ReadMythos

MYTHOS

Mishtu Banerjee

Mythos

Fire and Water 3 Humpty Dumpty After the Fall 5 Caliban 7 Paris at Ida 8 Icarus Descending 11 Ma Kali Whispers to Baby Ganesha 12 Ascent on Mt. Meru 13 Dasimayya the Weaver 17 The Wall by Spring 20 Among Swine 22 Angels 25 Ullyses Heads Home 27 Atlas Shrugged 28 Marsyas Comes Undone 29 Life with the Hangman 30 Edge 32 Buddha of the Waters 34 THE REPUBLIC 35 Voice of Stone Voice of Sea 41 Three Myths 45

Fire and Water

The witnesses could never quite explain it. To hear them tell it --

A man walked into a crowded street holding nothing between his hands, smiling openly at children and humming something which reminded them of how wind sounds when trees fall.

With no explanation this man with nothing in his hands caught flame. The flame was blue, there was no sound of crackling, and through it the man kept smiling, and humming something that reminded most witnesses of waves. Some claimed they could smell waves.

"He just kept burning and then there was nothing not even ashes"

Children, their testimony unreliable were not questioned. Still a few claimed they knew his name. Some children saw him burning in dreams; would spend their waking hours craving matches, waiting for snatches of blue flame to appear out of the air.

One day a woman with skin like dark water appeared and claimed knowledge of the man who had burned some months before. She said, "You could see the smoke behind his eyes, there was a flame beneath his tongue. His hands, though, were cold. You see he contained that flame all those years -- his brain slowly burning into his mind. Finally one day, he let it go, it let him go. I am happy, and yet I miss him very much."

Based on this testimony the authorities had the woman followed. They noticed she prayed often; each time in a different church; always in the back pews; usually silent or occasionally mutterning. One day she walked into a crowded church, pricked her thumb with a rose thorn, and rather than bleed, turned into a river.

____________________________________

The pews are still wet, the church has been abandoned. At night children without names play here. Each fortnight a man visits humming like the wind, with flames in his eyes leaving only dark flowers in a vase of water on the bare floor beside the backmost pew.

Humpty Dumpty After the Fall

The pain everything cracked brittle edges

Myself spilling out Terror then I was sure I would not survive

All the kings horsemen kept whispering there was no hope no repair I would not survive

I survived Defenceless without hardness I held together still out of pure stubborness something else

Not exactly hope not quite prayer but the first awareness

of sensation Where two arms ran into shell

A body now exists A strange thing this body this weak binding

of muscle and bone this mostly liquid membrane of flesh

This is my mind this is my groin both capable of erection

Tides run through me I am all undercurrents of desire and thought

Also I am not alone in this

There are creatures outside of me Most of them carry shells

Some are dull some refract light I think I had one of those

I think I must have created it out of myself

I think I must have secreted myself within it

It is hard now to remember then. Often I bleed

I have joined a tribe of bleeders. We huddle at night start fires

kiss each others wounds shut or sometimes break them open again

Last night I remembered what a hammer was Tomorrow I go

to break down walls.

Caliban

And I am the arrow, the dew that flies - Sylvia Plath: "Ariel"

Breathpulse. Roar -- something more. This moment bursts into light.

I crawl out from under a root wiping mud from my eyes -- Lies. Only the mud

is real. In my palm I find this stone. I spin to let it go

but fall down first. Dewdrops scatter, are so round it is hard not to love them. Too bad

dewdrops do not last, are reborn each night. Ouch! My hand is cut,

flint edging into my palm. This arrowhead, I will keep it. Feed it

mud so it grows a tail, grows so strong it hauls me through air.

Then we will fly like a mudball catapulted into light. And from that height

no magic will stay our plunge into the roar. Rush -- we cataract into earth;

cauldron of molten bone.

Paris at Ida

"who will forget Helen? not Paris, feverish, with the wild eyes of Oenone, watching his death" -HD

Paris dying, the nymph Oenone dead beside him, below Troy burns, Helen turns as the child Astyanax is slung head-first into rock, Hector's guts line the streets and stain the walls, and Paris - called Alexander, "Wolf-slayer" - is King of all he surveys: distant goats, grass, Oenone's bloodless hand, the mulberry - its fruit red as birth.

Again, this hill, the dull abrasive grass, Alexander again. This silly nymph dead beside me. Oenone, are you dead? How many damp nights have we spent like this. Oh beauty you seem so pale. Are you dead, could you wish me dead. Damn you then... is this love? You seem so pale, yet your lips are stained like pomegranates.

The day I left. Do you recall the thunder, the seared grass parting -- then three goddesses? I saw you there, outside the circle. I tried to call, but no sound came, everything went limp. I was unmanned. Someone had stuck a golden apple in my hand: "For the fairest". The apple was slicked with my sweat. Hera frowned, Athene smiled and Aphrodite, Aphrodite just grinned. Somehow,the apple ended in her hand. Oenone, I tried to call, no sound came; the charred grass began to blur and wink before I could scream.

After that there was Helen, there were various atrocities. Memory blurs. I recall only moments.

Greek dawn. The sea-damp sun. The fine feathered air poised as a hawk before the swoop. The deep pool; its green surface breaking as Helen rose, bathing among the voiceless swans.

Troy besieged. The field captains grin. Behind, the women mutter into their robes of Priam's wastrel; how his zeal to know contour and detail of her every pore murdered their sons, stole their lovers. The ramparts. The archers grin, their smirks lashing my back. Hector beside me, with the half-smile of a man who has seen the face he will wear below the grave.

It didn't even hurt when that arrow struck me. It was sometime before I started to shake. I spent -- how long? Huddled into a wall. It was some time before I understood I was dead but that it would take some time.

Memory blurs. I do not recall how I returned to this hill. Perhaps I crawled. I kill time, fingering a stalk of grass. I am king, of the wreckage about me. I speak to the corpse of my love. And Oenone, would you have me forget Helen? There are voices in the wind. They whisper, "She was never here, she was never here she was in Egypt, she was mahamaya -- pure illusion." Illusion? How can I accept that? Bloodlets drop in small runnels down to Lethe, like memories I can not recall. I can not dream the breath of forgiveness into this nymph still beside me. Illusion? Who could dream so imperfectly.

How can I explain it? Explain Helen? Unornamented among the swans, partaking of their nature, She seemed only partly human. I wanted that - the strength that was not human.

So we ran. I feared when she raged, when she began to moult into things I could not understand. One night it began to thunder, She threw me off in mid-embrace like a meal sack. I followed her as she ran howling and naked like all the maenads together. Oenone, I huddled on the deck, puking with fear as the lightning struck her, again and again, as she screamed and struck back. She carried me back down, cleared the blood between my eyes. No one spoke of it the next day. Even the old galley captain cringed whenever she passed.

I remember the bones of her back, the scars below her shoulder: two small bones there -- like budded wings. I never asked about the scars, I never dared. I never asked why she raged, I never dared ask what she loved. Oenone, I never asked.

I do not ask now. Who will tell the King why the white mulberry turned red. I die remembering Oenone, your lips, red as pomegranates -- Helen's were pale, like some fruit I can no longer imagine.

Icarus Descending

" I have not hollowed out the heart of space nor touched its boundaries: beneath a fiery gaze I cannot meet I feel my pinions fail;"

-Baudelaire

Icarus Laments

I fall. My stomach is a hollow space that holds all stars. Something warm, wet and sweet: skin or molten wax.

I am stripped of all senses; sense only the rush, this gulp of descent. Eagles scatter in my wake.

Father, I do not regret having passed the middle way. Father, I fall and will not stop when I strike.

Ma Kali Whispers to Baby Ganesha

When I bleed and do not want a man, when the ripe moon descends blushing behind that mountain -- Kailash -- where my husband hides or dances himself through madness;

Oh, little elephant head, I could eat you with a thought, I could crush you beneath an eyelid, I could stretch you into a thousand other gods.

Yet you gurgle fearlessly, safe in your flesh, the leavings of my flesh alone; your beautiful fragile head woven from strands of my hair bound through by sandalwood paste.

Oh little elephant head, were someone to crush that what would I not do?

As you fall asleep I dream you beheaded, crumpling before a pantheon of jealous gods. As you cough and curl into a banana arc, I see my foot step through the fallen Destroyer's chest.

Little elephant head, what would I not do were some force to blot that half-smile I deign worship

before all other gods.

Ascent on Mt. Meru

All I am is a lie.

All I am is a lie, riddled with truth like warm rust, the metal broken and brittled below.

Dog, heed me. I am not the man to follow. You are free to go. You are free. Why do you follow? (Is it even I you follow? Or do you sense it too, some scent amidst the spare dust, the stark air.)

Come then dog, let us go, the sun arcs low, its pale cast descending upon the day as judgement; ruling upon the fallen; my dead, lining this trail like markers: Doe eyed Draupadi so still, so cold now, her musk and the pine mixing, fire and fragrant earth turning acid, there upon the low slopes. Sahadeva and Nakula, the twins, just fallen among torn trees, side by side, cradled together like youths but fallen asleep. Arjuna, a god at rest, upon low shrubs, tiny, perfect flowers tangled through his hair.

It is Bhima, still warm in death, whose salt you lick. Lick well. There is need for salt. Its sting transcends my numbness. Lick well. My brother loved the heights, loved those places where rough winds blow. whittling rock as he ground men. Lick well. I go. Will you follow?

Gods, why chasten me with my life? My dead behind me, I go on. Faltering, choking forward, knowing neither how to die, nor when to stop; chill, lame, with little humour, with only this dog for company, I go on. Cur, you are small comfort, yet you are that.

Dog, are you there? The light goes dim.

This warped mountain. I do not trust it. No, not by dark when the shadows bend; when the substance of the rocks becomes unsure, begins to slip beneath my sandals. My foot arched, anxious in the twilight, almost expecting to stumble; the trail draining into shadows -- half shapes bending back upon themselves where the path runs straight.

Dog, are you there? I have lost my way. I cannot see. Dog, do you hear me? There was a time ... There was a time when it was said I walked above the earth. Not in, nor of it, but above it.

I have fallen. My feet are bleeding. Each blistered step has ruubed them raw.

Dog can you hear me? Men have named me "Dharmaputra"; have named me falsely. Spare mongrels, yelping down dusty streets, sniffing for offal, are truer than I. Their loose flesh knows itself. Mine does not.

I have been too many things. .....Far too many things.

I have been a king. I have been an exile. I have been a warrior. In between I have been a gambler. I have lost and I have gained.

In between, I have seen many things. .....Far too many things.

