Many Musics, Tenth Series (iv)

[Cenacle]

Continued from:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=32422&hilit=many+musics+tenth

xix. Anomaly

In dreams, I am negotiating with a snake,
riding slow down a parchment of paper,
a line, a purple line down its edge,
curls & loops near the bottom, & arrives
at the bottom of the page flourishing into
the image of the hooded purple snake.
“Sign!” I say. “Sign!” I command, to seal
my promise that the snakes may come
again, & our strong poisons will not kill them all.

Awake strange to daylight, dry-mouthed,
uncertain everything. Listen. No sounds
in the hall. My Aunt has hid me well.
Wait. Wish I dreamt of White Tigers
not purple snakes. Regrets. Lonely.

She comes at night, when her many tasks
are finished. Brings me stale bread,
fruits, nuts. Water. As though me still
a child, she pulls my garments &
things from me & tumbles me into
a large basin. Scrubs me good,
scrubs me with love. Learns my body
again, tender spots, what worn, what calloused.

Instructions to lift, to bend, to hold,
nothing else. Finally, I speak.

“What am I, Aunt?”
“What?”
“What am I?”
She pauses, looks at me. Her dark hair
in a long thick braid down her back,
her black eyes, shrewd, fearful, kind,
ever watching. Speaks softly at last.

“What do you think you are?”
“I’m a girl.”
“Yes.”
“But sometimes like a man too.”
Says slowly: “Tell me.”

I take her hand from sponging my shoulders
& lead it down between my legs.
Close my eyes & think of the mayor’s son,
his voice, his touch. Grow heated. Grow hard.

She gasps. “It’s . . . beautiful.”
“What . . . am . . . I?”
She lets me go slowly. “An experiment.”
“Experiment?”
Stands me up, towels me off, a deep soft robe,
leads me to my bed, a brush down
my long auburn hair, long, slow strokes.
Which brush? I wonder dreamily. I trust
she will tell me what I need.

“You’re from Emandia, a place far from
here, & now dead & cold. You came here
with many others. Your father & I
took care of you because this is part
of what Travelers do. Why we travel.
To nurture you & then let you make
your way. Integrate.”

“Why?”
She shakes her head. Stops & starts brushing
again. “I don’t know.”
“Why am I made so?”
“They could not understand male & female.
One or the other. Why not neither? Why not
both?”
“Don’t they have male & female?”
“No. Their bodies form & mold by wish,
by need, for pleasure, for purpose.”
“Thus I am?”
She smiles sadly at me. “It didn’t work here.
The chasm won’t be breached.” Then she
bustles me under covers & out the light.

“Shall I stay with you, Aunt?”
“No. Your home is here but not your path.”
“Where shall I go?”

A voice soft in my ear. “I don’t know
your days to come, but I do know
where you are finally bound.”

Long silence. Then: “The Tangled Gate.”

******

xx. Last Night at Pensionne

Again, dreaming of the purple snake.
Always negotiating down the parchment,
conclude with the signatures, cessation
of the poisons. Peace.

I push a little, impatient. Wave about us
a Woods, a skyfull of heavy stars, heavier
moon. Cold night. Warm fire between us.

Now you. You are large, tall as me as
you are risen up, hood wide about you
like a sail. Dark, diamond eyes snapping
in the sparks. As knowing as me.

“This is not my dream of you.”
Low, hissy, very masculine: “Nor mine of you.”
“Why do we keep meeting to negotiate?
What poisons must I agree to cease?”
Quiet. Grappling for words in my tongue.

Then: “Men poison the world by their nature.
The root amongst each other, not the earth
or the trees, the water or sky.”
“I’m not a man.”
“No. Perhaps why I try with you.”
“What are you?”
Rising higher up before me, shading out stars
& moon & the sky itself. “I am what
you fail to see in daylight, the beautiful
power of this world, its fragile, its pathos!”
“What can I do? I don’t know my place
in the world!”

Fading, fading now, morning. Have I slept
all night in this garden? Cold, achey.
Yet a sense of the purple lingers & I see
tis the flecks in the blue eyes of
the approaching White Tiger. My friend!

He lays himself warmly around me
beneath the oak tree above us.
“I’m still dreaming.”
No reply.
“You’ve come to say goodbye.” A lean closer.
“What am I to do?”
Speaks, such a beautiful animal’s voice. “Find the others.”

