legs through rooms of
detritus & decay, at last to a room where we stop.
She looks up at me, raises her pink nose, & again,
& I enter. I hear cacophony, song. I see doors
mounted on walls, beckoning. A tunnel into
the darkness, where its long wheeled carriage
intends. Two yellow-skinned brothers observing
me, plucking stringless instruments, songs of laughter.
A tiny creature at my feet, black & white,
nattering at me in . . . click-clicks & noise-noises?
I am delighted, I wish to go. I look back but
the white bunny is gone. There is a black thread.
I follow the thread back, feeling the girl
in me recede, feeling larger & more helpless,
burst choking & breathless from the earth.
The return is swift, there is no adventure left.
I follow the black thread back to my seat
& rest with it in my hand, alone. I wake
& don’t look down. No thread, black or white.
No bunny. Something wishes to convince me
elsewise. Something would have me
save what I would destroy.
******
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=28469
Many Musics, Eighth Series
When did it matter most?
When I smiled at another & believed.
i. New Work
On high, where the mountains snowy knuckles
& the roads deep veins, the pressure lessens
& a hope elevates.
Chatter on the plane is what
some reck breathing for. If I disagree,
then nothing for it but to make
like those veins & new rush heart & mind.
******
ii. And Again
You were come new, & I had my gift
ready for you. But something, &
then something else. That smile,
something, something else. I chased,
again, a little, a little more. That smile,
something. It was only a dream,
that smile, you were come new, &
I had my gift for you. Something I kept.
******
iii. Myths Breathe—
These glaring beasts of night, still,
the softest touch in my breathing,
the hustles with new sun. I'll start
explaining myself by simple numbers
when any of you can nod & smile &
finally account for the remain.
******
iv. Spring Thaw
Winter dawns in that strange youth,
tossing newspapers at locked suburban
doors, talking myself through inner worlds
finer than the day to come. A pretty girl,
a pen in hand, even the simple gesture
of a smile & a handshake. Big, simple,
inner worlds I did not yet know how
to conjure. I’d come home, fingers & limbs
numb, & the sharp yips of the thaw.
Thaws hurt, then & now, & bigger
inner worlds still call to be made.
******
v. Sobornost [After Herzog]
In his cage, he remembers. The scent of unknown
flowers, chemicals really, the wind from
the window he’d quickly come through. Two
quick breaths, then his, the gentleness
he crushed, but then let go a little. Maybe
it was God’s urge, he ignored the chemicals.
In her room she smokes. There is music
on the radio, too soft for lyrics, as she likes.
She sees stars through the ceiling, always
has since, even more now. She’s learned
new ways to laugh too, less personal,
more forgiving for the many hands striking
empty air, & again, & again, & somehow yet
call this a life.
******
vi. Render
New work seems best to root from
the rest, the stars themselves tools
to remind of that banking melody,
day the old enemy for reasons too
familiar to sum, night the welcoming
thighs, the encouraging beat, smiling
hurried breath, & so on. And yet.
And yet. There is that older than
my paths & songs, roots dangling for
a hold. There are liners in those skies
tonight, tomorrow, beckoning for a ride,
maybe just for a song. There’s sexy
glare in the gratings in the ground,
& three possibles for any smart denial.
New work is bedded through each new
hour, & a willing to still feel leaning
way over the edge, a willing, a hunger,
a slave to it maybe, to what
great notes can be found in that
next moment of balance between
possible fall, & wild ascent.
******
vii. Just Play Through— [After Burke]
If I can see also ligaments & light
where I now see just tits & ass,
If I can feel the man’s love of his
personal savior as much as I love
my pen & a tree to write near,
If I can embrace to hold my heart’s
urging truth that the vastness of any soul
is on the far side of coin & office,
If I can act with humor, with doubt,
with hope, keeping beat & breath,
If I can learn better to give it &
take it, & accept the brutalest beauties
of this world,
Perhaps I can live long & come to my end
with an easy smile like to your own.
******
viii. Temple of Dreams
Found in a clearing shaped like a temple
in full moonlight, potent without
flesh nor bones, a place, a portal,
a tool, a salve, recked ancient by men
yet dreams do not bide by miles or hours.
I wonder over this as I marvel too
that the Universe on luckier nights
seems most like sugar sprayed wildly
across a darkling canvas. At my best,
I think there’s space enough for metaphor,
science, for every slight & unsure passage through.
******
ix. That Slender Myth
Tonight, again, I know nothing.
I am nobody. Singing to manifest,
crawling the dust. Recking the web.
Praying the hours hit the same vein
that preacher does tonight, spittle
& fists, sucking the moving sidewalk’s
attention to his gesture & word,
the word, next word, he’ll hustle
another to his unhappy explanation
by night’s end, loose eyes from
that slight skirt, those misshapen green
leaves, irrelevant stars above,
yes. “Only suffering defines this human
dimension. Suffering & submission &
the relief of letting another direct
your path hereon.” I know nothing.
I am nobody. I cannot say you
are wrong yet I will not sing your song.
What lights my days staggers me with
wild, uncertain music, & what caterwauls
my dreams sexes my mind even better
with the possibles here & hereon.