I have seen my wife disrobed by hungry, ungentle hands. I have seen my brothers watching me watch the act.

I have seen the madness of dice. I have seen its mark on me, I, I who gambled our wife away -- coal eyed, dark Draupadi red lipped in the heat of her flame cursing me, unmanned in the hour of my shame.

I have seen my elder brother (the one we never knew) slain by my younger brother: Karna, unarmed amidst the muck screaming for the sun as Partha drew back his bow.

I have seen Bhima keep his vow, seen him laughing, singing, roaring like the damned, lapping the thick blood of the man who dared mark our wife with his unworthy touch.

I have seen! I have seen.

I have seen a blind man break a pillar of iron. I have beheld mountains behind mountains. I have seen with inhuman vision, have held truth captive between my pupils.

It breaks free now. I no longer see. Dog? Do you hear me? Do you? Dog, hear me, why do you not bark? What manner of dog would not bark?

Dog?

Dog!

Dog, is it you? Yes. I feel you at my feet, your tongue stinging my cuts. Lick well. Lick well, you have returned. Such constancy deserves reward. I have nothing left. I have only myself. I give you that.

It is rumoured that these paths lead past this world, Perhaps, to heaven. Perhaps, that is false. I do not recall. But let us go, go up to the summit before my bones turn cold. Let us go together this last little way. Come, let us seek where this way leads.

Lead, I follow.

Notes:

Dharma

Dharma is a word with no single rendering in english. It encompasses the notions of Law, Duty, social and moral order, Truth and Righteousness. It refers both to the proper method of performing minor rituals and the essential nature of being. Its sanskrit roots are "dhri" - that which upholds - and "man" which refers to this world. Thus "dhriman" or "dharma": that which upholds this world. In the poet Vyasa's verse epic, the Mahabharata, dharma takes many forms. Both Yudhisthira the king, and Vidura, a court counsellor, were called Dharma-putra: the son of Dharma, the avatar or mortal embodiment of justice. Dharma is also one name for the God of death and justice. And when King Yudhisthir, his brothers Arjuna, Bhima, Nakula and Sahadeva, and their communal wife, Draupadi, renounce this world and journey to Mt. Meru, they are followed by a dog, also Dharma.

Dasimayya the Weaver

* * Unless You build O Ramanatha Space will not get inside how will men know a house that this is so? * *

Hara Hara Bom Bom Hara Hara Bom ....

Hey there, old man. This cold night is no night for brittle age.

Safron robes are little proof when the wind whirls dust like drunkards.

Your knees rattle like plugged dice. Let me still them with a story.

I too was once renunciate. Ten years midslope upon Mount Meru wearing less than you. Naked in fact. My devotion so complete I was frozen solid.

Finally the lord appeared: RAMANATHA himself. Said the lord,

"Dasimayya, you lunk the lower pantheons wail with your austerities. Your penances have stolen all wind and left heaven in a drought of endless summer. Dasimayya, have you nothing better to do?" And Ramanatha struck his lingam against a rock so the rock melted, infolded into a gourd. And the lord set the lingam into the gourd, set the gourd aflame and tossed Dasimayya into the flame where I thawed.

Well, the lord plucked a hair, his head matted with ashes and turning with asps. Ramanatha plucked that hair, saying,

"Take this thread. Clothe yourself. Go among the people and do something of use."

So, I came down. Took a wife. Became a weaver and wove this turban cloth - wove that strand of god-hair the wind, the white ashes, wove the flame that turned like asps.

So I wove this turban cloth and went to the fair where I did not sell it. The buyers could not price it. A thief tried to steal it - grabbed it right where I'd woven a discus and lost his hand. Then the Brahmins stoned me and called me a demon. My icicle incarnation had so warped my memory, so I dared not disagree.

So, old one I can neither sell this cloth nor can it be stolen. But, I believe, it is mine to give.

Warm yourself and return home with me. My wife will have heated rice over the dung flame. We have little else to offer. Yet little divided by a few is merely less. When seasoned that is enough.

I ask only that you praise my wife her steady hands. She was palsied and prone to fits I have only just cured.

And, oh yes, one thing more. Take this comb; comb the ashes from your hair. And please, lord, still the asps and cover the blue stain along your throat. My wife believes me a simple man and I would not decieve her.

OM NAAMA SHIVAYA Eh, Ramanatha?

*(Note: The two italicized stanzas are taken from A.K. Ramanujan's translation of Devara Dasimayya's devotional poem #126 in Speaking of Siva. Penguin Books. 1973.)

The Wall by Spring

K'ung walked, with Gautama along the great garden wall whose slow bricks fall to the lower levels. Squinting down he said:

"The cherry-blossom festival begins. Ah, yes. Wintered scales curl; expose new, wet petals unguarded to the air. And -- though bud burst varies by the turn of a moon -- it marks the first of spring.

This week, the people gather to drink, to dance. Old blood thrills, quickens to the year. The young, freed of winter heed the heady air unrestrained. Evem the sullen (I recall old Jang) laugh, regardless of reason. Yen Yuan once asked: 'Master, does the coming bud burst presage the spring, or is it spring that stirs the trees? And, what sets men foolish at such times?'

Indeed, Hui, though he played the dullard by his questioning proved wise."

"And what, master K'ung, your answer?" Gautama asked, eyes smiling.

"Silence."

Siddartha Gautama's eyes shone. "There is a tale not listed in the 'Lives'. I would tell it now."

K'ung turned and arced a queried brow.

"Once, I was of tree, though not cherry but of older ancestry: a predecessor to the Sugi and Sequoia. Among the bare snags of Shergiri I broke earth. On a wind-wasted crest I grew a stunted form, force gnarled. After a hundred years my trunk closed towards the clouds less than a bonsai. But my roots, my roots went deep. While the winds oppressed they twisted past the strata and sought the heart of the earth that held me. It was in soil that through the harsh winter I sought the spring. While the snows still scattered with the gyring gales I felt the first tendrils of warmth from some deep core, strain to surface. That heat upheld me until the mediate spring."

Gautama stopped a moment then; stared unblinking to the sun. Aside him the statesman reposed and meditated upon order.

Siddartha continued, "Yen Yuan, truly a prudent pupil. Wiser still, the master K'ung; rapt in silence. Temperate the man who limits himself only to what he knows. As the dawn-tree I knew earth. And spring I felt in the cycle of my yearly rebirth."

"And what sets men foolish at such times?"

The Buddha smiled, silent, as the Master mused, "No, Hui, he was no dullard.

Among Swine

I did not think when I left home with half my father’s inheritance that I would end my days among pigs.

Somehow a lifetime’s work was so easy to lose. My father’s work, my loss.

At first it was all amazing. I had dreams, big dreams. I would tell women my dreams as they led me to bed. In the bars men would gather to listen to my dreams, their ears heavy as I bought the last round.

But as the money ran out., so did the women; and my drinking buddies dried up.

Soon I found myself penniless and hungry. And that was only the beginning of humiliation.

I had no skills. My dreams were not marketable. Finally a man hired me to feed his pigs. He could have hired anyone but he liked the idea of a Jew feeding his pigs.

He treats me no worse than I feel I deserve. He lashed me one day, and I bit into the gall of it; smiling back at him whipping me. He never lashed me again.

******************

In the beginning I hated it. I was ashamed, and the pig-slop turned my nose. After a while it got easier.

Pigs are smarter than dogs and I found myslef liking them. Their squeal when I fed them ewould bring a grin to my face. Before I refused piglflesh because it was proscribed/ Now I refuse it, because I know their names.

******************

I have been here a year now, perhaps more. It is becoming easier to think that this is my life. My back has a slope from picking up sacks. It is becoming easier to not think about anything outside the next sack, the next meal, the next shit or sleep. It is becoming easier to think this is my life for now and ever.

But a dream returns from sleep to sleep. In it I am standing on a hill before my old home. My father is running to greet me, his robe lifted between his ankles.

I dream that he will restore me. But I hope for much less. To wander home unrecognized, to offer myself as a servant. I would scrub the cloth of my brother and he would not know my name. I would work for food.

*******************

It has been four days Since I left the pig-master. I am hungry again, but somehow I am no longer able to beg. A bit of bread and a wash would seem like the greatest miracle. but I fear to ask the lord for anything.

There is a map in my mind. I follow it from behind my eyes, back to a hill in the village I was born.

I am trying to find my way back to my father. Walking away was easy. Walking back is so hard. Harder than I could imagine if I were not living it step by slow step home.

Angels

Wingless, they are wingless ... and if they are of god, they are of god as goats are, as mussels are, simply another species within creation.

Yes, they float in the air -- as do leaves, bacteria, dust. The explanation concerns lightness in the extra-cellular spaces of their bones and oxygen transport.

Still, without reason, an angel occasionally falls.

They are born plunging in freefall above the clouds. With each breath they lighten and slow, achieving buoyancy. Most of their lives are solitary, meeting rarely to trade myths or maintain the species.

Myths. They read myths in the motion of their clouds, weave stories out of wisps of moisture. Sometimes the same story appears again and again.

Perhaps it is something in the wind, or something in their bones, a memory, imposed upon the stratosphere, like the myth of the angel that fell:

Once upon a time an airbody was born so dense he fell and fell and fell. At last he came to ground among a race of earthbodies. He grew up alone, terrifiedof the weight in his bones, of the ache he felt on cloudy nights.

Occasionally an airbody would descend to tell him stories from above his head. Once a pair of airbodies took each arm and carried him into the clouds so he could read the stories for himself. More often they would hover at the height of a Jeurusalem Oak while he listened from its base, leaning against its coarse bark, his head upraised.

He remembered every word, remembered how the airbodies would bob up and down to the rhythm of their speech. He took the stories and turned them into songs for the earthbodies, though they never understood, and only began to listen the day he walked out to the sea; his footsteps so dense the water barely upheld him.

Ullyses Heads Home

The truth: I was running the whole time I was supposed to be trying to get home. I was running, and drunk on the heroics. We all were. The war was just an excuse to feel really really alive.

But sometime -- I think it was after Circe, and all those damnded pigs -- something changed. The striving went out of it. Maybe the pigshit cleared my brains. I looked around and wondered, why wasn't I affected" The only human male left on this island, and I was jealous of the picgs. They oinked, and they squealed, and butted tusks while I fed them rotten slop. It was a job. And Circe was a boring conversationalist, and pretty well over-rated in the sack. And I missed my wife, and my kid -- gods, he was probably grown by now. What happened?

What broke the dreams that chained us into a band of heroes, what stilled the lightning -spark rush that carried us into Troy?

