Many Musics, Tenth Series (iii)

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xiii. All Flesh is Lorn

All flesh is lorn. All flesh needs love.
Me to help make it so--

I let none but soft too near to me.
Dressed in my frills, always new
or what my father the tinker could provide.
I looked like my mother, his true love
years long gone, & served my needs as
I hummed & bustled to her ghost’s song.

Let them each into my bedroom, once, let them
see, let them sniff. Were they carrying
me to my ruffled bed, upon whose edge
we sat? Did they pause by the window,
smell the wisps of salty sea? Not one
a look at my books, the things on my shelves.

Twas my Aunt on those shelves, her books
of witchly lore, her secret folded maps
between hand-made covers. Her juices
to blind a man with rage, with lust,
or just blindness, if needed. This bed you
would spread me upon was a prop,
a test, a boring test.

Moonlight, full moonlight, the two of us
wet, nude, excited, singing the old songs,
ancestors from the stars, secret Islands,
ur-tongues to speak with the trees,
the beasts, the wind, earth itself.
Dance & jump, my small breasts but
I don’t wish, I feel our songs blow
clear through the world, through me,
ceaseless, every fingertip, ohhh--

You grasp my hands, smile harder.
Plea some imagined god my father
stay away an extra hour. I breathe
too, a blue-pink powder, fill you full
& juicy, shrivel you panting dry,
full, juicy, pant, pant, dry.
A soft whisper, your hand among
my folds. Another, & you go.
Crawl. Remember, crawl, & go.

All flesh is lorn. All flesh needs love.
Me to help make it so--

Something in me loosened in years.
I didn’t want the hand to go, tell me
something true, true as your hard cock
in my hand. Push this bed away,
paint me your want’s canvas.
Teach you teach me the desolate path,
the humble shine from twined spasm
to love.

That night I pushed away the bloomy powders,
left my unwashed musk upon me,
the curtains opened, the bed its corner,
& when you came for me, I lay me
on the map of the Island, its Tangled Gate,
source of the world, & dared you come,
dared you come hard after me, nod & laugh,
find me, find me, dare you find
what I am, dare you discover this new world?

******

xiv. Honey Now

My father the tinker would have me fill
with the books he hadn’t. I would have
him brush my freshly washed hair most
nights. His coarse, lonely hands clumsy
each time, but calm, & firelight, & me
her young image in my upheld mirror.

He’d often stolen books for her, he’d laugh
& redden & tell me over & over. "We had
no money, we were Travelers, but come
to a town, a rich man’s open window."
Pause his brushings. Me not present.
"Oh her devilish smiles & kisses those nights!"

So I filled up on books. My Aunt, the tinker’s
witchly sister, luckily had books of
spells & potions & the secrets of trees &
stars to keep me upon my studies.
Sometimes, though, I wished for myself
the fate of my dear friend Honey Now.

Honey Now was blonde & blue-eyed with
a smile to make & break hearts twice-over,
& a sweet high breast to keep even the girls
dreaming & touching low in their beds.
Honey Now lay close in my bed &
told only me her dark dreams.

"There is a starship buried under our
village, deep in the earth," I brush
her long hair as the tinker had mine own.
"The buildings have secret entrances
to below. Our river a false bottom.
Our beautiful park a stairway
deep down there. I’ve been all these
places, in my dreams? I don’t know."

I would place my wet lips on her
beautiful pink nipples, kiss her
to a soft moan, lucky down her tummy,
draw her fingers & my tongue into
her maidenhair, make her cry out,
long & slow. Once, my father the tinker
mistakenly came in. Not angry, not shocked,
he nodded to me, gestured me continue,
was quickly gone.

A traveling lecturer came to our village,
gathered his crowds to listen &
wonder at his travels & knowledge.
"Alternative History!" he’d cry. "Doubt
all your preachers & kings & any certain
of the past, or future, or world at all!"

Honey Now trembled in my bedroom.
Honey Now low-voiced urged me suck
harder, suck harder. Honey Now
bit me hard, & came, & came again.
Honey Now, half naked, left to the
night, I not where.