******
x. From a Dream
And again I’m in the classroom
And again that old bookstore job
And again this courtyard, this black pen,
Which are dreams, which to keep?
And the few meals remembered from years
And the click-clicking chess-clocks
And the faces that remain unknown
What else is passing by too?
And again it’s springtime, mercy’s cool air
And again I watch the homeless man prowl
And again, & still, I know nothing
but still add to the noise
I’d walk home tonight, from this courtyard,
with each & every one of you, if you
could breach my dreams at last, & land inside my skin.
******
xi. Two Men
There are only two men.
One sells the fire. One blazes.
Will you purchase your days with one
or learn how the other burns?
******
xii. The Red Bag
When the glaring lights have left
When the music has slowed to smoke
Where there is sniff of good blood & then no more
When touch brittles maybe to break
When best taste is old & cold, hurts
The red bag, doorway, back to dreams
The red bag, the path, come
The red bag, come, trust, come here.
******
xiii. Tomorrow’s News
When the ships overhead descend,
if they were to slave, use the world
as crops, as men do now, but badly,
would it take no more than a flash
of glowing wings, a hard bark about
judgment & punishment, to subdue
resistance & fear to submission? Who
would challenge God’s arrived minions
but some of the children, a handful of the freaks,
& a scattering too few to whelm
the millions well-raised for the lash
& unexplained condemn from the skies?
******
xiv. Emandia
I fell asleep, sad again, & looking far
into the darkness I could see the cankerous
shaft in me, its veins twisting maybe deep
as blood, oh yes, could see how it bore
through, then, the most lost, secret
sweet of thens, barely a seed with limbs,
unaware my unspent life, to now,
taking in all it could, a blind, unhappy,
frenzied mortal feeding, consuming
& yet not all, for there was something else,
an opposite, what?
Another shaft, of music, culminating music,
a shaft of forest breezes, ocean waves,
leaves, curling inward, open hands, even
closed ones, the coming harmonies of
mutual gain & get, putting on another’s
dream to understand, the pink & purple
& green colors of want, & I wished, seeing
both plain now, to near the one & dismiss
the other. But I woke this morning
with both still. Knowledge of the canker
does not free, nor does the music diminish.
Each feeds me still, of each other, &
the play is mine to let the canker
thrive or follow, yes, I am nobody,
yes, I am nothing, yes, I still sing.
Become again, anew, the wild violet shaft
crying, thrusting inexorably into the
twining grasp of this great gaping universe.
******
xv. Claude Monet
I wish I knew you, Claude Monet,
as your teachers did, & as you
knew your colors. How many cities knew
you too, as you painted their churches & canals,
Claude Monet, I wish I knew you as a friend,
to sit & watch the day with,
know your rustling breath, study your
beautiful hands. I wish I knew you,
Claude Monet, as your dreams which recurred,
as the canvasses you stretched, your paints,
your brushes. I wish I’d been a wheatstack
or a water lily you studied for hours to figure,
to find where eye & colors & the movement
of hand might coalesce now, & forever.
I wish I had known you, Claude Monet,
as something you loved enough to keep.
******
xvi. Carry Me Back
Later there was a film about her,
the dead girl traveling north where
all comes from, it had gotten easier
since she’d been dead, the pressures
were fewer from body & clan, & the scene
that really convinced me was when
she’d made it to the shore & it’s snowing,
big chunks of snow, like cottage cheese
or something, & she begins to disassemble
herself to understand, at first
the pleasure of watching her vague
garments reveal a slender torso,
pleasing breasts, soft ass, even shaved pussy,
but then she uncouples them from
herself, they had come later after all,
& the skin softer as she news & undoes,
her blood unremembering its hungers & imperatives,
oh yes, & the glisten of early songs,
first songs, it comes apart easier around her,
as the cottage cheese snow diminishes,
& she is left just with the wish
to understand before she even knows why.
******
xvii. Atop Mt. Cloudy Day
You reach the top or end of
something & all there is
is to look down or back.
******
xviii. After a Time
[F.B., “Hot Air Ballooning Off Normandy,” oil on plywood, 20th cent.]
When you start losing your legs,
the world seems more ferociously moving,
& you find yourself looking up,
more & more, for an offer of wide wings,
a soft ride in a striped air balloon, or
maybe that long swim to the bottom
finally coming due.
******
xix. Manneport near Etratat
The plaque to Monet’s paintings tells of
this great rocky gate but another view
says that it is a leg taking a long step into
the sea, toward something new, greet
the far landless depths, learn some things,
remember others, great rocks dream too,
& the sea will enjoy the visit, tales from
new company, yes, I think it’s time
everybody saw this too & accepted tis
a journey begun, more steps to come,
& at the stateliest of gaits.
******
xx. Homer’s “Weather Beaten,” 1894
“For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
—Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things,” 1969.
I wish to crash with your waves,
not against them, not ignore them
for not being man-shaped or talking like men.
I wish to uncouple from my simple ideas
of dawn & dusk, as though light disappears
entirely, feel like the sky my colors changing,
wish to disintegrate like driftwood,
without woe or metaphor, & eventually
spread what I hark out to every point
of the globe, wet & dry, feel every pulse,
every breathing, now a fiber knowing
its weaving, no longer harried or hanging on
because I know everything needs me too
& is seeking to keep me my place.