Those moments when the arrows left our hands and caught another's throat. Those moments -- disturb me like old drams. Nothing in them was ever quite real.

Penelop, It's only this last month at sea, that I recalled the cloak you wove me befiore I lefft. It goet buried somewhere but the embroidery gets clearer each time the waves lull me back to sleep. Time weathers a man. Dreams change, but the striving remains. Penelope,

I dream of finding my way back home.

Atlas Shrugged for Sumitra

Who was crazier, my brother, you or I? You wanted simply to save mankind. So you gave fire, set a spark in every man and woman that passed by. Now the woods are ablaze, branches crackle with the voices of angry gods cursing the name Prometheus while you are laid out on a crag and disemboweled endlessly by an eagle no less fierce than you.

All I wanted was to keep the dome of heaven from crashing down on the things I loved; to save my tiny meadow by the river, my mother, my father, my sister --- even my mad brother. I put my back into it, dug my heels down, steeled my muscles with love and rage, wet my strenght agaoinst the curved wieght of heaven. Tendons ripped, vessels broke -- I hoped not to show the strain.

Who was crazier, my brother? You or I? I no longer know. Once, I was the saner. Now, I no longer know. Last night I collapsed -- a moment only, and in that moment nothing came crashing down -- the stars held their place. Listhen broother, I am about to let go. I am not responsible. Neither are you. Drop us. Let the eagle go.

Marsyas Comes Undone

The satyr Marsyas challenges the god Apollo to a duel of music. Overmatched he loses. Apollo punishes the Satyr's mortal arrogance by skinning him alive. As his flesh frays and unwinds, Marysas takes voice.

Why do you strip myself from me? God, is it not enough I have lost?

Now you pluck my gut strings, play my heart like a muffled, leaking red drum.

The eye you have not pulled from its socket sees the nymphs that cryed while you played, begin to cry for me. Even the satyrs weep into their goat-beards.

God, you strip myself from me. Bodyless, tears float me into a river.

Unhinged, my tongue comes free. I can match you now.

Apollo, take up your reeds -- Note for note, howl for howl, I will match you.

Absent as the wind I will enter through every stray tear, I will whisper into every fair ear, "I am Marsyas. I am. I am here."

I am Marsyas. Apollo, I am so near.

Life with the Hangman

"In order to avoid her death, her particular death, with wrung neck and swollen tongue, she must marry the hangman. But there is no hangman, ...." Margaret Atwood: "Marrying the Hangman"

So, I created him. He created me. Each in our own image. The only image of freedom we could hope for. When he comes home each night I still see the death cowl upon his face. Can he see the noose I wear like a necklace. His hands are empty, the pale delicate fingers I did not expect.

It has been ten years. We have no friends. The neighbours tolerate us, understand our necessity. We have children -- three living: two daughters, and a son, the youngest. And two daughters I can no longer touch while waking. Five children, but my belly does not sag, and the sideways glances of the men tell me I am not unbeautiful. Yet these same men will warn their oldest sons, "Beware, beware the hangman's wife".

*

If a man would drink with me, hell, I'd buy him the drinks. But no one drinks with the hangman. Sometimes, when the body first jerks, I feel so powerful my balls dry up with the fear of it. Each death is different. The weight, the distribution, the muscles about the vertebrae, all these are factors. And the fear, the fear god is counting each time the crossbeam jerks, then recovers.

*

When we were voices, when we were only voices behind walls he said: the end of walls, the end of ropes, the opening of doors, a field, the wind, a house, the sun, a table, an apple.

I remember. I said: nipple, arms, lips, wine, belly, hair, bread, thighs, eyes, eyes.

These were our marriage vows. To have and to hold. To fear and to cherish. To survive. To never understand where "I live" passes into "I love".

When we were voices, we were only voices behind walls, the flesh was in the promises.

*

Hung a man today who scared me. He'd murdered his daughters while his wife slept. Took their little girl heads off with an axe. That's not what scared me. What scared me was the way he grinned the whole time. Grinned just the same before and after he was hung. What scared me more was his wife. In the crowd, she went wild, started screaming, screaming: "daughters, we can have more daughters, but we have nothing without a son, I am nothing with my husband dead." She kept screaming that I was murdering her, kept screaming while she was dragged away. I am sure god is on that crossbeam watching me. I fear what my son may inherit.

*

I was surprised when he kissed the girls goodnight. Half the time he can't keep their names straight. I suckle my baby boy, and I hear that man in the other room moaning. It almost sounds, but no, he has never spoken their names. He has never spoken the names of the first two, the oldest. They were born dead, but I named them in our months together. He buried them without words. Part of me will always hate him.

And the other part? The other part sings a lullaby to my son: beware, beware the hangman's wife. The other part remembers the voice behind the wall. It used to sing :"tirra lirra" by the river, sang sir Lancelot -- and in singing his voice was like a girl's, higher than mine. The other part dreams of long fields of barley and of rye. The other part sees the mirror across the room that reflects the candle-light, the shadows that surround me like a necklace.

Notes: The two underscored lines were stolen from Margaret Atwood's poem "Marrying the Hangman."

Edge

Say he was a paintor once, but is no more. Or say he is a paintor still, but the art has sunk into the canvas, has withdrawn into the marrow, exists so deeply it seems to no longer exist. Still, his unconscious fingers trace the tangle of her hair, the profile of her face onto the clear laquered table.

Say she sees this and remembers what he was; wonders how that travels into what he is. Same face, same hands, same politeness. but there is no edge she can grip. It is as if somehow, he is no longer quite solid.

Say an hour passes before they part. They speak stiffly. Run down lists of names. Exchange new addresses. When he sees she is staring at his hands, he curls them into the womb of a fist. When she sees him do this, she tries to stare at his eyes. But the irises are so dark the pupils dissapear. Were they always so> Is she staring. Say an hou passes before they depart .

Hours later, at home, she stares into her make-up mirror. She can’t see her face. What she sees is a fingernail etching her face into the glass. She blinks. It dissapears. And the sound of scratched glasss is just her gritting her teeth after all.

Hours later, at home, he stares through the closet door into the canvass he did not complete. He had painted a room. But she had stepped into that room just as he began to paint her hair into the canvas.

He said: I’ve built this room for you, and if you need it, it will become real.

She said: You are a fool. I’ve had it with your gentle stupidity. And anyway I prefer more dangerous men, men with an edge.

Say he was a paintor once but is no more. Or say the artist exists, but his talent has turned upon its edge, has sliced itself into the marrow of his bones. Say he smiles, not gently, past the closed door and into the canvas. The room is gone. He scrathed it out with a finger-nail like a razor’s edge.

Buddha of the Waters

That night -- Siddartha came here, his footsteps falling from pavement, to gravel, to sand, edging into the opaque water where he stopped.

Perhaps he heard the two-four cry of the tide hurling itself ashore only to get dragged back. Perhaps that "slish-slosh" lulled him from his purpose. Perhaps he was awed.

How long did he stand there, slowly unfolding like a chinese box, opening into, containing that dark, then snapping back, enclosing stillness into his breath?

Did he sense that everything existed between his cupped hands, that his skin had become a filament bounding abscence and emptiness? As he awoke into night, did it etch a smile beneath his skin?

Siddartha came here that night. At dawn, shivering in the wind I stepped backwards through those footprints, backwards from the waters edge.

THE REPUBLIC

'He is saying that there is no peace for him by moonlight and that his duty is a hard one. He says it always, whether he is asleep or awake, and he always sees the same thing - a path of moonlight.' - Mikhail Bulgakov, "The Master and Margarita"

Return and Abscence

At last they let him go. Stooped, pale, greyed - a sackcloth harmless as death.

I gathered what pieces shambled past the gates I saw no man, saw only patchwork slung upon emptiness; recalled eyes: once a blooded hawk's only green. Now, merely green.

I took him home; served him soup and stale tea. Stalled at names: love, poet. Silly now, as he dribbled the soup and did not answer.

II

I come home each day to tea, the flat dusted, dull floors swept into absence. He sweeps as others pray: silently, hands shaking in awed terror. His gathered flowers tremble in the naked light.

Night

bent fingers braid my hair, so querilous, so meekly platonic my flesh crawls.

Night

I lie still, struggling not to smother his wheezing sleep to silence.

III

The flowers are the oddest. Out of season. So unlike the tamed curiosities that sell in the shops. No large blooms, no scented water. Tiny petals, scarred stems, tufted grass with soil.

He writes of flowers now, of flowers only: poems where petals bleed, where roots release subtle poisons; where orchids grow fragile stalks upon decay.

Poems? No human passion. Only a stillness like dormancy -- a surrender, surviving through the dead winter.

He is gone. I am left these scraps: memory, leaves, a poem: --

IV

Corallorhiza! Oh my beauty. Such orchids! Organic batique; backlit glass with veins of striped obsidian. Saprophytic, they rarely last. Uprooted stalks dull into scraps and strips of flesh.

So I bring you leaves of holly. Edges twisting from point to point, half-wild, hardy: lasting green through winter. Yet when they lastly fall, then,

Corallorhiza, oh this beauty arises from young death like duty.

Letter to the Black Rose

One day the blood in the pollen will put me to sleep, the syllables of blood in the pollen will put me to sleep. The companeros will come, they will say: and this one what happened to him, he used to be so strong. -Ariel Dorfman: Last Waltz in Santiago

If I left like the thief in the garden of your affections, snatching petals from your mouth, leaving sling-stones, O lady, forgive me.

I had not hoped to see you at the gates. I had hoped not to see you. I had hoped to fade. But you took me home; fed me soup and tea, called me names I no longer claim.

I had not hoped to see you. I saw your gaze pass an old man, searching for me. I saw you look past me, see me, look past me for a man who nowhere exists. What did you expect?

Did you think I slept those nights your fingers crept to my throat. I have had fingers at my throat before. Yours always ended in a caress. I have had other hands at my throat. I have learnt to be still. Did you think I slept, my love.

An old shambling man may survive, if he learns to listen, listen closely for another's rage. I left before your raging fingers enclosed my sad throat.

II

I am well. I rent a room from a deaf woman. I have a small pension. I sweep and cook to make up the rent. Weekends, I gather flowers. A farmer tells me I could sell those flowers I collect. I am very good at finding rare, small beauties others miss.

I never asked if my letters ever made their way to you. I am sure they never did. Had they, you would have known what to expect, you would have recognized me.