The lecturer traveled on & none
saw Honey Now again. Some said
they went together. They didn’t know
her like I did. I had caressed those high
breasts they hungered. I had tasted her
every smiling juice. I knew she
would not leave the starship below.

I was quiet as the tinker brushed
my hair. "You miss her, daughter.
You will follow her?" I nodded.
He embraces me. He wanted to say
more. Hands me the hairbrush.
"Now yours."

I chose the river as my route to follow.
A good swimmer, I dove deep, it was
night & I used my fingers each time
I reached bottom. Nothing. Rocks.
Weeds. Dive in. Again. More rocks.
Nothing. Breathing hard.

Dive in again. There! A metal ring,
pulling it, hard, & harder, afraid
to surface for breath, lose it again.
Pulling, fuck! pulling! Then it came.
I pulled it open & climbed down,
the water now following somehow.

Long dark metal steps into the earth.
Eventually come somewhere,
like a building deeply interior to
the world. Passageways, stairs,
more of them. Many doors, most
leading to darkness & little else.

I don’t know how long I looked.
Days, months? No day & night
that deep. What kind of starship
was this? I began to tire deep down,
forget why I’d come, her taste
on my lips, her voice in my heart.

I found Honey Now, finally. With
the lecturer, in a bedchamber
of metals, leathers, chemicals,
costumes, wide-eyed little beasts in cages,
found my Honey Now painted with
snakes-blood, her hair braided with rings
& bones, her frame emaciated with hunger,
hunger, hunger. Riding his big cock,
his face in wild pain with her rageful need.

He saw me at their door, his face
plummeted, pain gone a moment.
Shook his head to me.

"Someday I will find a way to make
my starship fly," she’d once said to me.
"All of us, flying the stars, free,
forever." And kissed me. And kissed me
again. "Wouldn’t that be something? My dream!"
Kissed me last. Fell asleep, smiling,
against my shoulder.

******

xv. My First Boy

There was a Pensionne at the far
end of our village, the one we settled
at for some years. While my father
twined up his tinker’s trade, his sister
my Aunt found her work out there,
tending its great gardens, endless lands.

Too free & full of my juices for
my father to leave me on my own,
he sent me often to visit her as
she labored. The gardens had long
been left to wilds, as though this best,
as though prosperous for all.

My Aunt saw how neglect, interrupted
by the occasional brutal scything of all,
had withered the place. She gave it
a shaping hand, loving but hard
for awhile. Weeds welcomed to a degree,
but no longer the bullies they’d become.
Clear the paths, prune the fruit trees.
She worked this land from its best
energies, long sluggish & half-dormant,
out. Romance the green. Taught me
simpler things. Like the hmmm.

Aunt eventually planted other seeds
among the blooms, bushes, & trees.
Grew materials for her spells, potions,
salves. Tended & tended. Hmmmmmm.
Told me of the beautiful, half-faerie
beast who sometimes approached from afar.
"A black-striped white tiger with blue eyes,"
she said, "A miracle in strength & kindness."

Sometimes I wandered the Pensionne
itself, its many floors & hallways.
Travelers came there from all times
& all lands, for rest, for sanctuary.
Sometimes their fears & fatigues undid
themselves for a bonfire-high dance
in the Great Hall, roofless, all the stars
too invited in. I watched bodies dance,
I watched bodies fuck. I watched
sadness at lost or cut down loved ones.
All these passions resembled each other.

There was a boy. Did he belong to the
owner or one of the Travelers?
He was younger than me, though still
sniffed at what I was. But his face
wondered mine own as much, his hand
not just to grasp & possess me, but touch,
feel me feeling with him.

He showed me places in the Pensionne
I had not found, cloaked closets leading
to hidden rooms leading to new corridors.
Older, these, earthen walls & floors.
Breathlessly quiet, then a pack of howls,
vibrating ground, quiet again.

