dumbass

okay, so i put too many pages in the book. do i do the whole thing over, or write another poem?

sigh. being me...

song

there was a girl went underground
(went underground, went underground).
under hill and under down
(under down, under down).

the ones who loved her sought her round
(sought her round, sought her round).
they sought her up and sought her down
(sought her down, sought her down).

they turned up earth, they dug the ground
(dug the ground, dug the ground).
they found her in the earth deep down
(earth deep down, earth deep down).

her eyes were glass, her hair was down
(hair was down, hair was down).
her hands were red, her hair unbound
(hair unbound, hair unbound).

they took her up out of the ground
(out of the ground, out of the ground).
they took her back to hearth and town
(hearth and town, hearth and town).

in her narrow bed they laid her down
(laid her down, laid her down).
they went, came back, and found her gone
(found her gone, found her gone).

and in her narrow bed they found
(bed they found, bed they found)
a rose full-blown, a rose
full-blown, a rose
full-blown.

malfeasance

i'm sorry to anyone who may exist and reads anything on this blog maybe that these posts are getting prosey.  i'm just thinking about things, and they have to be thought about in immediacy, and poetic thought is, for me, about immediacy (to, i'm sure, the detriment of my poetry).    i mean, that's what all my "i don't know how"-ing boils down to: i'm not sure what i'm doing with the type of moment i'm dealing with, or the feeling that's started to stir behind every moment.  aka i'm in a silent and intrapersonal ferment.

and it's amazing.  my imagination stretches like something that stretches less gracefully than a cat but isn't inorganic...either something with legs, like a rabbit, or something without 'em, like a worm.  worms are blind and therefore appropriate; rabbits are disjointed and therefore also quasi-appropriate--i think too much.  the point is that if i think about the quiet revolution in my circumstances in, not abstract, but poetic terms, i come up with something that feels very new.  from an early age, i thought i knew it all, but this...whatever it is, upwelling of green in me, is like an invitation to find out something.  in quite-oblique opposition to that dylan thomas poem: open the doors and open all the windows, as long as early spring is lying green and silver on the wet cars banked in the bart lot.  it's not the season that's the metaphor, but rather the colors of the season.

the feeling localizes in me comprehending the fact that my eyes are green.  not always, that is, but i think the grey they sometimes are is something like a mask.  identifying the grey as a mask doesn't make it less to the point...sometimes a mask tells more truth than the truth can, right?  but sometimes the truth tells the truth more than a mask: they're intervalent, the mask and the truth and/or the grey and the green.  

being hidden doesn't make me secret and being secret doesn't make me hidden; this is something i should learn more about.

maybe i see the revolution of circumstances in me as localized in this eye color thing because...well, maybe i see it that way because i'm kind of a douche, but barring that as-always available explanation, maybe i comprehend the change as finding habitation in eye color acknowledgment because it has to do with what i am, as opposed to what i deny myself the saying of.  i always saw things as to do with how i could express them, how i could define them, because that made it easier to interact with them.  and then i wouldn't say them as i'd found them, because of my fundamental belief that when it came to self-expression, words were somewhat on the useless side.  which left me with nothing except words i wouldn't say.

but now i have eye color.  the green and silver season.  and a drawer full of underwear.  except not literally, because i need to do laundry.

HATE...MEEEE.

why must the dang restrictions loosen just when their tightening could be considered a good thing? why can i protect myself better than twinkies to the next-to-last degree and then when it counts let everything go for the sake of self-explosion? i see wrong. i do bad. i'm too weird. yes. when it comes down to it, i see things that are only a little bit there because i'm weird. and apparently i don't know how to look or what to see. i know nothing about what i'm looking at.

it'd be good to shake the foundations to their marrow (foundations with marrow...apparently it's a creepy mammalian building), but i don't know how. all i know is that i suck, and that i'm blind because i've made assumptions that aren't valid. from the bottom up. like the sweet sweet inevitability of jenga, but without the inevitability. i mean, i could retain this structure for years. if i don't know how to poke the holes or where to poke them, i could continue to live in this ridiculous head for years.

it's better to shake, i know that--it's just that this kind of shaking is unfamiliar. usually i shake with knowledge, but now i shake with feeling, not just red and black but the deep green. the red and black shake incised like a shard of that stained glass that the flying goat guy replaced in that one church after world war II. the green shake is different (more odwalla-y...that was a joke): it goes through ground, but instead of spearing from ground up, it spreads and covers, like grass, but like a lichen. the whole idea of shaking is that you don't know how to shake--but i wish i did; i wish i could encourage it in myself. because as things stand now i only shake sometimes and i'm afraid it won't be enough.