For awhile, both of us quiet. I am willing
to sleep, to keep him near to me.
But then, no, a thought. “What is the Tangled Gate?”

He sings in my mind now, hmmms with pictures,
lavishes pictures in my mind, too many
of them, I try to slow & look at just one.
Tis a Hummingbird, like from the old stories,
first taught men to sing, & some say we will remember
our first song again one day, & fly away.

I follow the Hummingbird through Woods,
deep, pathless woods, & come out to behold
a monstrously tall Gate but, afraid, I shift
my eye away, lose it, continue alone,
& now come to a great black cave where
I feel the White Tiger would lead me but,
again, I am afraid, his hmmming shifts,
is another’s, one I cannot see, then a
tiny twittering thing, cackling perhaps.
Paths, possibles. I close my eyes. I do not know.

“Please, my friend, who are the others?
How do I find them?” I feel his mercy
encompass me, his empathy. I live
among men & women, am shaped like them,
I don’t know other ways to be.

He brings me to the road leading
from the Pensionne into the village
& out to the world. Empty fields, woods,
ever moving, till come to a harbor,
come to a boat, & there a man, face
kept from me, wearing a long leather coat,
carrying a strange walking stick with
him. Boarding his passage. “Go, my love!”

I wake in my bed. There the tea cup I’d
drunk last night. Earth creatures of my
Aunt’s, a few spices, an herb or two.
My things clean, packed, a second bag
I guess from her.

I wash. I dress. I trust. I go.

******

xxi. Sueños

We are among the passengers crowded
into the Captain’s quarters. No bed,
no writing table. Buckets of water
alter with stools across the room,
& on the walls, & on the ceiling.
Queer magick tied to the leaping
prowess of our tiny captain, an inch
high. A wide-eyed panda bear in
a blouse & skirt? Well, so.

[“Just sueños,” my Aunt would call
this. Sleep or dreams.” But her crooked
smile, more, if I liked.]

We new passengers, arrived this morning,
were led to these quarters, arrayed
across the wall next the doorway.
Half dozen of us, about, & the man
from my dreams among us. Face still turned.

I wait. The Captain leaps with a cackling
cry from a stool the far end of the room,
into a bucket of water & out to the next
stool, in & out & leap on, over & over,
until she nears the wall & cackling
wildly lands in the bucket affixed
the wall, its water held in as though
spelled, thence the bucket
hanging from the ceiling, splash! & then a
long leap to the far wall’s bucket
& splash! & finally back to the landed
buckets, now faster a circuit through,
& up, & high, & over, & back, & a third
pass so blurring she is gone before
we know to know. Gone.

There is silence among us. The ship is
far out from port now, this display
strange but not threatening. We file
out like a bard has fallen his
last curtain, & each of us to his own room.

[“Sueños, my sweet. This world full
of them. Ours to embrace, to follow,
or let ourselves grow dull & old.]

I sit in my room, my old thin mattress,
my window a porthole my fist would
hardly go through, my hours’s view of grey day
passing over endless water. I don’t
know what I am but there is a man
who may.

I stumble the hallway, wondering
which closed door is his. A woman
knocking at any might as well drop
her cloths & name her price. But his
is open. Him asleep at a table.
A candle’s light shows the maps
& books he had studied.

But what strange than a sleeping man
are the shades & figments about his head!
Owls, bats, flying things nameless & vile,
silently swarm about him, fading
in & out, emerging from him somehow?
Suddenly flee, one & all, before a bigger
thing, a great powerful Beast that
seems to see my spying & lunges
toward me. I cry, yet somehow
do not fall back.


[“Sueños, no more, no less, but what
are they? Would you turn away any
offered power?”]

In this chaos’d moment I find our wee
Captain at rest & smiling in the palm
of my left hand! And the sleeping
man looking at me curiously, standing
in his doorway.

“Ta-da!” she cries, bites my palm
for departure to the floor, & skitters
on her way.

The man still gazing me, I redden,
apologize. “You cried out from your
sleep.” He nods, smiles. “Just sueños,
Miss.” Stands, walks over, but then
“good night” & closes the door.

Returning to my room, my bed,
my questions. Sway & creak of this
old ship lands me slow to sleep,
still in my woman’s clothes, even as
I feel my body shift uncertainly,
growlingly between a want to bed that man
& maybe a deeper one to friend him,
learn his maps & his plans, align
my own, discover how to guard
his sueños ever against his mind’s
nighttime wilds, its frenzied fissures.