Up & down stairs less steps & more clusters
of hard leaves, to less hallways
than branchy tunnels. We would wander
till nightfall, I might hold his hand
for balance, to guide, but always return
to make my father’s dinner, query his day.

He brought me to a strange clearing,
reddish, like curtained. "Hum your songs
here," he said, reddening, confessing he’d
heard me sing in the gardens with
my Aunt. I smiled, I looked around
this green, growing place, the red tinge
from the leafy canopy above.

I closed my eyes & hmmmmmm’d for
him, for him alone though I sensed
others gathered. I hmmm’d the girl
in me for him, this is me touching you,
these are our hands grasping, this is
my heart’s body opening to yours.

He brought me there, again & again,
& more shades crowded to hear.
Something in me hesitated, pulled back,
I think he angered, wished me naked
reveal for him, before all. I would kneel,
but for him alone. We did not return there.

Seeming resumed our wanders, him
always knowing new places, now
grasping my hand always, urging me
hmmmmmm when more often I felt
silence. Finally came to a chamber
where he figured to claim my body
& perhaps lure back my heart.

A thousand candles. Stars & insects
whirred through four walls. I did not
resist his lead to the bed, his kisses,
too rough, too urgent, too desperate.
I would have ridden him, hard, to calm
him, to hold him in place to just
look at me, but he wanted atop,
he wanted drive.

It hurt. Girls know it will, & so resist,
but curiosity too. And what when
I’ve been cleaved & bled? New pleasures?
Power? Control? New release
when not mine own fingers at it?

He drove & drove into me & I moved
him just a bit with my hips. His face
so beautiful, so anguished. I must
have you. I love you. I must have
you whole. I love you. You’re mine.
I cum so hard inside of me we both
caterwaul with this rending. This goodbye.

Are there wet camel’s lips or a good bulge
as I dress afterwards? He says one
thing, & another, or maybe doesn’t.
The man in him has won over the boy.
I stay apart from him thereafter, when
I must visit my Aunt in the gardens.

Stay apart as yet I yearn his touch,
his mouth, his sweet hard cock.
Her soft breasts, wild cries, deep
wet cunt. Again & again in my bath
I feel a young woman’s shaped flesh,
how it responds to touch. Yet in me
too is a bone of fire, deeper than mind,
remembering how she smiled, how she
spread her legs to my command. How
it felt to possess me even this hour,
this moment, a want to tame my
starlight, that much, that failed.

******

xvi. Asoyadonna

There was war. There’s always a war,
is it far, is it near, is it your front door?
When occupiers come, some Travelers
fight, some travel on. My father & Aunt
divided me among them, she stayed
with her gardens, refugees where she
led them far. My father & I left.

All humen are kind but this seems more
a belief among most than a strategy
to survive & endure. My father sought us
Travelers. Feared what others, anyone,
would do to me.

That last night, a cave in the mountains,
so cold a fire risked, he told me
what of his life I could use. He’d fed me
most of what little we caught, picked,
smiled at me so tenderly I worried.
"What’s wrong?"

"They say daughters grow up to resemble
their mothers, that makes their fathers
love them more dearly." His face
in shadows, words among crackles
& snaps.

"I don’t wish you her life at all.
Wars were even more common then.
I met her on the road, a far country
road, I was on the run, but not her."

He laughs. "She had a knife ready for me
when we met up that day. I told her
if she wouldn’t conscript me, I would
defend her safety, not compromise it."

Silence. "She smiled. Then she fell into
my arms, starving & exhausted.

"It took awhile to get her story.
Why that road? A farm somewhere
near, relative of her fiance."

"Did you find it?"
She nodded. Pressed closer to me,
in the hidden grove of trees
we’d found to camp. A strange man
to her, on the run, it had been
that bad.

He looks me straight through our fire.
"Women live in the very furies of men’s
souls. They will try to love you,
they will try to hurt you, the flesh
they tend or tear is their own."

I want to hug him. I want to calm
him for all this. My heart hurts
wildly for his story, his voice.

