Aeschylean Blues
Half-open, are you afraid?
Are you a quitter, are you a quitting
kind of a door?
Are you cracked? Are there cracks in you, are you exposed?
Bronzed, armorplated. Steelplated. Loyalest oak-
plated. Of sweetgum, of cedar.
Where is the latch, the secret needle
or the letter?
Excuse me, pea-jacket. Pocket of grapple.
Put it back.
The yarn is here; take it from your head.
The field all woven into. A thirsty history
stretched into (me). With my name like a giant rail
or fence. Runnels the place where. Your hand, a place where
I go. Red in the corner.
I sit.
She has no recall of his stenciling talents.
He has no information.
Things could get easy, or sublime.
II. Ariadne, Shucks
Lesson: the marionettes wiggle onstage
Lesson: and there is music
it happens
drama is easy
1. from a man or metal chair
2. raspy as hate
I’m thinking of something and a metal fob
I’m thinking of (a highway)
with something average
(a highway)
missing though like the ocean
exits: sands of scorn, isle, atoll, we know how all this ends, amen
*
but this as we’re getting up out of our seats and whispering
(the last dialogue we might hear from them)
I wanted to roll you up in a carpet, one of those Persian jobs, put you in my car
no you wanted me to walk out and chop off my feet
no abuse me come back no
guess what i can’t do it here
by myself
then this goes on endlessly on and on and we’re on some train to Madrid
III. Pseudo-Dionysus, not Theseus, Already
but before that could happen
(a voice)
speak expert hope mechanical frailty
shameless you deserve a good whipping
hard in proportion to your bitterness
you deserve
Agamemnon
Libation Bearers
Eumenides
Absolom Absolom
how do you come
to the mercy
of the threshold
or kill the stronger one
I once thought I was flying
it was dangerous to move
without you
but you didn’t exist
I felt your chains
were simply screaming
(shocking me awake
then I was)
a myth, a song, and a good one