There were 59 letters. I recall each word. The first began, "Exultations, dark Rose, Exultations!", and ended asking for cigarettes. The fourteenth was written, when I was sure I would die. I was so scared I caged the words in sonnets. I hope you never saw the fourteenth letter. Later, letters were written, then thrown into a corner. The very last letter was unwritten in my mind. It began, " No, my dear, the black Rose was never here"; I did not finish it.

Oddtimes, I try to write that last letter. I get scared, the words do not come. I shiver, my fingers cramp, then stumble and break the lead. "No, my dear, the dark Rose was never here" If you have the strength, please finish it.

III (so she wrote)

No, my dear, the black rose was never here. It was only desire only fear. It was only the years of waiting. Your wilted face shattered those dreams.

If the black rose was never here, was chimeric, was only shadow fragments I clutched through dark. (How How could you leave wordless How could you leave flowers to rot How could you leave?)

If the black rose was never here where where will this poem go Oh no, this poem won't go. Damn you you stole the petals you stole the stamens stigma, style, hope you stole leaving only thorns bitter leaves dust Damn you This poem won't G O

IV (she began again)

No, my love, the black rose was never here. The dark stamens, the pistils in my hair, the endless petals I have never worn are absent. My red blood, the black thorn that traces my wrist are simply fictions of my desire. And I am a realist.

So I let it drop. I damp the blood. I tremble and gasp until my breathing clears; breathe away your name, your scent, the silent years...

I crumble holly leaves between my hands, crumble memories into sand. One night we passed, I remember, hand in hand --

a moonless night among the graves. In that dark, we walked among the black, black roses there.

Voice of Stone Voice of Sea

December in Algiers. A wet night. Albert Camus, having fled "Europe's night, the winter of faces", walks by the sea, utterly soaked. Elsewhere Sisyphus rises, to find the boulder before him, to find himself mid-slope, somehow having fallen asleep amidst the strain. Man and myth pass each other in the dark. They can not see each other, the disparate planes flow through each other. But each senses the other's existence. Each hears the other's voice as an echo in his mind -- a fragment falling away. Each almost stops.

* Camus

Five days and this dragging rain begins to wet the sea itself. It is so easy to stop now, to walk into the water, to forget. Beyond all games there is this question I would answer, Why not walk out into the water?

* Sisyphus

The heat. I sweat acid, this moment bleeds into the next. The stone is marble the hill, obsidian. My path is hounded by twin walls of flame, lest I stray. Everything is so concrete. I would die for a touch of water.

* Camus

The absurd. How it strikes unexpected. All the second skins slough away. The air becomes dangerous. You fall in love with a stranger you have known neither well nor long. You whisper, "I love you". What you meant was "am I here?".

* Sisyphus

I have seen the gods naked behind their masks. There is nothing there, only the raw abscence, the lurking terror of discovery.

"Am I here?"

It was those words Zeus whispered, his swan neck arced about the throat of the Queen of Lakonia. And he dropped her, with a croak to the rocks, terrified, in that moment before she spoke.

When I saw Zeus, an Eagle now, snatch Aegina, the daughtor of a friend, I realized it was time for someone to walk through the lies. I have been walking uphill ever since.

* Camus

Who is here. Who walks here in the darkness with me. Nothing; my mind decieves. I imagined a voice. But there is only the splat of rain.

Does rain die. In that moment when the tear flattens out, then spreads, does it cry?

I have seen devastated faces that have forgotten how to cry. I have seen well loved faces turn to stone. How do such faces persist?

* Sisyphus

Sometimes I fall. Always, in the end, at the crest, I fall. The stone rolls down. I stumble, my face strikes glass. I have run out of reasons for rising. I rise. I am healed, against my will. Against natural law, I persist. I am not resigned to my fate.

A dull, discriminant man will, in time pull down every god. I whisper that oath beneath my breath. Occassionally other voices take up my call.

* Camus

A dull, observant man may, in time pull down every god. But those I love walk wounded and brilliant beneath their gods. Even Kierkegaard wove despair into an idol. I am a quiet man; the distance between the anticipated and the actual deafens me. Friends die with or without their faith. Is the sea warmer than the rain?

* Sisyphus

What does rain taste like? I can not recall. If the sun suddenly burst in, I would go blind. I recall my feet bled the first thousand years. It was friction, the dissipation of form into motion. I have callouses now.

Slowly, so slowly, this rock wears down. Slowly, so slowly, this hill rises. Someday -- I have forever -- this hill will approach the roof of hell, the floor of the gods. Once, I knew what I would say the moment I burst through. Now, I would rather know what does rain taste like?

* Camus

Of course, rain tastes like the sea. But the salt is not the salt of tears. There is nothing human here.

Some rains, you taste them and know it is time to worry, it is time to write your last letters home.

Even then, hope rises from the ashes. It can not be eluded forever. You recall you told that girl you loved her, though it was never so. You passed voiceless. Small fictions preserve you. No one sees so clearly as before his last breath. Until then there are no reasons, no excuses not to continue. You write: mother, father, dear friends, I am well, I will be home soon.

Odd, I feel as if I walk behind someone whose steps, upon these stone slabs, I can still hear. As I walk, I ask what friend walks with me?

* Sisyphus

What voice walks with me? I have been rolling this stone so long, it begins to speak, it whispers, "Am I here?" How do I answer?

Three Myths

Bullheaded Dionysus

Harvest season, the farmers rip him down from the oak against which he was bled. The whole time their balls are shrivelled with fear. He was another farmer's son. Yes, he could drink like Bacchus himself. But no one expected this --- The Maenads called.

He was chosen. He came, Bullheaded Dionysus.

Now he is a rag of flesh bloodying a tree. Now he is what remains when a hundred women rip you apart. The Maenads came with the October sun that strangled in their uncombed hair.

They called for a Bullheaded Dionysus. He came.

The Erotic Ascetic

In the whirl of Tapas he felt a prick. The first arrow had struck his heart. He turned upon the god that fired and blasted Love to ashes. Then he turned to his left, and saw the woman...

It was not an easy union. There were her inlaws; her father raging. ".., well how am I suppossed to worship a god that goes about laying my daughtor, and patting her rudely in public?"

Her mother wailing, ".... and he's got snakes crawling out his hair!". Her friends enquired if the rumours about his tongue were true. She smiled, demurely.

When she died, he could not grasp it. He was a god. Marriage was forever. Nataraj wandered with her carcass, expecting her to wake up. He stopped dancing. The universe slowed,... then stalled.

The gods, desperate, tried to make him forget her. They sent women; they shot arrows --as he stumbled from cloud to cloud -- cutting her away from him, piece by rotting piece. He hardly noticed, he was still impaled on the first arrow. Love won.

Inferno

All these years I never pitied the sun its long immolation. We burned, each in our own orbits, scattering what light, what heat we could, incinerating those objects that plummetted into our core, the fusion chamber of the heart.

Then it began to leak out. First from the eyes, later from the ears. Fire everywhere. The flames just came, and came.

Flames got under people's skin. They went skinless -- raw flesh and open wounds .

Ashes.

I was becoming as dangerous as I feared.

So I turn flame upon flame. I can not contain what I am, I would melt into slag. Nor can I let it go.

So I direct it. Polarized laser light into autumn fireworks; gentle spark that starts a furnace; small, common gifts from an excess of flames.

Sometimes, I run into one with smoke behind their eyes. I reach out tentatively, -- with charcoal hands -- hoping the blast won't consume us.

June/13-14/96 The poems before are in the arrangent from the original version of Mythos, created sometime in the fall of 92. IT’s a fairly coherent text. I’ve added all my other “mythological poems” in the section that follows, but haven’t tried arranging them. Need to select which ones deserve to be added to “Mythos”. Also, my first “real pome” the tale of grog” isn’t in here, and probably should be. I’ll have to type it in, and decide if it’s juvenalia or part of the left hand drawer canon. Stone Hands is also not in here. Should I wait to finish it --- or is it separate from Mythos. Both Stone Hands and the Republic can exist independantly of mythos, as their own chap-books or picture books. Actually, I think The Repulic is a performance piece, and Stone Hands is a picture book.

What I need to do, is read the whole mss over, and start moving pomes from the 2nd section to appropriate places in the first section. If any poems are left in the second section it measn they are either awkward or unfinished to me -- I either have to change them or leave them out for now.

I guess I should set a deadline --- A final MSS by Dec/31/96.

Siddartha The things we are, age. Work out your salvation with diligence. -- Buddha

“Decay is inherent in all component things! Work out your salvation with diligence”. Old friend, what is that you say with my mouth? I am exhausted, please end so I may sleep. I am tired of being the compassionate one.

I am old, cranky. I can not remember my mother, only her name. “Maha Maya. Illusion. This body is real, and my friend you have worn me like a favorite gown. I am tattered, stained, faded past ochre into a dullness.

My mother. I wish I remembered my mother. We are dying, are we not Buddha -- I feel the light leaving, I am human again.

Oh yes -- this is the rapture. You told me. When we pass from each other. When spirit transcends flesh. And I am the flesh -- just Siddartha.

I am very afraid, old friend. It has been a great adventure. I have been everywhere in you. I have kept you human. We are the compassionate Buddha.

We are ..... I remember ..... Benares The most beautiful Saris are from Benares. Red, and the women, I believe in Benares are born the women with the most beautiful hips in the world. When they move .... Oh!. I will miss the women of Benares I missed the day I wandered out of court straggling after a beggar. He was you .... or me. I was the beggar .... and I was the prince -- My own fate and my own ghost.

Friend, I am tired, of this struggle, of travelling across the continent in rags, without a bedmate, with this light burning my humanity. I wanted a wife, a daughtor, spicy curry, grandchildren to pull my beard.

But I die here among your followers. IamafraidIamafraidIamafraidIamafraidI^?. They stare and they do not help me. Oh god I could have had the four continents. Get these vultures away ..... Oh Mara ... I renounce, no continent, the simplest shelter would have ... I am cold. I am cold. I am cold.

Good bye old friend, my Siddartha. The things we are, pass. Work out your salvation with diligence.

Fallen

If I were an angel I would have fallen

I would have come down to where humanity is begged an ax or a chainsaw from a woodsman, begged him to forget me as it would be easier on his reason

And when he departed I would not hesitate to take the metal’s song haul steel through air and hack off those wings whose purity blinds

If I were an angel I would recover the body of blood-bone-bile Imperfect machinery I would stagger under gravity and feel the stumps of my wings slowly healing

I would walk into your town like amnesia I would take the name given by the first person to friend me Or I would walk nameless and frozen until arrested or institutionalized

If I were an angel I would bend the distance between hunger and prayer I would learn to write with my left hand I would not be ashamed of the scars on my back nor would explain them

I would live with you I would take my daughter to soccer games I would bandage my lover’s feet with caresses, and ask her to paint a sunrise and a sunset on those days light hurt too much for me to look directly.