******
xxi. The Tangled Gate [Sketch #1]
Remember some things. This is the lost purpose
or forgotten, obscured, of the tangled gate.
You will enter as a group, pretty dancers
offered as a king’s sacrifice, but I know
what you will find. Each of you will arrive
but alone, but only by heeding me in this.
Through the tangled gate, neither left nor right,
on & on & on, now into the great mouth,
the great beastly mouth. On in, one by one,
heed me in this. On in.
******
xxii. The Tangled Gate [Sketch #2]
I watch you roaming the tangled gate,
& you try to understand, where were
the dance steps I taught you? Which color
thread is the clue to which path?
You sniff & pause, & press your hands &
breath to the walls, those of clay &
other vines. You wish to know, to feel
your blood walk calmly the gate as though
through the stars themselves. Heart’s
deepest feeling the map to all
the worlds of creation. I watch you.
You sing, you talk softly. You move slowly,
you run, you stop. Nothing orchestrates
you, Ariadne, not you nor the stars themselves.
I watch you, note by note, glance, glare,
green leaves blow places you don’t know
within, where lead & know & how let off,
& the gate untangles past all ceasings of cease.
******
xxiii. The Tangled Gate [Sketch #3]
You wonder who let the elixir in,
& you look around for a face or
office of intent, look back, far back,
now far on, beyond your station,
the stars in your night skies.
You wonder who let the elixir in,
& marvel a little at how time & space,
how foolish, how funny, now let it
some more, look far, look back,
beyond your station, your roots, your dreams.
You wonder who let the elixir in,
as though the plan, its masters,
their secret book, its language
to master & teach, stare harder into
the fire, grow blinder, listen till you see.
You wonder who let the elixir in
as you wonder on want & what will delight
perpetually a moment’s sugared laughing,
what will calm the many tongues & their guns,
oh tell how, sing why, by the beg, by the pray,
you wonder who let the elixir in when
look, your hand is on the tap & see it flow.
******
xxiv. The Tangled Gate [Sketch #4]
We sit together, you & I, & at first
our breathing distrusts, because
this room isn’t big enough & it has
no windows. But our hearts are listening
too, looking for the music even as we
still tangle in tongues. They beat,
there is the beginnings of music,
there is silence, how music continues.
We sit together, you & I, & this is
ten thousand years ago & this is tonight
& this is when the earth has blown all to light.
This room isn’t big enough but here
we are & the music between us has begun.
You call me ugly & I return yours with
a nod, & we both start laughing.
This is how I remember those days best.
We sit together, you & I, & you are
gone some years now, & your laughter
remains in my mind. And this room still isn’t
big but I can see now the possibilities
of windows. Make them with fists,
or maybe open hands. Every day’s deciding.
******
The Tangled Gate
(for JBIII)
She Returns to the Island
Remember some things. It’s what put me
in this small boat on this great
blood-remembering sea in this melancholic
month of the year, near too cold to sail.
I’ve left the Pensionne as though not to return,
but look at that blue bag. That’s all.
Remember some things. And what choice?
You neared me in my dreams, nearer than
any man had, at least meaningfully.
You neared, you lured, you made off.
“The Tangled Gate. Find me through the
Tangled Gate. Will you choose? Will you?”
It is hard sailing to get to the Island.
This boat won’t get me there, I can’t make
my friend risk his livelihood. I’ll swim,
despite his looks, his friend’s wish
to protect me somehow. The Pensionne had
recovered him too. But I am prepared.
I’ll swim. I haven’t in years, in the sea,
but it’s like I’m more fish than girl.
My bag is sealed, hauls from my waist,
I wave a thank you at him in mid-flight
to the water. These blood-remembering
waters took too much from me to ask more.
So I thought. Architect, I thought you &
your prick-addled son both swallowed in
its deep. I thought I lost you to worse
than your uncertainty, your willingness
to take me only with your eyes. No,
it seems. You survived, you live, so say my dreams.
The shore is rocky, no beach where I half-
collapse breathless. The sea lets me leave
but slow, as though something more,
something else. The grey-etched skies, too,
prod me restless, go. Return. Remember some things,
something’s ticking harder, little to do with time.
******
She Remembers the Queen
Working my way along the rocks
I remember the Queen, my father’s
jealous wife, with her herbs for fidelity
& her witchly cult’s screeching songs on
full moon nights. Was this sparkling foamy
beach where my own path began to begin?
The story was foolish but nobody would say
otherwise. The King & his reckless plays with
the Eternals, gamblings with one & another
for bits of power. Agrees to slay the magical
white bull in tribute, then switches out
another. Fool an eternal? Some don’t learn.
Fool an eternal? Feel an enraged fist. Now
see the mesmered Queen sneaking off by night,
rouged & primped, a servant carrying her
sex box. I followed by shadow, I watched,
the crashing waters, the bull’s wet roar,
the beguiled woman’s ass fit high for cracking.
Now gorged with her punishment, now
unseen for weeks, she called me to her
rooms, she touched my hair, my new breasts,
lied & called me beloved daughter.
I waited at the very edge of her bed, ticking,
naming & counting constellations in my mind.