i've had the hard bloom; i'll have it again. is there such a thing as a fissure at peace? knowing that my own eyes are mostly green and that my hair is black, and that i can feel anything, can be anything, but choose to feel and be this select variety of things because i have judged them approximately truer to my form? is this a dynamic sort of peace, or am i just more desolate, and breaking apart farther and farther? i guess it doesn't matter--i guess what matters is that it's movement.

yesterday i was getting out of the car and i had this moment of realization that i'm wonderful. i always thought looks didn't matter too much, but i never could figure out why i felt that way... yesterday i knew why. but i can't say the reason, because i don't know it know it.

geezus!

song of the maenads

nor summer nor winter--nor life nor death--
nor flesh::nor breath::nor thought nor mean nor plenty--
nor over nor under. but through. let the hard bloom grow. let the great red stain stain stain. let the red rose stretch and strain to open and to gaping.

creep creep creepabaga

song of eurydice's bridesmaides and persephone's handmaidens

we wrap her in the winding sheet
the heart that leapt has lost its beat

and from her breast a flower grows
it is the rose

a red red rose with thorns that prick
a maiden's eager fingertip

and at the root it feeds.
the rose never bleeds.
heed a maiden's song.
the rose knows no wrong.

once more unto the whatnot

danged quintet...i feel like there ought to be some attempt to bring the principle players together, but if there're only two singers, it'll be, by defied definition, a somewhat nebulous piece. multiple alliances? is that the term? according to le tigre? probably not?

quintet for hades, demeter, orpheus, and eurydice/persephone (an adequate translation)

2 or more characters:
"justice for i and everything
that saw her move and breathe, everything
that wept and worshipped in her wake."

1 character:
"justice for the rose that drops
for lack of light from her eyes."

1 character:
"when she walked, her step
was a bird that dropped in flight
to sweep the ground with a giddy wing."

1 or more characters:
"watching from behind rock and stone
feeling lichens stretch and tangle
in the heat of her presence."

1 or more characters:
"the vines stretch toward her like snakes."

1 character:
"a star broken from the heavens
spilling light like a song."

2 or more characters:
"what will we do without her.
where will we go.
we overswell ourselves with sorrow. we crack
like stone in a bone-dry riverbed."

persephone and eurydice:
"aaaaaah aaaaah aaaaaaaaah" (possibly to the melody of those songs they were supposed to have sung)

uh...

Aristaeus: niether the honey nor the bee


honey-limbed eurydice
fleeter than the bumblebee.

waxen-faced eurydice
i chased her toward the apple tree
unlucky me, ill-fated she,
serpent-stung eurydice

those fading eyes, what did they see
when in their death they looked at me?
the bees build near the apple tree,
while underground, eurydice.

quietus thingum

hades to himself

her full pink wholeness,
the floral cheek, the step like wind,
i watch drop like a garment.
i watch her bare to pale and silence.

the bone moon wanes and the rock pulls toward it.
the fire quivers in the hearth; the ash drops quiet.

she does not sing; how is she singing?
her eyes like stone remote--
like stone, that vein of breaking heat--

red seed juice stains her lips and teeth,
runs down her face of white and black--

why, why, why do i love
her more than ever, more than ever?

end of the line-oh

duet sung between someone who heard a song persephone sang and his memory of persephone singing it

sleep, to rise again.

even the winged birds

lie still at night. the ruby-eyed falcon

and the dove with its feathers

like gray fur.

sleep, to rise again.

the cat's tongue unfurls.

night throws herself across the sky.

unknot the ribbons

in my hair.

the seed

works

in earth.

sleep, sleep, to rise once more.

thingaling

duet for someone who is singing a song that he heard eurydice sing and his memory of eurydice singing it

remember, my love,
when you are gone from me--
remember the rosemary that piled the rock,
my love,
under the low gray sky.
remember the petals that dropped
from the black-boughed trees.
remember the rain in the dark.

remember, my love (remember, my love)
when you are gone from me
(when i am gone from you).
remember the clouds in the sky, how 

they shone silver (remember 

the clouds shining silver),
how they shone as white
as bone (how they shone
as white as bone).

eurgh...

charon says

does she weep?
i ferried one, hair up, face blank;
she flickered like a lamp.

the other he pulled through the ground.
hades with his mighty arm.
like an inverted bloom--
she fades and flickers too.

does she weep? the ground
has its passions, the deep
earth
its cracks.

i ferried one.

her face was like

a pane of glass.