If I were an angel I would fold my body into time -- grow old, study science and theology with equal dispassion and save my ardor for makings, growing, walkings

I would walk beside you and use a cane on coldnights and if you asked “Does god exist” I would shrug and say “My angel, I do not know”

Self Portrait

I As gedanken Lightbeam racing and then the bend to capture imagination in equations that do not suffice, imagination rounding a bend, leaking through all pores

II As a fallen angel The old mended coat is made of wings, and forgets itself that it is still alive, fluttering against the body on days when there is no breeze.

III As a lonely sleep The body curved around a self that is not there incomplete as a left hand drawing itself by mistake while trying to draw another close

IV As Dissonance Some days he is like a house of chaos exploded by order. Other days he is like a river avoiding turbulence. Most days he is neither, or both, just a note apart from each.

V As logic The tiger stalking circles around the edge of its cage, rattling bars with its huge shaggy head listening for the first vibration of metal bending

VI As psyche Tra la la tra la la you can not unfind me

Tra la la tra la la there is lint in your greatcoat

Tra la la tra la la I have stolen your change and melted figureheads into petals of your tra la la

VI As nostalgia The leaves of Abies lasiocarpa when crushed smells like the rind of an orange when peeled or your breath after lemonade. I feel like chocolate and miss you.

VII As natural history Digging with thumbtips, placing seed into shallow depressions waiting for the sunflowers to emerge. 12 seed from the same single flower, collected from the centre outwards along the arc of a single parastichy Which seedling will emerge first? Will each have flowers with exactly 34 petals in a spiral? All observation is for or against some theory the eye is never unbiased, merely skeptical

VIII As fire To be eaten by the world to be eating the world where is a mouth what is a kiss? There is a flickering and a shadow; two dancers unite into none

IX As a woman I look into my daughtor’s eyes and they focus, but in the moment before they do I remember looking into my mothers eyes How can I remember that? And I remember how my daughtor will look into her daughtor’s eyes, and her daughtor’s, and her daughtor’s. And I begin to cry when she unfocuses -- her mouth looking for a breast.

X As a man The badlands. He is running at dusk shirtless, sweat making a ring on the top of his shorts. His sneakers have a hole in the toe, and he ignores the grass blade hat has lodged there and cut him. His hands reach to a spear he does not carry, but he thinks “fang” and howls as the moon descends because he is a wolf.

Water Birth --for Tia

She sat naked on a large, off- white water color block. She looked deep into its grey blankness as if it were a mirror a wishing well the deep, deep ocean.

The hair on her head was black, thick, tangled with implements. Out of it she pulled a soft charcoal pencil, closed her eyes to see better her body getting absent minded and swaying left and right and left and right her long neck like a charmed snaked catching flutters of rhythm

Suddenly her eyes opened wide wide concentration marked lines onto her forehead and with slow determined strokes she drew a portrait of her vulva giving birth.

She reached into her hair took a lighter, harder charcoal and sketched the rest of herself with quick restless strokes. Legs - feet - she stopped at her left ankle and let a line trail off into formlessness arms - fingers - hands, smudges for landmarks such as belly button, nipples, breasts, kneecaps. She stopped at her face and drew more slowly eyes, nose, mouse, connecting lines and shadows to make sure she got her look of concentration just right.

She went back to her vulva smudged and rearranged several lines a circle appeared, the crown of a baby’s head breaching.

It was her own baby head which suddenly she remembered through unfocussed eyes. She covered its scalp with a patch of her own tangled hair She reaced deep into her own hair and withdrew several small clay urns full of earth tone paints in variou shades of brown. Also -- a very small jar of white for lightenting.

She coloured her drawn body in brown, using white only to lighten her lips and fingernails. Her drawn body was hairless, naked like a woman after radiotherapy; only the baby head had hair.

She looked at the drawing a long time then reached in behind her ears and brought out obsidian jars with blue, indigo, aquamarine. She dipped her closed right fist into each jar, let the colours swirl and drew big swathes of current with the palm of her hand.

She considered fish but decided these waters were much to deep for fish. She mixed blue and indigo with a fingernail and drew undercurrents of great darkness.

Finally -- she pulled a hairpin out and pricked the tip of her tongue. She licked her drawn body all over streaking it with flecks of blood. She saved her baby head for last. As she began to lick it, it yielded more like flesh than paper. It was becoming dimensional. She reached into the drawing and pulled and pulled. The baby head twisted in space aging as she pulled, lines bending until a body came out just as big as herslef.

It looked exactly like herself but it was a baby covered in mucous and blood -- trying to breathe.

She pinched the trailing umbilicus, let the afterbirth fall into a rorsach blot seeping back into indigo, blue and aquamarine.

She took the baby’s head, cleared mucus from its nose so it could start bawling. She held it close, pullling more mucous from it, amazedat this body, this face identical to her own.

When a look of conentration furrowed the baby’s forhead she moved its head down and held it to her chest. When it found a breast and began to suckle she wept.

Forged

The figure is bent with the hunch of muscles tensed to the point of rip Sweat washes the body like a phantom tongue None of this is felt -- only the ram of the hammer echoing into the bone has meaning

The figure is shaping a fist of copper, joint to joint, the mirror of its own right fist In the acid vapour blind eyes blink then look up as if worshiping Vision clears and the neck creak creaks down, the body becoming a womb about the task of completing this single left fist: thumb tucked beneath the fingers, knuckle bones like struts.

When the metal is cold a signature will be inscribed into the cup of the palm

Noman and Scott Gaelic

All Iyam isstories. Hey -- heres avoice. Wantone?

Icud tellyour story-Mister. Yougottadime? OkOkfreethen^? -- gratis

Youra Youngman namedScott NamedScott^?. Yougotta semiaristocratic face. Youstory Youstory is Goldilocks & Three Bears. Now Goldi-Goldi-Goldi Oshit thgatsnot yerstory

AllIyam^? Isstories Yourstory Mystory Letstry again

Yourname IsScott^? Myname is Noman Golidlocks Isntthre Thereaint no bears Oneday Scott whois Gaelic and Noman whois Allstories goupto mountains of wastewhite Scott Gaelic and Noman Allstories climb freehand -- notcuz theyare hardbodies butcuz theyhas norope

Twotheygo likesprawlthings upthemountain Theyfeelgood cuztheysweat cuztheystrong cuztheybitsofeverthtingstuff

Butthen Scott Gaelic losesahandhold & Noman Allstories whoisbelow goes “JUMP SCOTTGAELIC JUMP LIKEYER FATHERSBEFOREYEE JUMP ILLCATCHYOU

Scott Gelic goes “YOUBASTARD YOUCANTCATCHME IIS145POUNDS WITHOUTVELOCITY IWILLRUSH THROUGHYERHANDS LIKEABLACKHOLE YAMURDERINBASTARD YOUCANT CATCHME SHITHEAD”

Nomna is laughingnow lettingo ofhisownhandhold laugh&saying “HEYSCOTTGAELIC IHEEHE IHO IKNOW YOULLHITME LIKEAMETEOR BUTILLREMEMBER ANDIFYOUDONTFALL SEE ILLLETGO TO DODOWN WITHOU JUSTLIKE JUSTLIKE JUSTLIKE ...”

Heythere heythere Heythereguy Whyisyou lookingso atme itsjust itsjust astory. Youdontfall really Ijusttellit thatway soasI getstob theHero -- Noman Allstories.

All Iyam isstories. Hey ScottGaelic^? ifyouve nodimes howsbout awave oraspin orhasyouevengot acupofcoffee? Itsacoldday arainday forNoman forAllstories Wantone?

Transparencies

I found your note -- this room still smells a bit like you, I think. maybe I’m imagining. I don;’t know, maybe I should be sad. I’m not.

Just a little numb. You were what? Something. I don’t know. Not all there. Not quite solid. What?

I wish I could read your note but I crumpled it and tossed it, I hate shit like that. I like things to be simple.

I should be seeing someone, I should be forgetting you -- Remember, I called you, MS Insubstantial. It was a joke, but the way you looked at me.

Maybe I never knew what you were, or maybe you never trusted me -- You kept eluding me. I’m sorry, maybe I’m too simple. I tried to make you happy in the days .....

You changed me -- and you left. I don’t feel quite solid. It’s as if the light could pass through. I go for long walks alone. I try not to think of you --

Shakti

What he wants:

A woman of ferocity in whose face ugliness and the exquisite twine unbreakably Even her pores are beloved

A woman who owns her nature is beyond posession, who opens herself like lovegifts, scent, opens herself the way musk opens the air in a room with presence

A woman who would have created her child out of her own self but chooses to share the body

A woman who can bend A woman who will not stoop Who knows how to ride and snarl protectively and be perfectly still, moving only with eyes and breath.

A woman who understands her powers, both the subtle and the provocative, who is comfortable in her danger, is wise to the blindness of men, the ways of binding, who refuses to bind her man, or herself, who would risk freedom

Awoman who does not lead, does not follow but when she needs to can strike the man down and cradle him when he bleeds

In these moments he is coming into his power, creation and dissolution are equal and just and lovely and he is gentle and extreme, careless and terrifying. He wants the woman who sees this who is not afraid of his weakness and his strength which are one.

He wants a woman who is no more a goddess than he is a god, imperfect and mortal as he is, and in moments with her he wants to forget this and believe she and he are immortal, separate and unified, complete alone, more complete together and they are enough to last the others lifetime.

LostBoy^?

There was this LostBoy^?, ya see, something cracked his memory and hunks of brain stuff fell out -- not so’s you could see, fact is he looked a lot like most anybody. But but he coulden’t remember things. Like who he was. Sometimes where.

He has this place in him, he calls The Commonwealth. He thinks, maybe he lives in there, maybe he’s a continent moving through a body. Maybe he’s the land that Columbus was really searching for. Sometimes he dreams he’s just the may-be before it is.

Maybe that’s why when first he meets you, he asks you for his name. Like maybe he’s a planet, or a mountain peak, and you’re about to stake a claim for your kindom, your nation, your religion, or just for yourself. Or maybe you’re the woman whose got the treasure map to his memory. Or maybe you just know. He doesen’t.