“Don’t lead with your heart, child,
it will betray you,” she growled.
“How did you cause this? What was your
wrong?” She smiled, a woman handsome
like a man. “When they near you, child,
hooked by your luring blood, do what I didn’t.”
Silence. Ticking. Counting. “Sniff.” “Sniff?”
Silence again. Breathing more complex than
it ought. I should have felt something, or
at least these years later. I remember the advice,
& think only the stupid woman learned one thing to say.
I remember her dragging her sex box home before light.
******
She Visits the Dancing Grounds
Eventually to climb, the Castle on its tall hill,
my father the King & his spy-glass to the seas,
his insomniac patrols in the weaker hours of the night.
He’d say, when I was small, “They’re all out there.”
Always looking high, in love with night’s shiny stones,
the musical patterns of gulls in flight, sleepless too, I’d ask: “Who?”
“Where we come from, the ones who would take all
this. Our heritage & home.” I looked hard toward
the star-speckled horizon, seeing the dark waves only
in my mind. Answered his fears with my only powers,
touch & kiss & the breath of few words. Embraced,
sighing, he’d say: “There are other weapons, stranger strengths.”
I come now to what he built me later, a remain
of those years. He knew I moved quick like
my white bunny, & light like my many butterflies,
& said I must dance. Showed me books with patterns
he’d kept as he kept little else. Stranger strengths.
We’d study. I’d imitate. He shook his head. I’d try again.
The grounds for the dance’d be raked every evening,
the stones set in place. I’d come before eating.
Some water, a gown, but me nude. Alone, all quiet,
I’d let the waking dream come, move my feet,
shift my body to sing its pictures & noise.
Only companion the morning’s movement into light.
The rocks would stray from my feet, the raked
sands scatter. By when the others joined,
the grounds would compose my song & message.
They would smile, pretty & clothed, I would let them.
Not my friends, just other pretty trinkets of the court.
My father the King liked the contrast. Had his choice.
Only one understood, knew as we did.
Friend sister rival, she smiled & danced for noone.
You built these grounds, now savaged by kind time
& human neglect, & let me lure you a true love
by the collision of the magic in my dawn’s
erupted dream & the girl who knew no patterns in the stones.
******
She Visits the Castle
When last I saw you, brother, you were in
this doorway, on your way to the games,
convinced in that sweet, soft, thorough way
of yours that you’d win. The pretty trinkets
of the court admired your shoulders & thighs.
I worried as always about your limp.
It happened when you were young & sick,
& I don’t know how, but thereafter you grew
quickly, so graceful, & slightly off. You treated me
tender, indulged me brush your hair, sometimes
carry your bag to the sports fields. You excelled.
The limp came & went, an obsession of some seasons.
You mentioned my dreams that last time
all of us gathered here. The Queen tightly
crated in her several best colors, new haughty scraps.
The King my father with the sweet demon’s glint
in his eyes, her spread sleeping in a private chamber.
Even the Architect, who saw the limp too.
“Will you tell them all goodbye for me?”
you whispered as we embraced. No louder
than a breathy thought. I nodded. I knew
I wouldn’t see you again by daylight, though
I wondered about other hours. It was the last time
we all stood together. You sprinted alone to the boats.
The Castle is returning to field, perhaps even
forest one day, the one which covered most of
this Island long ago. Many stones fallen,
rooms collapsed, I climb stairs half-gone
& think: this is truer life than all those
anniversaries of the Crown & its stolen secrets.
Finally, to my room, at least the chamber
that held it. There’s little of me here,
even less than ago. I lay out my bed roll,
my brush, my totems, my knife. I’ll sleep,
finally, but likely not dream. The place in the wall,
its tunnels, its caves, won’t open again, no matter my tears.
******
She Passes by The Tangled Gate
A few steps at dawn on the dancing grounds, just a few
for now, to see how it feels. Strange is a meager word.
My blue bag is waiting, & the next place to see.
Places, really. What remains of the Tangled Gate
now, the one in my sweetest of childly dreams, &
the one you, Architect, would not let me pass.
Find you in there? Time’s hand has been no less kind,
human neglect again her partner. Just a few steps in,
the great Fountain that greets all, insists a drink,
looks half-swiped down by the years. Not just a drink
but a decision: left or right? A crux to distinct
paths, each a phantom hand, reaching, encouraging.
And yet the Gate itself is not fallen, little rusted,
a stubborn collaborator in the matter of its passage.
And its small legend still clear, a lily’s glow:
”For those lost.” I read it, & read it again,
as though my pout or my wink or what mind
I’ve gathered to me could loose its first riddle.
For those lost. Someone read those words
to me the first time I saw them. In my chamber
through the hole in the wall in my dreams,
yes, it was strange. Yes, I was small. Yes,
it was real like important & beautiful things
in this world are real. Yes, this belief wears
& wearies in my mind. Yes, it’s why I’ve returned.
And yes, to find you through the Tangled Gate,
Architect. For minutes & then more of them
I stand here stupid with griefs, where
I come from, far from home. I try to remember,
claw into my heart for its old wounds & stars.
The cold sky bends me lower, & I let. I release.