******

xxii. Aunt’s Gift, Part 1

The days pass. I do not see the dreaming man
again. Even come the exciting hour when
the old ship reels side to side, & all
careen up to the deck. The mate steering us
wildly among a forest of furious spouts
pluming high from the sea, half as tall
as the ship itself, blocking us on all sides.

Exciting because the long unseen Captain
appears with a wicked cackle of delight,
orders all stop though we’d just cleared
to safety, & she leaps from the boat into
the nearest plume. Sucked in, shot out,
& into the next, & the next, till she has
completed her circuit, & leaps back onto deck.

“Ta-da!” We nod, clap, cry out.

I won’t knock his door, & do not lucky
find it open again. The endless waters
tire me, as does the seeming futility
of my voyage. Even the secret winks &
happenstance caresses at table do not
rouse me. Blue as the sea. Bluer.

Then I happen into the second bag Aunt packed
for me, in it a sewed-up side-pocket.
Barely visible, yet stitches so thick
my pocket blade barely cuts them.
Inside a cloth bag, & a note:

“Asoyadonna, my love: may you find
this sack & note when your path
has become uncertain, & despair
nibbles at your ankles. As you recall,
both answers & new questions will come
of the tea. But you will be renewed,
whichever comes, spine straighter,
chest out, eyes bright & hands open
to what you must do next. With love, Aunt.”

The well-tied sack, when opened, tells
its secret with a sniff. Full of Aunt’s
plumpest earth creatures, dried, &
small metal flasks of herbs & spices.

I wait. A day. Another. I wish to be sure,
am sure, hesitate. But he does not appear
at table, & the Captain reveals
no more distracting tricks.

My choice: prepare the tea of earth creatures
or begin to consume between my thighs
my fellow ragged, smelly, flaccid-brained
passengers. I filch a teapot from
the kitchen, heat its waters hours
after dinner, when all are sea-bottom drunk
or sinking slowly to its depths, & return to my room.

******

xxiii. Aunt’s Gift, Part 2

Some candles to give my midnight chamber
a little dance, put the shadows to
their play. I brew a third of Aunt’s
sack, & pour into a slender green & gold
tinted cup from the Mayor’s mansion.
A smiling gift from his dear son, we
naked & sated studied its intense symbology
in the barn’s biggest moonlight shaft.
He touched round the rim, laughing,
made it hmmmmmm.

I greet the earth creatures in my cup,
thank them for this night, this world,
melding with me in this drink,
herbs & spices smoothing its bitter,
I sip, I smile, I think of my loves
& travels, of Honey Now leaning against
my shoulder, my father the tinker brushing
my hair, telling me funny stories of playful
Creatures who only come out in dreams
to sing & dance, of my Aunt teaching me
to stand straight, thrust out my chest
in pride, pull in my lip when not
offering my invitation. Of the Captain
of this old ship, an inch & a mile
high in her daring & delights. Height
of shortness, & best portrait of gaming
glee, it’s easy, it’s fun. It’s so easy.

Of the mysterious man from my dreams
& what nightmares he must have for
them to burst from his very skull.
What flew about him was not playful,
not happily of this good earth, but
vengeful, & yet that Beast did not scare
me, I did not jump back—

I remember a beautiful pale Woods
I once traveled, alone, yet
it did not scare me. I remember
stopping, completely still, in a
clearing, stopping still. What scares me?
these trees? No. Not knowing what I am,
what I am for, what to do, yes.
What scares me is that my shape
& form, my mortal time, my options,
my ignorance, these render my fate!

I return to the shack where we are
hiding out, upstream from our pursuers,
the several of us. Someone talks of a ferry
approaching us but another says:
no, we blew it up. We have no heat
in the shack & sleep cuddled like Creatures.
Long months of flight have grained a fear into
our skins, an unhappy scent, together
even more potent, & yet we huddle close.