"She showed me her hairbrush one night.
I fell in love with her from the moment
she’d fallen into my arms. I stopped running
away & began looking for protection
for her." He laughs. "She practically
had to tear my clothes off the first time
when it finally happened."

I laugh. So glad for them.

"The hairbrush. When she’d gotten
to the farmhouse, it’s what she
most wanted. Saw it in the
bedroom he led her to, payment
for food & shelter. It was OK till
he hurt her. Not sex. Just a taste to
make suffer."

The silence. Snaps. Crackles. "She told me
she got lucky, his neck snapped cleanly.
She told me if she hadn’t shifted an inch
when he came upon her the hardest time,
it would be her dead in that farmhouse."

Now he’s sitting next to me. Holding
my hand. Putting a small, lovely ivory
hairbrush in my hand. Some of her strands
still in it. Smiling. So beautiful. Urging
me to sleep.

Something he arranged happened.
I was given safety, suddenly, many new
people, feeding me, tending me
without my mother’s paid price.

But he was gone. Travelers know what
they can take on, as much as they can,
& still survive. That line divided between
my father & me.

I mourned him. I didn’t leave his side.
I listened to his words from that night,
again & again. My life’s education in
other hours, many miles. My body’s
too complex to easily tell. My heart’s
education in his rough tinker’s hands.
I brush my hair long & beautiful, slow, every night.

******

xvii. Don’t Bend

At first I am kept with the other children
in the caravan, given simple things
to do, sort berries, husk nuts. I say nothing.

Then we camp outside a larger village,
one the elders say is friendly to our
presence, there are tasks to be done,
should we linger. Launderers, horse grooms,
servants for the holiday parties.

I am reassessed. My breasts deemed full
enough for a bodied to show them,
a serving girl position in the mayor’s house.
Mansion. I’m one of many but his son
notices me. Favor for all for acquiesce.

In his too frilly & ruffled bedchamber
he struggles to undress me, tho I willing.
Flaccid against my wide open hips. "Why don’t
you fight back?" he hisses.

I nod, flip him to his back, a hand & mouth
on his cock before he can know.
He is a sweet, quick suck & so grateful,
confuses unpaid whoring for love.

Over the nights I harden his confidence
although not enough to take me.
Yet my mouth ‘pon him pleases him,
& so I try his ‘pon mine in thankee.

He licks, he sucks, we both struggle with this.
"I want to do what you do to me"
his voice brokenly hoarse with confession.
So sweet, so desperate, so lorn. I wish
to please him, to salve him, to tender him,
so. Wish, want to please him, so.

His sucks upon me now strong, now deep,
tongue dragging up & down my shaft
while I moan & moan again, finally
slowly, less slowly, wildly, letting go.
Then he finds my ass to his pleasing,
my groans harsh, suffering, sate.

We sleep twined. His hand holding my--
gone before dawn.

I wish to say the word love as some
romances do. I wish to say anything
but how curious dirty eyes saw our treasured
coupling, & how I nearly hung or burned,
& how our caravan fled wildly to just
the thought of the mayor’s son feasting my beautiful cock.

And me? The young girl ready to give
or take it both? When the Travelers
assembled finally, days & miles from there,
I was given a pack of food, & a knife,
allowed my hairbrush by someone’s begging,
& turned out to the road. I was cursed
to walk alone, no family, no protection
from the world’s raw wants, & how
it would take what offered, or not.

I had only my memory of the mayor’s son,
beautiful mouth riding my cock apparition,
swallowing me, swallowing me, so happy
to feel my veined hardness by his cheek
& lips, so happy to taste my seed
‘pon his tongue, so happy, in memory,
against all the lonely married years to come.

******

xviii. White Tiger

I’m unable to stay a place long.
Come to villages a woman laborer,
willing to plant, to pick, to scrub
for little, willing when a manicured
hand lifts my skirt, a few thrusts in
me but I don’t pretend to fear or enjoy.