I remember one thing, small, but a place
to put my steps. Deep in the Tangled Gate,
we faced a cave, a featureless maw,
the Beast just two more roars & a crash
away. My friend smiled, took my hand, said to me:
”No way out but through,” & we went. We went.
******
She See the Tower, Again Trebles in Time
Was the King my father who first brought me
here, to meet the Architect, see his chambers.
I felt tree, I saw Tower, I dreamed star craft.
Are there still rooms along those impossible stairs?
Are the faces in the stones still clear, some crying out
yet some smiling? Some not men at all.
They set me on a stool before a spyglass too heavy
for me to move. That day I saw what I’d see
again in dreams, the innards of the Tangled Gate,
its branching roots, its shadowed-out mysteries.
And movement in there? I looked & looked,
not yet knowing what thing this was.
A noise behind me in these half-lit chambers,
I turn. A branch pokes up through the roof,
behold a patch of speeding stars. I open my mouth
but another cries out. The King my father
is angry, waving off the Architect & his plea.
They are long words, somehow clung to bark & earth.
We leave, I am roughly carried, the stairs
pass more like dropping straight into water.
I do not return for years, am told not to,
not just by the King my father who forbids
me nothing otherwise. Those I love in
the caves & tunnels behind my chamber wall:
They say I treble in time. See was, is, &
to-be at once. Our last banquet, every kind
present to honor my birthday. I talk of the Tower,
of other dreams than these with them.
Hundreds of noses raise & sniff. Silence.
I’ve decided. Or maybe my new woman’s blood has.
They forbid me return, my love for them
their only power to protect me. I shake
my head, I go. Fear all of this for days
until I am standing again in this place,
looking up. I will move your spy glass now, Architect.
I’m ready to ascend your tree, your Tower, your star craft.
******
The Architect Remembers the Boy
They say the boy’s waxy wings melted &
betrayed him when he too neared the sun.
They say the boy was my son. They say
the boy was an ordinary boy. They say
The Tangled Gate is just a maze-prison
with a hungry Beast-bastard within.
He was hungry when I found him, terrified
of me, neither Beast nor boy. I fed him
from my bag, he calmed, he studied its color,
the sky’s, though I thought him half-blind.
We talked by touch & I learned it was not
The Tangled Gate which he feared, but the voices.
They spoke in words but he received them
as clicks & noises he could not run from.
We listened together, & he understood,
& he smiled. Yes. They had brought me to him
& now we would leave. Eventually, for him,
the Island itself too. This wasn’t his home.
The voices led us from the Gate &
I taught him the human tongue. He lived
with me in the Tower, & I schooled him,
though not in the dull samely histories of
men’s wars & gods. I taught him how to let
& release to those voices. Steer through many worlds.
And other ways to reach The Tangled Gate.
A day too soon & it was time for us to go there
again. The King prepared to take the mainland,
& he commanded every boy & man clapped in steel.
Though this boy could have fought & ended the war
for either side himself, we left before dawn.
We flew together many places that day,
I showed him the beautiful world of trees,
& mountains, the many seas, even the works
of men. Many pointed, later made statues
& songs. When the sun approached its fiercest hour,
I signaled to him to rise & to rise.
There were feathers & waxy drops all around me
for a moment. He touched my mind & said goodbye.
I dreamed for years of his final plunge,
perfect sexless body. All I had taught him,
what he would learn. They say this boy was my son.
But men still clap for war, & say many foolish things.
******
The Architect Watches from His Tower
It’s really true men once grew from
spasm & spit, from the awkward twist
of torsos, the fevered collide of breast
& pelvis, suddenly the prick a catalytic
bomb, suddenly the cunt to which sought
& resisted & sought for its planting ground.
How did we finally stop? Was it the wisdom
desperation contrives with a conceding cry?
I don’t know, nor why I am here among
these men. Negotiating for other outcomes.
I was sent to serve a King whose lusts
are boring & easily filled. A bed & a torso.
Where she comes from, suddenly, I am aware.
She is no daughter of this King. Her dreams
are not dreams by any reckoning. Brought
to the Island, kept to her chambers,
her singing to rags & flower vases, she finds
the Gate immediately. She enters.
Night after night, I watch her dreams
from my chamber, watch her enter
the Gate deeper & deeper, no maps,
not the tools I have for its feistier,
slipperier places. She makes within &
the Gate responds, smooths & opens to her.
I don’t intend for her to meet me but
when her brother’s dead body is returned,
we honor him as one. Though I alone
know the boy’s intent was not victory
in games but peace making, I put on
my robes, share the chants & the ground breaking.
She spies me from among her grieving parents.
We exchange nothing, no nod, no smile,
but thereafter I haunt her Gate wanderings.
Like I was the answer to a question
she didn’t have, & now it consumes us both.
Across stars & centuries we will ask this question.
******
The Architect in Exile
I wake up in a dank tent to the noise
of departure. Recognized, not knowing
even my name, I nod inly & begin
to assemble my facts. We’d lost the last
key battle, & are going. Our enemies
are blood-close, the worst kind, but
are allowing us a war-less path to exile.
There are several hundred of us, though
there’d been many more. They are grim
but strangely not hardy. They are leaving
because the army is gone. Like a pretty head
with no body, unable to compensate, to be other
than a pretty head. The King makes them hurry.