The witches come by deep night,
no moon, they take our leader away,
strip him to his cock, poison him
to harden it for their pleasure,
threaten to cut it off if he will not
comply, now on a dirty floor,
legs spread, each one he fucks takes
a piece of him, till he is all scream &
cock, I have to leave, I run,
the air will not enter my lungs,
I vomit black bile, again & again,
my mouth fills with metal shards,
I puke & puke & cry out, three witches
vaguely chase me, then five, then many—
I cry wildly—

He’s with me, as I see double: lie vomiting
bile on the hard ground of the Woods,
a sword in his hand, bloody with many
witches’ heads; lie on my back,
soaked in my puke, not black but so
much, gurgling, crying, words not words,
he holds me close, settles me.

He undresses me, washes me thoroughly,
warming my shivers, changing my
bedclothes, closer & closer, I try
to listen, he is making sounds,
he is hmmming close to me,
he is smiling. He is smiling at me.
Old boat rocking in the sea, him rocking me to sleep.

******

xxiv. White Birch

“When all your bright scarlet turns slowly to blue,
will you stop & decide that it’s over?”
—Townes Van Zandt, “Sad Cinderella,” 1972.

In my dream’s dream, I am walking,
seeming again, as though quite often,
with Aunt & my dear White Tiger friend,
somewhere beyond Aunt’s Garden, where
the Woods begin. “You’ll know these
White Woods again, child,” Aunt says,
“with other beloved ones in your company.”

They hesitate to my will but I nod,
we enter, I am nude, good to feel
this place with all I have, what
its honesty, what its trickeries.

There are of these . . . none. It is plainly
beautiful & now I hear its hmmmmmm
easy & true. I look at Aunt, her severe
loving face, the White Tiger, his blue eyes
loving me, feeling me deep down. “Why
did I fear this place? What was
I missing? What am I missing now?”

Aunt holds my hand as we walk deeper,
no paths here to follow, the White Tiger
on my other side, close to my needful
touch. I know into awareness that
this is vision, this is dream. They are
with me, now, they are very far.
They love me. This how they tell.

Come to a clearing deep in these
White Woods. One tree in its center,
several close-growing trunks. I approach,
touch the one main glowing trunk, broken bark,
warm to it, look up, count six leaves
among its bare branches.

I look fiercely at Aunt, at my White Tiger
friend. “Tell me it! Tell me the it
you would give me, have me know! Please.”

They speak, like one voice. “Release
to the Gate. As much as you will
want to resist, release. Release it all.”

I want to know more, to ask more,
but I find my mind’s bones staggering
toward waking, a what? a refugee camp,
people are strangers to each other,
how will we join? How do kin become?

I wake. Disappointed, my bed, my cabin.
Cleaned up & tucked in, mostly as the
dreaming man had left me. Last of
daylight through my port window.
Wishing I could have more earth creatures
for tonight, knowing would be awhile.

A commotion outside my door, many
on the stairs up to the deck, voices,
laughter. I follow, hoping the dreaming
man among them.

No usual ship’s deck to be found,
‘tis criss-crossed with planks, atop
which in great number the buckets
of water & little stools last seen
in the Captain’s quarters.

Her newest trick? We crowd into corners
& free spaces to wait & watch. But
she does not appear. Wait, wonder,
grow bored.

Then, from the clouds above, a great
full moon appears, riding high monarch
in the dark starry skies. And then,
perhaps of course then, we hear
a delighted cackling midst our number.

As grand & tiny as ever, her smile
delight’s definition itself, yet the Captain
does not commence her trick. Gazes us
one then the other, then back again,
peering, recking, mockingly fond,
the Captain looks & looks. Then a single soft word.

“Together,” she says.

Her leaping, cackling cry follows her as
she lands in & out of the first bucket,
& onto stool, & leap & splash & again!

Good. Good. Together. Hiking myself
onto the nearest plank, then stool,
I cry it all & into the nearest bucket
of water, & am stuck. And climb out.
But I get up on the next stool & this
time discover one must hit the water
already leaping toward the next stool!

Leap in the past tense! Leap having already
leaped! Leap & splash as one, &
again, & again, until leaping & splashing
from every bucket & stool in concert,
one, none, many. I knew not what
it meant but I leaped like splashing,
splashed like leaping, & cackled my joy!

They join me, too, these disparate
passengers on this strange boat.
Some more clumsy, others deft, but
all of them cry & leap & splash
& know this each his own way but
under that great imp’s moon
we leap & splash & laugh as one.
Even the hatless dreaming man appears.

Come morning, the planks & buckets & stools
stowed, the deck glistening for
departure, the Captain her smiling
but quiet kind again. Prompted by
a sudden notion, I hold out my hand
to her as before, let her board &
graw a time or two. Thank you.