Anyway, LostBoy^? knows this bit of fact, that he ties tight around his little finger. He doesen’t own his name. He doesen’t know how it got away, he thought he’d staked it down, or at least branded it, or perhaps he stuck it in a safe place within his ear with a wad of bubblegum. Maybe he got slapped and it fell out, maybe someone pulled down his pants and he closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and whacked back so hard stuff fell out, maybe nothing happened, and it was just molecules of air hard as bullets wiping out bits of his brain and taking his name. He calls himself LostBoy^?, but he knows that’s not right.

He’s trying to make it right ya see. We gotta all make things right you see. To find his name. Your name. My name. LostBoy^? .... .... ....

He goes on a journey carrying the things he knows tied into his belt-buckle with a bandana. This is what he knows: He knows he’s not LostBoy^?. But he is LostBoy^?. He knows he has no map, but that there are clues. He knows the people he meets on the road will help him or not. He knows he comes from the Commonwealth. But then people say, “ya well -where’s this Commonwealth”, he can’t say, and just points at his head, then at his feet.

LostBoy^?’s been travelling a long time. He meets people. He befriends them. He falls in love, and never out. He can do some simple magic tricks. He gives folks ideas he didn’t know he had. They give him ideas they didn’t know they had. He doesen’t know quite what is dream and what is real, so he mixes them up into chalk drawings on the sidewalks that kids come to see, sometimes bigfolk too. His drawings have bold outlines in all the colours of a Crayola pack, and no interiors. He says to the crowd: “fill it in!” when he feels good, or “fill it in?” when he feels not so good.

Some people think he glimmers a little like things magical. LostBoy^? laughs at that. One day a woman comes up to him and points a finger: “you’re Peter Pan, aren’t you”. He turned around with the most ferocously black-in-black eyes, gathers his dignity like a black cloak, and rises up to his full height. From the great distance of the Commonwealth he proclaims, “No, I’m not him. I’m not him. I am LostBoy^?”

Then he sags, and dwindles, holding an invisible cane for support and says with the sly-hungry-whine of a beggar, “Hey lady, can ya give me back my name?”.

Transparancies

I have been vanishing again -- I am sorry, who am I to keep winking in and out of existance?

Alleyway’s call to me -- they say, here, here, in this corner you can dissapear.

Your voice tries to call me back in sound waves that carry -- but I am only two dimensions, and your voice becomes a flock of geese that fly over me.

I wish you could follow me --- that your curves and squarness could become points, that I could collapse you and carry me back with me

But you would not believe -- you would look for your hands, your teeth, your feet and demand the same from me.

You would convince yourself you were holding me, on the days I decided to walk through you -- and when you found a strand of my hair in your mouth, you would rationalize -- and laugh, when I explained I left a kiss for you -- in the centre of your brain. Even when you made love to me -- and I said I came in two -- you thought it was a metaphor.

So, I played by your rules, for as long as I could, spinning so fast that for a while I became round, and you could hold me without lying to your senses.

But I am a woman who the light shines through. I didn’t promise to be real very long, And the shadows of the alley-way recall the simpler world where time fades me lovely as an old photograph.

Leda’s Diary

It wasn’t an eagle, vulture, or god. It was a man dressed in white with pomeegranite on his breath and I was not his wife.

And this is what all those verses glorified the fact I was raped

Damaged People

Maybe, oh once upon a time a man named jac met a girl named jil in a pink supermarket with wide isles so everyone could walk five abreast to better view the tropical fruit.

So here's jack checking out fruit when SMACK he gets runover by a cart of rapidly moving vegetables: Enter jil. Jil is a jain veggan with a gas mask over her face to keep out inadvertant meat supplements.

In the true spirit of non-violence she is buying only rotten fruit.

It so happens that jac too is looking for rotten fruit. Not that he's religious about it, or even vegetarian. but he had this dream where rotten fruit was a metaphor for, was a metaphor for ....... oh shit, I forget that part.

Anyway, in his dream a figure came to him and spoke: "If you build this, and the fruit is rotten, and the figure is large, and it stalls traffic, and gets your arrested, then consider yourself arressted in the name of art."

The point is: jac and jil have something in common: rotten fruit. Well, it's a start..

Of course they also have histories, histories that lead them unalterably to this fateful meeting in the wide isle, now crowded with rotten fruit.

Jil was married To a one eyed medical Dr. specializing in lobotomy's who left her when he found the perfect woman without a brain.

Jac's last affair was with little red riding hood, or at least a wolf with her passport book. Anyway, Grandma's house turned out to be a bit of a nightmare. Jac's a little confused about whether he got the right address. Problem is, jac's basically dyslexic, existing in a mythic world without roadmaps.

So we have jac, And we have jil. All we need now is a plot. Buyt what do jil and jac need? Romance? Sex? Jelly donuts? Better taste in groceries? Well all of the above are quite vital, but what jac and jil really need is a good abrasion, emery cloth to wipe off the scar tissue of experience.

Jac knows about scar tissue from a course in first aid, where he watched six hours of gory medical video before sneaking out for a horror flick to cheer him up.

Jil knows about scar tissue because her former husband was once sued for replaciing a patients brain with it. Jil stood loyally by Dr. throughout the lawsuit. But after, she refused to eat sushi, amd soon turned vegetarian. And that's how history works.

Any way, back to the present story.

They abrade each other. It's sort of like brushing teeth, but more intense, And, of course, done gently, it is part of healing. Shed the dead skin, bring new skin to air and light so it may grow.

They go for walks, go to movies, go on vegetable safaris, bagging bananas in the wide isles. Occassionally they go for jelly donuts. But mostly they talk. Mostly they talk about nothing. Once in a while jac or jill will try and talk about something. Sometimes they will try and speak somethings at the same time.

Somehow, it never quite works out.

And so they drift apart, They start shopping in different supermarkets. Jac has gone sour on fruit.; his visions are replaced by other non-perishable items. Jil, meanwhile, has been radicalized by a newspaper article about a poor veggan girl captured by a gang of fast food merchants and forced to eat non-grain fed beef.

Years later, in different cities, jac still remembers jil's smile. Jac thinks it was a very nice smile, wide open and with a wink in it. Maybe he'll sculpt that smile out of used pizza cartons.

Years later in different cities, Jill has become a high profile crusader for the anti-fruitisectionist league. Their latest campaign is against the "Cactus Boutiques" which reportedly have been engaged in Cacti poachery. Antifruitisectionist pamphlets in hand, Jill heads out for the New Meixican desert.

Jac is already out in the desert. He's not quite sure how he got there. He had been looking for a Shaky's Pizza in Prince George, and took a wrong turn somewhere. Anyway, there are no pizza cartons in the desert. This does not perturb jac,, since he has just realized his life's work. He will teach gopher snakes to smile.

At sunset, before when the snakes come out of hiding, he sits at a distance and tells them stories. But once jac realized the gopher snakes have no ears, he improvises. Eventially he finds, he can communicate if he rhythmically drums his head against the sand: the gopher snakes can pick up the vibrations. While this discovery brings jac incredible joy, the gopher snakes still can't smile.

One day a gopher snake that new jac runs into jil. She is leading a guerilla campaign against the Cactus Boutique Poachers. She is tracking their "kills", and swearing in capital letters, when SWOOSH, a gopher snake winds across her path. Oddly, it smiles at her. Jil is terrified, does not know a gopher snake's smile from a rattler's death's head grin, and thinks it means, "I'm gonna bite you and suck your blood and inject my venom into you so you die a slow and horrible death."

Jil is so terribly frightened, all she can thik to do is match the snakes smile with her own while praying it goes away. Curiously, the snake crawls to her feet, gently taps its head against the ground several times, then winds on its way.

A few minutes later Jil remembers how to sit down. So she sits down and cries. She sits there a long time,, as the ground warms and cools beneath her. At some time she passes out. When she wakes, it is night, there is a blanket upon her. As her eyes glaze open, she spots a small man with a cane, carefully planting Cactus seeds. Jac looks up from his work, "Hi there, m'am, sorry to disturb you, but you looked so sad and cold you reminded me of a shopping mall

The Garden of Sleeping Beauties for YB

It is spring in the garden. Two sleeping beauties walk there, standing out amidst the crowd of white umbrellas.

They contrast, shadow to light -- his darkeness to her paleness; her light melancholy punctuated by his brooding humour. But the single umbrella they share is black against the rain,

Together they walk the careful embroidered paths of this garden, smile at the passing white umbrellas, gush over children climbing brass horses. Only if you looked very closely would you notice that they are not quite awake.

Look at the way her neck bends, how her cheeks dimple when she smiles as she descends to sniff a red-orange flower. Then, still smiling, crinkles at the edges of her eyes, she jokes off-handedly of suicide.

Look at the way he darts and hides behind his hair, lopes and pushes his face into the green bushes like a nearsighted wolf. His pupils register elliptical raindrops, arced venation of dogwood leaves, the coarseness of the humous -- his sudden eyes dilate at her off-hand comments.

They move upon the cobblestones, the distance between she and he an exacting compromise of personal spaces, leaving them together and apart accompanied and alone -- awake or deep asleep, dreaming with open eyes.

Walking and talking, their conversation becomes a jazz session -- spontaneous harmonies and a-rhythms, that play off each other's whimsy; tagging each other's jokes, they play past sour notes to make the other smile.

At the water spout he grapples unskillfully with the camera as if at any moment it will grow wings. She corrects his lack of focus, "No, see, you've set it on infinity", grows frustrated when he fails to grasp why infinity equals 30 metres or more. So she photographs the water spout herself while he muses on the existance water spouts at infinity.

They pass a golden buddha statue, lifesize and smiling across the garden. She recalls collecting buddha dolls as a child. This strikes him as perversely entertaining, the notion of a blond child collecting small replicas of a potbellied asian rather than inhumanely proportioned barbie dolls. But the garden Buddha disturbs him. He can't recall the story. Was it about Buddha's feet. No, it had to do with waking. Buddha waking. But his memory feels like a soap-bubble dilating, the light refracted -- and soon they have passed farther down the garden, she leading.

He is blowing soap bubbles, and feigns a dense incapacity to understand why she will not accompany him into the garden shop if he insists on blowing soap bubbles inside. The irridescent films expand, dilating into silent "pops" at the point where they vanish. Both her irritation and his obstinance suppress giggles. Over the years each has mastered the gentle mischief of teasing past each other's insecurities.

The day comes into its ending, so they must depart the garden. Within the enclosed plastic space of the car each lapses into the privacy of silence. He drives as she absent-mindedly untangles curls from his hair. His peripheral vision registers how tired she looks. As he shifts his consciousness into the steering wheel, he finds a suspicion overtaking him that neither he nor she are quite awake. He does not tell her this across the distance of their mutual silence.