When I enter his tent, he starts, wonders
why I am not gone to the Island.
My new life solidifies in that space,
I am here to survey & ready our new home.
I pack my bag, full of tools from a nameless
future, & arrive before nightfall.
When I see the Gate, I nod, unhappy.
The time beyond time is crumbling back
through these centuries, it makes no sense,
but here I am again, here is the Gate,
I am trudging through summer mud
toward what I know I will find.
In myths, the Tower is portrayed as
my prison, where the King kept me
in punishment & service. This is a hole
in the story, & the truth is absent
within its absence. It is no prison
but my home in every place & time.
I do not serve the King but he wants something
from me. I am his necromancer &
he believes the Gate will prove his
best weapon. This greed gives me time
while I contrive a way to fuse the cracks.
I am tired of tools & travel. I wish
only for my tree revealed, a day & a night
without end. She will help me find
what I need. She will inherit my tools
as reward & join me in the Gate.
******
The Architect is Her Teacher, Her Hummingbird
I first appear to you in the Gate as an invitation
to believe. Your dreams of this place are still new,
a game you half-remember by morning, seeing
as you have been trained to see, that there is no hole
in your chamber’s wall. I invite you to accept two truths
about one thing. There isn’t a hole. There is.
You have a picture book, a simple telling
of the hummingbird story, he who gave men
music & taught them to sing. You breathe this book
through many days, memorize its few words
& many strange pictures. I see my chance
to twine with your path, & softly take it.
One spring day you return to your paints &
large sheets to find the hummingbird on
your page gone, as though never made.
Waking next morning you discover it flitting
upon your chamber wall, as though always.
In later days, moved again, the Queen’s half-wild garden.
You ask the King your father but his smile above
his maps is mirthless, a thing of abstract love.
You even ask your friends behind the wall
but they do not know what a hummingbird is.
Strangely, they do not care to try. As a child,
you nearly leave this strange mystery quickly as it came.
I let you but one. You are walking the path
in the Tangled Gate to the place you call
the Carnival Room. You are singing the hummingbird’s
song, about how one day mankind will remember
its first song again, & fly away. As you make
the last turn, I appear before you, set upon the air.
You gasp. You look. I am my question to you.
This is your test. You hold out your finger to me,
half-smiling. I accept & you walk along, no words,
just the potent of touch. As we both wake,
I am humming for you, & then we share this too.
My bedchamber is as dark as yours is plush
with light. We each nod, & know. You now twice believe.
******
The Architect’s Record of the Time Beyond Time
You found, you read: “The storms became constant, wordlessly violent; the daily life of men & markets, ideologies competing mostly benignly, churches vaguely explaining their fences & roofs to the cattle within, new seers smiling with fresh ancient visions of humanity waking & rising as one, was over.
“What remained for most was the leash & a stingy bowl at nightfall. Hope was a little more light in the day’s grey sky, less snaggling wind at night. Where possibility still lay, at least for a few, was far below ground, in the great darkened halls of the sleepers, thousands of them clicking song, fed by tubes & awake less than an hour a day.
“The men of science, magick, & spirit had joined with the men of Art to contrive a solution. What remained unfouled of the seas & mountains & forests had been blended into this work, not to save the world but undo it, find the place beyond the Dreaming, by scavenging through history for the clue all believed was there, the thread out of time.
“If this all sounds lunatic, or a beautiful plan but far too late, or you dubious wonder that such diverse men were able to work together even at the end, you are right, you have read well. The minds of men did not contrive this plan, but others whose own world had been lost. They had tried & failed to convince, to help, for centuries, & it wasn’t working now. More sleepers would wake up dead, or simply disappear.”
What you did not read is what I did not write in those pages. I came back not intending to return. You are the thread. You are the clue. The Tangled Gate will seal the world, close its cracks, & those back then will not live nor die. My Tower has snapped the link back to them. You are the chance I follow.
******
The Architect Sees Her, & Again
At first we dreamers traveled history like shadows.
There were few of us, drinking the foul potions
to cross beyond the Dreaming.
We scattered through times & lands,
& returned to report the details.
What we found was morass, not pattern.
The lives of men are governed as much by chance
as will. By blood’s strange inheritance,
& the way desires will twist & deepen & half-rabid
survive the years, by shell after shell.
Wars were fought over land, women, cankerous
want for power & control in a world that
buries or blows to breeze every large man &
his castle, every pauvre & his cup, every God-thing
& its statues & its followers & its very name.
More of us joined the first few sleepers,
& the chemicals got stronger. We slept more hours
of the day, surrendered lives & loves for this obsession.
We began to invade & maul history, but nothing above improved.
Powerful men built grander edifices over dead soil,
ranged greater seas of armies against each other,
queered mortal desperation into frenzied faiths.
We below were forgotten. Didn’t matter.
This is why I’ve chosen not to return,
to meet you at the Fountain near the entrance
to the Tangled Gate. I see you approach
& keep my cover until you enter. You still carry
the blue bag I gave you. You never change
through the centuries. I still shudder as
you hesitate, kick the golden leaves at your feet.
Your breathing quicks, mine does too, & you enter.
******
The Queen & Her Beast
There are forces in this world no man taps,
no man harnesses, no man controls.