My two bags in hand, down to land
again, missing this boat already,
when who at my side but the dreaming
man. A smile, an offer to take my heavier bag.
Speaks, explains as much as he ever will.

“Dreamwalker.”
“Asoyadonna,” I explain in reply.
He wears a long coat, but again no hat.
I wonder if they slow his velocity
in dreaming. Nearly ask.

The port we arrived is our boat’s
terminus, & had not Dreamwalker
approached me, I don’t know what
I would have done. Maybe, looking back now,
trying to remember that wondering thing I was,
I knew we would meet.

Yet the expected advance at dinner,
at my inn’s room door, didn’t come.
I would not bind this man to me between
my legs.

A tropical clime, its beach long, white
with singing sands. I walked it, little
clothed, sniffed at by bachelors, husbands,
maidens, wives. Dreamwalker not
among them. How? What approach?
A man’s aggression? A woman’s smiling
elusiveness?

Finally, I knocked. He answered, smiling,
expecting. His room like what he had
on our ship. Writing table, books, &
his bed.

Succumbing to honesty, I told him
who & what I was.

“I don’t know how we are connected,
what we owe each other, if aught,
but my friend led me to you.”
“Do you trust him?”
“Yes. With all I am.”
Pause. “I do too. And your Aunt.”

I start. “You know her?”
He grimaces. “In dreams alone I have
met her & your beautiful beast friend.
Says no more. “Tell me, sir.”
Still. “Tell me! Please.”

He reveals from the long sleeve of
his coat a letter. “This she dictated
to me in several dreams. It is for
you.” He looks sad.

“Read!”
“Would you not rather have its contents
in your solitude?”
“No. Read.”

He unfolds the letter, pauses, again,
& then reads in low slow voice:

“Asoyadonna—It cripples my heart
to tell you that your father has died.
I don’t know many details but that
he loved & thought of you to the last,
& caused word to travel to me.

“The man who delivers you this sad
news you can trust with your all.
Together you will find others on your
path. Love him as brother by my wish,
& let him keep you from your worst
doubts & nights. Love always, Aunt.”

Dreamwalker held me that night, &
many sad others, as I learned again &
again my father the tinker was gone.
Did love come upon us, by our embraces,
our walks, the stories I told of how
I arrived to him, the beach singing,
the moon again so full?

Something. Something else. Sleeping together,
dreaming together, trusting, trusting down
deep, we together walked the White Woods
hand in hand, sometimes leaping & laughing
like our old Captain. My heart shared
open with him. Call it whatever. Call it love.

Till the dream we came to the clearing
I’d come before with Aunt & my beloved
White Tiger. The whitest of trees, as then.

“’Tis the White Birch, my dear heart,
my Asoyadonna,” said he, smiling.
“It betokens renewal, tolerance.
Initiation. Our next journey together.”

Points up, to the six remaining leaves.
“We’ve others to find.” Points then
to the edge of the clearing. A dark man,
there, I start. Standing at an easel.
Intent upon us, intent upon his canvas.
Intent most, I think, upon this tree.

******

[Cenacle]

*** Many Musics, X, xix *** Anomaly *** Emandian folks among this world are not male or female per se, Asoyadonna just discovering this about herself, even as she soon will leave her home . . .
*** Many Musics, X, xx *** Last Night at Pensionne *** The White Tiger advises as best a Creature is able, with wisdom deep yet pure, sweet, fine.
*** Many Musics, X, xxi *** Suenos *** This is a funny poem in addition to its pathos and wonder. A whole world here lives, and I am lucky to have a place in it.
*** Many Musics, X, xxii *** Aunt’s Gift, Part 1 *** Mushrooms play & advise in this world too.
*** Many Musics, X, xxiii *** Aunt’s Gift, Part 2 *** Dreams not the semi-impotent thing they are in much of the daylight world. Powerful, good scary, heeded.
*** Many Musics, X, xxiv *** White Birch *** White birch, like all trees in this story, is beautiful & powerful & revealing to those who pay attention. And I loves the Masta' Spasha'!

[mnaz]

Love this. The perplexions of flesh, and riddles of our conscious being in gardens of the subconscious. Still negotiating with the snake. "Men poison the world by their nature..." A lot to ponder.

[Cenacle]

Continued here:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=32529