And always the man who sees something
else in me, flames around a doorway
he would walk or leap or fall through, but
not yet. I let these men bandit into
my heart, let empathy, not eros,
lead me to their barns, their woods,
their happiness at a hard cock in them,
or just astride their cheeks, or theirs
in me. For them I moan, remember
my first boy, my Honey Now, feel something.

The women less often, less needful
of me because what men will pay
to watch, women will find chambers
to enjoy without a hundred hands
& pairs of eyes sweaty & pulling.
Some of these men still tasting my sweet cum.

Yes, I make my way back toward my village,
lost home, Aunt, Pensionne. It is years
but the war moves on. I return at night,
not by the front door, but the gate,
tis still there, leads me into the garden.
Mean to find a place to sleep,
encounter my Aunt first by calmer day.

The garden looks bigger at night,
looks prosperous, the presence of
weed patches among the blooms & tress
is my Aunt’s signature. She crooned
to them especially, unloved,
remarked how their lives not unlike
Travelers, survive, endure, rarely bloom.
With her, they tamed, they bloomed.

Did the hours to come really occur?
I was just about to my sleep,
my blanket & clothes wrapped about me,
a loose bush my cover, when a flash
took my glance. I stood, ready to fight
or surrender, but standing. But away
went the figure, rapidly. Forgetting myself,
I followed, rapidly, strangely shed
my shoes, my clothes, faster, &
faster, now calling, me calling!

"Please! I am no danger! Who are you?
Please! Don’t go!" Pleading, crying,
I slow, defeated, wordlessly sad of this.

He approaches. Slowly. Large, silent.
A beast, padding nearer to me.
I don’t move. Yet don’t fear. Blue eyes,
the color of deep sea. White fur,
long black stripes. Kindly, curious,
afeared. I rise to a crouch, holding
out my hands. Approach. He sniffs me,
twice, & nears. His fur remembers me
happiness, all what lost, all what lost.

I look deep into his blue eyes, &
find past fear, curiosity, a calm,
a timeless calm, & I hug his great body
closer as I can, & I listen, &
I twice listen, & I hear it, I hear
the hmmmmmm I know so well,
what I’ve rare in years tried in me,
it pulls my heart in & I croak,
I whisper, I cough. Try again. Choke a little.
Try again. Hmm Hmmmmmm
Hmmmmmm. We meld into song,
voice into voice, no longer girl &
beast, one song, we too are one.

Long deep hours & I sleep & I dream
of my new friend as he carries me
back to my bush, my clothes, my things.
Curls around me as the light
pads in, as softly, as curiously,
as powerfully as he did.

I wake & wonder where my friend’s fur
has gone! Where his stipes? What this
human form now? Where his own
gorgeous one?

She waits. Knows. The White Tiger’s
encounter is gift from other times,
his touch a magick few know.
She gathers me up & quiet & unseen
into a chamber. Comes to see me
often as I writhe. As his face
lays securely upon my heart even
as my eyes release to see in
common light again.

She holds me as I cry new. "This is
only the beginning, my child,
my sweet. He will never leave you,
& you will find your path hereon."
Closes the door, returns to her work,
I see your eyes, loving me. Shudder. Shudder. Miracle.

******

[Cenacle]

*** Many Musics, X, xiii *** All Flesh is Lorn *** Sometimes the myth of a dreamed world reveals in small details, private moments . . .
*** Many Musics, X, xiv *** Honey Now *** So much lonely want in this world.
*** Many Musics, X, xv *** My First Boy *** Asoyadonna is from Emandia. She is all-gender & none, shifting by will & whim.
*** Many Musics, X, xvi *** Asoyadonna *** Travelers many populate these poems. Their lives hard & beautiful.
*** Many Musics, X, xvii *** Don’t Bend *** Pleasure is so often punished
*** Many Musics, X, xviii *** White Tiger *** The White Tiger lives in the Garden of the Pensionne, most times, & is encountered a few rare but sweet times in these poems. He is a dear friend.

[Cenacle]

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