Yet mankind, a living thing, roots from these
forces, the plays & persecutions of its history
bides within their grasp, & though invitations
to study their roots, grasp their trunks,
set lightly upon their leaves to read the pages
better, are offered to each & all, few wake
from these, bray wildly for this more satisfying
food, & make for the boundaries.
I watched the young Queen often. Stolen like a treasure,
by agreement, from her kin’s palace in the sun,
married off to the King to maintain a peaceful war,
she moved quietly within the halls of his anguish
for his dead wife. Unnoticed that she imported
her seers & witchly craftswomen from back home,
& these piddlers in magickal currents that
hardly knew them extant aided her to mesmer
the royal bed, conjure in his eyes, to his touch,
the dead woman’s lips & breasts, fingers & hips.
I watched her as she came night after night
to the beach, to hidden spy the chained cows
cry in fear & hunger for their starry fields,
instead lures for powers from the seas,
victims of men’s belief that blood’s only choice
is spending or spilling.
When I galloped from the waves, I snapped
the links & bid them away. She trembled
too, but did not move. I approached her, huffing
& snarling. Reached in, crumpled her mask,
calmed her down deep. I showed her unfurled
power that night, sang for her scraps of
the first songs, drew her beat & breath
far from that nocturnal beach, its celestial
foolishness above, speckled riddles to mock
those wide-eyed with arrogance.
We crafted a pact, a new truth that would
birth me into her world. She agreed to the lie
that we mated, & an unholy thing emerged,
a shame to be caged, & slaved to new
bloodspill. She even commanded her tinker
build her a sex-box to receive me. In return,
as we twined, I lit her every cavern with knowing,
loosened men’s harness upon her heart,
revealed its better stars, its fenceless limits.
******
The One Woods & Its Beast
There is a maw to the heart of the world
& from it I emerge. But you will find it
everywhere there is a far edge, a man,
an idea, a shattering storm. The world
is no more still than any of its creatures,
its music the transformation none will resist.
This morning is peaceful, I stay near
my best-known oaks. I think about where
I’ve been, where I am now, I am nearing,
I am trembling to quiet. Later there is feeding
all around me, a sharper-tongued wind,
the beautiful violence of mating. Far edges.
Close my eyes & I am the near-blind man,
my remaining sight still fluttering with
lilac & lily, moving with their scented light,
scratching up a spark by glint & petal,
behold my colored silhouettes shaped like a God-thing.
Open my eyes & I am the scrawny prick-hard
singer, finding my music beneath the night’s
sweeping skirts, insisting the oldest idols
totter forward & people my lyrics,
grind bloodless hips new with the next hour’s
unspent semen, its high crackling juice.
Close again & now the tall professor, behold
my sepia-washed pictures, their hard press
at your jaw & shoulders to justify now
your own sanity, resist this years-long game--
Again & now the dark man kneeling
with my horn & shredding time--
The tides, the quakes, the rosebuds in
her cheeks signaling blushing new love
or how her sickness consumes--
I am quiet this morning near my oaks,
near the beating, breathing maw & yet--
I would warn you from the far edges inly
& others bitter far, but hope you do not listen,
grow your berries over the cliff, move your herd
before the snows intercede, drink that potion
& watch your fingers make the world glow--
I would warn you find the far edges or
bray through your bars alway, grasp them
harder, love them better--little wonder what
happens to those who cry out--& climb through--
I would say nothing & let you be as I am
merely servant to the world, my task not
to preach but to rankle, stir the world’s power
elsewise, give history an uncertain path,
so no way to grasp what’s occurring,
& no way to know how it ends.
******
World’s Wish & Its Beast
There’ve been times, moments, places
I’ve relaxed, & begun to believe. Winter lights
on a long boulevard, a hidden shade of
cool salmon over low hills. Even battlefields,
yes, on moonless nights. Close to the dying,
or dying myself again.
In memories I find it & would show it all
around if I could. We danced that courtyard
through the night before you left, & you
showed me your whys, what rotting,
what still pink. Or the flex of an old king’s
fist, whatever kind of beast, the ways
power leaves, gently till abrupt. We runts
remain of the One Woods & men call us
great, urge several link arms around
one of our trunks for a picture.
Or a thing not a memory, because it didn’t
quite occur. The excitement of moving bodies
swathed in sweat & smoke. The drums now,
the words later, the way live eyes
sniff & listen. Among them I chase you
that night, I cohere, I wish to know.
Your eyes crackle with fear of want,
not mine but your own. You touch
my beard as though a pet. I tangle
your hair with my fingers, still wish to know.
Someone moves in the pile of corpses, sighs,
just a little, I hush him as though a night bird,
the wind.
There is what few kings age to understand.
The world is garden, or garbage, or cemetery,
by how you stride your days, how you command
me, your Beast, when a pretty, or a foe,
or something small you fear & would prefer crushed,
how we together bound in the wide wild field
of dreams as you lay there breathing,
& beating, & a thrash, & then still.
I remember the night, it was three, or a hundred.
You were one, or several, as was I.
We’d fought for kings we’d never meet, never touch,
& never know. We’d danced & I showed you
that boulevard, those trees, your smile, long & it lingered.