After he has dropped her off at home by the large oak that rains tent-worms, he continues driving north into the oncoming night. Hours pass as he falls into the waking trance of long distance driving -- parts of him begin to dream a story.

He dreams the story of Buddha waking by the Bo tree with a sudden understanding of human pain and suffering. Buddha woke to find tent-worms falling into his hair, and smiled calling them "little-buddhas". He put one near his nose and spoke to its eyeless greeness, "you know little-buddha, the gods can not help us in our lives. Their pain is not ours. We must help ourselves, we must wake into empathy with another's suffering. Forget the cares of the gods, our concern is with each other little-buddha."

A truck passing too close jars him awake. And he remembers how this whole day he left unvoiced his concern, his worry his caring for her. He walked beside her with mute honesty. Behind his smiles, beneath the surface anarchy, deeper than his mock humour, he had been screaming in his sleep for the both of them:

"Wake up, Wake up! It is spring and the orange blossoms are drinking in the rain. Wake up."

Post-Modern Beauty

The mirror does not lie -- she is imperfect, her hips, her lips, are not as they should be; too thin, or too full, or too something, either way, imperfect, her body is an embarrassment.

This will not do, she will have control of her body. She must have control of her own beauty.

Post-modern beauty starves herself, Until her belly is as flat as a bread-board, until her skin is just a tight sweater draped over her bones, until she is as two dimensional as a centre-fold. And still, she looks too ugly, and still she is not thin enough, except for her lips, which are too thin, and she is sure no one will kiss them.

When the paramedics come, the last thing she hears is her mother sobbing, “My girl, my beautiful little girl” When she comes to she is in a room without a mirror, and there are tubes in her arm, and finally, she begins to be alarmed at how her body and her beauty have strangled each other. She thinks, “I don’t want to live like this”

Months later, she walks into her bedroom. There is a full mirror by the closet. It has been covered by an old blanket. She uncovers it. Closes her eyes. Strips off her clothing. Takes a deep breath, then opens her eyes and stares and stares and stares, whispering this is me -- not so bad. She covers the mirror again. For a month, she conducts this ritual. One day she leaves the mirror uncovered, singing, “Mirror mirror on the wall, I’m not afraid of you at all”

She is learning that to be beautiful she must look into the mirror and smile at the miracle of her wondrous, imperfect body

Some nights she sneaks into her sister’s room and dismembers all the barbie dolls, paint's nipples on their breasts, sag lines, with play-doh she accents their nose blesses them with imperfect lips. In the morning her sister will confront her, “You went an uglified ‘em again!”. Beauty puts on her sternest big sister voice, “No, really, they’re still quite beautiful. I just made them a little realistic. Besides, they’re only dolls, .

Frida Kahlo Draws Judas

“Something strange had happened. Frida was totally nude. The collision had unfastened her clothes. Someone in the bus, probably a house painter, had been carrying a packet of powdered gold. This package broke and the gold fell all over the bleeding body of Frida. When people saw her, they cried ‘La bailarina, la bailarina!” With the gold on her red, bloody body, they thought she was a dancer.” -- Alejandro Gomez Arias

Frida draws Judas as herself -- she gives him her face, the thick eyebrows that meet in the centre like chevrons the isoceles triangle of her chin; she darkens the hair above her lips into Judas’ mustache.

And, so as not to betray herself she gives Judas her breasts, her navel, her sex which is hidden by a gold shroud, because she is too modest to display her shattered pelvis, the black hole of her uterus which gives birth only to miscarriages.

Frida gives Judas her features on the day she was crucified by the metal bar that impaled her when the bus crashed, Sept, 17th, 1925, the steel handrail having entered on the left side came out through the vagina -- “I lost my virginity”. The ressurection happened slowly, over a hundred operations, and some things were not put back right.

Frida gives Judas her face in the moment before suffering begins to sculpt it. The face of a 17 year old girl, looking very directly into the camera, the lips about to part.

And she kisses her self portrait, once, on the lips, her mouth open where it’s mouth is about to open. Her lipstick leaves an imprint, like a flower encircling Judas’ mouth. Frida steps back and whispers, the secret names of former lovers, lists their accusations, betrayals real and imagined, and lower than a whisper she will silently mouth the things she has not betrayed.

It is Sabado de Gloria. tonight, all through Coyacan, and up into Mexico city, the people will burn Judas in effigy, and scream the names of soldiers, police-men, tax-collectors, anyone who has earned their common hatred. They will call them all “Judas” and will explode them from the inside out.

Only Frida Kahlo will remember the original Judas, exploded from the inside out, Young Judas with an open mouth with all the love and betrayal leaking through his eyes, through her eyes. She will say, “manis, I forgive you”

Diego Rivera Sketches Frida’s Ashes

“July 13, 1954 was the most tragic day of my life. I had lost my beloved Frida, forever .... Too late now, I had realized that the most wonderful part of my live had been my love for Frida”

Love, this is not hell, only the crematorium.

the cart is moving your still face into the furnace.

Love, I Diego rivera must bear witness -- sketch this.

I follow you, the heat is great. When you died did you see mine or Noguchi’s all too pretty face?

Flames roar. People fall back. I anchor. Even here I can sketch a face faster than lesser men can have an erection.

Your torso snaps up. Oh lord -- it must be body gas. You dead eyes, my dear do not rebuke me now --

The betrayals, the other women -- it was physiology -- I didn’t care. I didn’t mean to hurt you so.

All those ghost bodies, the miscarriages you had, to try and hold me were unnecessary. I was yours.

I was yous. Three things I’ve loved. Painting, women and Frida, you.

Sweat stains the sketch like tears. Love, your face is done.

Diego’s Masque

My grand-daughtor, in a week she will be baptized. It is to be a masqued, so I will dress in Frida’s finest clothes.

I will be Judas, in her lace, twin to the paper-mache taht hangs by the doorway of Frida’s empty house.

Frida would have loved this child, any child, as her own. I will kiss the baby , once on hte forhead, brush Frida’s perfumed sleeve past her nose and mouth.

Perhaps Frida will waft into that insensate mind, and curl into a ghost memory between generations -- the trace of a woman’s smell on her garmens, subtle as old betrayals made new.

Gifts

Once upon a time a man wandered giving away pieces of himself as he went. How he came to do this is a long story:

Finally, he returned home, to stay. Still, occassionally he would go up the mountain paths to escape the village where he was born. One day, two beings stopped him as he climbed: an Angel and a Demon were there, on the trail above him. They told him half his being was fire, and the other half was light -- and he would have to choose which he would keep -- the fire or the light.

But he didn't understand how this could be. He asked: Is not lightning made of light, and does it not cause fire. Is not the light that fills my desk lamp out of fire. How can you separate these things, how can I be made to choose.

And to this, the Demon and the Angel said the same thing: Nevertheless choose you must. The man refused.

The Demon turned itself into a circle of fire around the man. Smoke covered him, he choked and sweated, he fell on his knees, gasping for air. A voice came out of the circle of flame and said: Choose. The man refused.

And suddenly he could breathe again. The circle of fire gathered itself back into the Demon.

And then the Angel began to grow smaller and smaller. Soon it was a single focused point of light that shone straight at the man. He was blinded, he could see nothing but the light. He tried looking up, but the skies had dissappeared. He tried covering his eyes with his hands, but the light just shone through them as if they were not there. A voice rang in his blind head: Choose. the man refused

The man is still on that mountain path. He is turned to ice -- his mouth still frozen into an O of refusal.

During the day, there is a circle of fire. At night his body shines like a light. Only the bravest of the village go up there, and no one has walked past that point more than once.

The Kiss

Red poppies, a patchwork quilt fades into bodies. He is all rectangles, black to white. She is circles, rings and fine lines. Their patterns bend into edges.

Her left wrist guides his right wrist; her left hand draws him down -- they meet to one side, her right eye facing his left eye, both pairs close into the blindness of touch.

His lips are not upon her lips, but to one side, a half-turned cheek, the kiss left hanging, all implication...

Her toes are arched, triangle s trail from her ankles.

The Snake Charmer

Nothing hides me but my own darkness. Parrots squalk among leaves like green hearts. But I do not play for them. I do not play to still the serrated blades of grass, I do not play to draw down the yellowing moon, And Adam, I do not play for you

The duck billed bird that wanders by is deaf to my flute -- only the snakes hear my vibration through the tiny bones within their skulls. They come to me, dark muscle and vertebrae caress my neck.

Two snakes rise from the slender grass, and a third unwinds from the heart leafed tree.

While you and your god, Yaweh march through Paradise, naming each thing, marking territory, comparing ribs -- I play this bone-flute and call upon the snakes to cover my abandonment.

And Adam, have I told you how their tongues are forked?

Briar Bush

Singly they come hoping the brambles will part hoping for a sight a touch a kiss from the sleeping girl hidden within

Alone, they die upon the wild rose thorns their last thoughts, red with bleeding, the taste of pale lips .... as the bush enfolds them, thorntips drinking their blood.

Their fall into death is so gentle no rustle wakes the girl within turning softly in her sleep She dreams of a prince, and smiles, thinking he is before her, and she is awake.

Orpheus

The block of silence wakes me. These woods are falling -- hush!

Hush little raven, your rush of wings is terrified. But just

sit still. Slip beneath this cave of slash. Hide while lightening draws

and thunder undercuts the stillness. Just hush while I draw my flute into air.

Music is my blade A rush of wings is the edge of my song.

Silence aquires depth the way shadows stretch into the bark and branches. This too is my song.

Above us lightening strikes -- great trees groan then fall. Outside us the thrash of a thousand naked feet approach.

But this moment, little raven is Orpheus'. So hush while I shape stillness and the chiming of shadows into heart-wood.

Raven -- Memory, listen. Draw my last notes into your beak; pierce them like small berries. Carry the memory --- fly! Before the maenads ... Before the maenads come.

The Little Girl Down the Lane

The little girl down the lane no longer comes out to play. We go by her place, we knock on her door. But no one answers. And somehow, we forget her name.

Her name is like a blackboard in our minds. All chalk scribbles and erasure. My name's Luke. And there's Jill, and that's Dave, and Sandy likes riding Harleys.

But somehow, we've forgotten the little girl down the lane.

At first, Jill said, "Maybe she's been hurt" Dave said, "It'll come out in the wash." Sandy said, "Dave, you're such a dork", which started an argument.

But soon it was just like, we'd all forgotten her name.

Dave's an engineer. Jill's a dancer. Sandy basically rides the Harley, or when she runs out of money for gas, sidelights as a computer programmer.