As we lived, so we died, there were memories,
more forgotten. It was a time for believing,
my maps, my uniform at first light,
the half-remembered lover in a photograph.
As we together walk down empty streets, still looking on, still looking back,
there is no final thing to know.
******
The Beast & His Partner
We walked the One Woods together in my
many dreams, you singing songs in your strange
own tongue, its clicks & noises, the way pink &
yellow & blue would burst from the trunks & bushes
around us. It is always dusk, when light blurs
& lingers, when a few stars peep out in the sky.
Then I wake. And you are far, as we agreed,
& I am silent again. You leave me signs of song
in scattered clearings, spears of your colors
struck into fallen logs. I read them
as they melt, sigils none other would know.
There is something you would have me do
that I hesitate. You believe I was once a man,
& you my partner. You believe we played too close
to the Eternals in our drive to control,
to shape, to break through their powers
& time itself. Those years for me obscure in shame.
But your songs begin to convince me,
& I wish you near again. The sacrifices
we’ll need to crack the maw will come soon.
They will not survive. They will fuel
the transformation. We will together
blow through the heart of the world.
My only doubt is the girl not a girl
who approaches again. I wonder if she
is a different way. I wonder if nobody
has to die. I wonder why I must choose.
I find your songs in more & more clearings.
I stand now where we first met deep
in the Tangled Gate so long ago, but
this is neither waking nor dream. I stand
here to call down the stars from the sky
& find among them a truth to hold & pursue.
I swap out handfuls, looking for the words
of light I need, crush & fold & block
their heat even unto themselves in
my relentless need. When they speak,
to guide my steps hereon, it is not men’s
tongue nor your spectral one. Their message
is clear: bind the girl, consume the dancers.
Break the maw & absorb its every
last dripping of power. She awaits.
******
The Beast & the Princess
You first came in lilies & soft morning sunlight.
You first came in the puzzles & formulas men call dreams.
I sniffed you, twice, but did not know if to call you friend.
You saw me & you jerked a bit. And you smiled.
And yet you were careful. And yet careful
had not been in your nature till you saw me.
I sat near you, & tried to look like a man
& tried to speak like a man, but you shook your head
no, no bother, in this Woods there is truth.
We played a game that morning, tap the air
& loose its notes, collect the notes & shape a thing.
Gently blow & lure its colors. Nod, exchange.
Last round you conjured a small white bunny,
pink nose, mesmering eyes, tranquil but
intent expression. I held it, felt its pulse.
You shook your head when I made to clap
hands, giving the creature back to the air,
as was common. Your smile bid me keep.
Did we meet again? Several times? Then fewer?
Then all I had of you was the white bunny,
who would sniff twice & be gone for days.
Soon I only had soft mornings trying to remember
the field where we met & played our game.
Where I did not need to conjure as man to please
your company.
You do not return in dreams this time &
I’ve long not shaped like men. I’ve long not
shaped & played the air for games.
I . . . hope . . . yes, I hope you will understand.
That you will help me with what I need to do.
That you will join us as we clap out the rest.
******
The White Bunny & the Beast
The white bunny returns, sniffs twice,
& settles in my lap, as though I am a man,
as though I am a rare & trusted man.
We still together, we watch, the morning
is full of small movements & light sounds.
Her long ears rest on my arm, as though I have arms.
I begin to remember. I am a fist of men
by a map, I am a volcano burying all.
I am many fish on many decks,
breathing hard, breathing last.
I am paintings in castles & in closets.
The white bunny nudges me return.
We sleep. I dream like a man & yet.
The white bunny looks up at me
& I follow. Faster than any man’s legs,
holding a . . . white thread? Through oaks
whose leaves remain despite the winter light,
through places dark & unfinished in the Gate.
Now walking, but no longer a man’s form.
A girl’s slender carriage, wispy torso,
& the bunny is waiting near a hole in
the earth. Even though I am too large yet
we crawl through. A long long scrabble in the dark.
My thread gives out but I continue to follow.
We come to an ancient structure, burst
through a half-fallen wall, stand within.
Words in my head say: “The Carnival Room
is near.” I am afraid, I am not afraid.
Which is truer? My face in many reflections
is hard, soft, hers, his, its, nobody’s, all’s.
The bunny hops quickly, ears flashing, & I follow
on my girl’s light legs through rooms of
detritus & decay, at last to a room where we stop.
She looks up at me, raises her pink nose, & again,
& I enter. I hear cacophony, song. I see doors
mounted on walls, beckoning. A tunnel into
the darkness, where its long wheeled carriage
intends. Two yellow-skinned brothers observing
me, plucking stringless instruments, songs of laughter.
A tiny creature at my feet, black & white,
nattering at me in . . . click-clicks & noise-noises?
I am delighted, I wish to go. I look back but
the white bunny is gone. There is a black thread.
I follow the thread back, feeling the girl
in me recede, feeling larger & more helpless,
burst choking & breathless from the earth.
The return is swift, there is no adventure left.
I follow the black thread back to my seat
& rest with it in my hand, alone. I wake
& don’t look down. No thread, black or white.
No bunny. Something wishes to convince me
elsewise. Something would have me
save what I would destroy.
******