I work at the 7-eleven weekdays, and clean out cages in the zoo weekends. Not that I like quadraped shit, I just like being around animals. The little girl down the lane was a writer of poems and songs, or was it the other way round: songs and poems.

The five of us grew up together, sometime during college. I think it's the beer. Moosehead beer. One morning you wake up and go, "Shit, I feel like shit", and vomit.

Then you stumble down to the mailbox, and there's a typed letter from the parental units, "Dear, we're retiring next year, and we'd dearly love to see you graduate.

We have this exorbitant dream that you'll be self-sufficient sometime before we hit senility. Love, mom and pop".

Anyway, sometime during college the five of us grew up.

We graduated. We share a house. Jill and Dave share a suite. Dave and I were pals as kids. Still are. Sandy's room and mine are side by side, or sometimes the same room, except when we're arguing, which is usually.

Sandy thinks I'm wasting my life. She's got some weird idea I should be on National Geographic TV, talking about the finer points of Yak dung. When things get rough, I go into the woods and track animals for a few weeks.

I can identify rodent bones in owl dung at 20 metres. I guess I'm the world expert on an unpleasant subject -- Shit. Anyway, I like the zoo job. Not that I like dung, but poop and behaviour reflect each other. Somehow I doubt National Geographic TV is ready for my masterwork: The Sociological Theory of Excrement.

Okay, okay, I'm just talking to hear my own noise. I'll stop.

The little girl down the lane is Sandy's younger sister, and Jill's cousin. We called her, "the little girl down the lane" cuz her rooms beside the bathroom, and cuz she's a year and half younger than us. Sort of, "baby" of our little family.

But she's barely been out in six weeks. I'm scared. I don't understand what's happened. Jill's gone in a couple of times. Sandy barged in once, but the door's been locked ever since. The little girl down the lane won't come out. And we have no idea why.

Maybe the girls know. But Dave and I don't. Whatever happened, happened the weekend all four of us were out camping.

The little girl down the lane, her name's Monica, had finals, and a hot date for the weekend. So we said, "good luck studying, don't do anything we woulden't", and we took off.

When we got back,

her door was closed. In the kitchen I found her poetry in the garbage, and a bunch of pictures all torn into tiny precise strips.

Jill went in a few times the second week, staying for hours each time. When she came out she woulden't tell us what they talked about. She told Sandy though, which is when Sandy barged past the door. When she came out, she went right past Jill and I, right out the door. I heard the Harley roar, and she was gone for hours. She returned, tight lipped, and spent the evening in Jill's room.

This has been going on for weeks. Dropping breakfast by the door of the little girl down the line. Going to work, coming home. Dropping off dinner. Picking up empty plates. It's all become routine. And that scares me too.

Dave and I have no clue what it's about. We feel like schmucks, and don't know why. One night we tried serenading her -- twin guitars, and really bad lyrics. No dice, she didn't squeak. The door didn't open a peep.

Last spring, when she'd turned 21, Dave and I'd pulled the same stunt, for her birthday -- at 5 a.m. She came out, squinting, sleep in her eyes; cussed us out; rewrote the lyrics and music, and made us keep repeating them till she thought we sounded right.

Our three part disharmony woke up Jill and Sandy. Finally, we all went out for a Birthday brunch. Sort of goofy and magical that time. That time feels like long long ago.

I asked Dave if he noticed the whispers. Sandy and Jill seem to speak in whispers, specially when we walk into the room. I don't get it. Neither does he, "it'll all come out in the wash", he says. I don't know ...

Monica. The little girl down the lane. It's like "Monica" has dissappeared. All that's left is "the little girl down the lane", a shadow creature and spook.

It's like our memories are being erased. It's like photographs fading in my hands. Click. There's Monica and Sandy pushing me into their parents pool. Click, Monica painted fluorescent in a play only an art student could love, or old pals sit through. We were at least half the audience that time. Click, there's Monica and me. Click, where's Monica?

Sandy had to go off a couple of weeks to Ontario, for a programming course. Jill and Dave were suppossed to go off to Iceland -- their dream vacation. I'd been planning another trip north to track rabbit and wolf predation. So we drew straws. I won, and stayed home, in case Monica ever came out of her room.

I think it was just last night. I thought it was a bad dream, but no, I'd heard a scream. It was Monica.

I heard her scream. I banged on the door. she just screamed louder. I thought they'd call the cops. I tried whispering. I said, I'd call a Dr., cops, an ambulance -- whatever she needed.

She talked to me then, sort of, "oh Luke, just fuck-off -- leave me alone, I'm okay, I don't need anything -- just just leave me alone.

So I went to my room. And cried. I haven't done that in years. This morning there was a note under my door: "Luke, I'm sorry, I didn't mean what I said.

It was signed, "The Little girl down the lane".

Under the note there was a package in a manila envelope: 1 photograph of the five of us at the zoo; 1 package of her poems, typed; a page in which she'd carefully pencilled,

When someone takes everything you are. When someone takes the song from your mouth, When someone takes the blood from your cunt, When someone takes the colour from your eyes, You lose your name.

Sands, Jillsy, David and Lukas:

If I get whole, I'll come back. If not, Remember what I was, forget what I've become -- Sands, tell mom and dad. I love you guys, but you can't get to where I live now,

The little girl down the lane.

I should be phoning people, I'm not sure who, but I, I should be doing something.

I just keep staring at the picture. The five of us. My name's Luke. And there's Dave beside me. And Jill and Sandy are sitting down. And there's Monica jumping up to our shoulders. There's Monica.

That's Monica.

Monica?

Cage Edge

To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors is to live without the self. Margaret Atwood, "Marrying the Hangman"

And if the language abuses your body, leaves you mute and raging, locked within these stone walls. The dim voices of your jailors seeping from without as they play poker, taking bets upon original sin. Notice this. The edge of your cage is loose. Since you are not wholly rational, that is enough -- a single loose edge, and the stone wall begins to heave, begins to weave holes into itself, collapses into a blanket in your hands.

Now you are free. While your jailors dream of jelly donut centres and conquests, you are free. You can take the blanket, enclose them while they sleep, enclose them the way you swaddle a baby. Or,

you can walk away as far as the edge of the sea. There among the half-shells, the irregular pebbles, the mute sand, you can listen to the pause between each wave. You can fall away, dream a language that will not become a cage.

Dream a language without jailors, a language where no hand upholds the crossbeam that hangs the other.

Wolf and Vampire

Wolf: It hunts me, I hunt it Through the curious dark, this uncomfortable night. I tremble in the shadows, the fearful lights of this man-place. These moments, I am lucid, they will pass. I feel the soil beneath the concrete. The motion of worms tramples my mind. Everything seeps into everything. I fall into my Other, into the endless present. Even this most moonless of nights, I fall.

I am lucid these moments. God help me. The moon.

Moon-scent. Earth-breath. Smell I Smell it. Smell I. It. It smells me.

1. It hunts I.

Vampire: Blood is blood. But this blood is not, is not merely that. Is not merely serum and hemoglobin. This blood carries the breath of the moon. Like tides, its ceaseless strength is the shadow of her will. So I fear. Not that I fear the fangs that guard this blood. The claws. The brute, cornered speed. The mindless intellect I can not comprehend. No, I fear this blood as a drowning suicide fears oxygen; I fear the first taste that marks the birth of my death, the death of my immortality, the cessation of this endless thirst.

I remember, I have not forgotten I was a man once.

But, oh look. The beautiful children. The brilliant rouge. The evening hair and the endless holes at the centre of their eyes. Oh, I am so thirsty. And they are so lovely.

Wolf: Hide, hide. Hunt. Hide. Womanchild in my arms. Dead child? Womanchild in my arms are you dead? Are you dead-not-dead? Not eat Womenchild. No. Not eatt What I was. Was I, was man, once -- or no man.

Oak-hill, dry hill. Grass over rock. Oak arms turning, so many bent arms praying to Moon. Oak hill, dry hill hide me, hide me. I hunt it. It hunts me. Hide me this night. No Moon this night. So tired this night.

Vampire: Like quark and antiquark, we are trapped in the nucleus of this masque -- this bizarre dance. It strangles all my lovers. All those lovely women, the beautiful men. It strangles each one. Gracelessly as all the maenads incarnate, with the efficency of a rodent weeding runts It strangles all my lovers, stills them in that moment before they come to me eternally. Each well is stopped after my first drink.

And this one was so lovely. I was so thirsty. I was so thirsty I could barely recall inanities -- enough to pass for conversation. And this child was so unafraid. I hate that, the fear in their eyes, for I love them so.

Then it fell upon me from a low roof. I did not expect that. That it would attack this most clear, this most moonless of nights. Attack here, among the noise and lights it so fears. I screamed as it lifted her by the throat, as it bunched before throwing her into a wall I screamed: "I have not drank this one, I have not even ..." It stopped then, in the furtive half-turn, of a squirrel, then fled with her.

So I hunt them. Her blood, Its blood, the anticipation of their blood engorges my veins. My stride quickens, I shift into the hungry dark. Its fear musk betrays it. It is there, on that hill. Somehere among the damnable trees.

Wolf: These moments I am lucid, they will pass. Beneath the rough corked bark below my hands I sense the growth of this great branch, sense the slow creak of its bulk against the trunk. It hunts me. I hide here. This moonless night my Other falls away.

In the breeze I taste bulbs of death Camus that dot the bottom of this hill. My tongue is dry and alkiline. I do not remember why this womanchild is here. I sense her ungentle sleep. She has red hair -- this child. Red, I remember red hair and black hair, black hair turning red in certain lights.

I leap down to the grass below, my four hands curl into the blades, their silica edged grain. The dead blades are limp with dew. I rise, my hind hands root into the rocks below. I wait. I am lucid these moments. These moments pass.

Vampire: It waits. It does not evade me. I do not see it among the shadows. Its fear musk has subsided. But it is there. The air between us is mollasses: the friction of that drag wearies me. Why do I not fear those fangs?

Mary: And I was frightened. I remember a man. A street-corner man; he smiled and I knew he would love me. The endless holes of his eyes tracked our future. He is there, leaning against that rock. Eyes closed, so pale, and he has not moved, he is so still he might be dead.

Mary hold on tight. I am in a great old tree. Beside me a woman crys. She is naked, and so thin, and allover covered in a fine black hair. She is so sad, I stroke her hair. I do not know what else to do.

I am frightened, so scared of heights. Nothing makes sense: this woman, the dead man below -- the shadows coming alive, the moonlight -- so much moonlight.

-- MishtuBanerjee - 02 Jun 2004