Folklore
I.
And what will you do for it, and what have you done?
Will you back up through your life?
Will you outlive, did you betray?
Will you stretch? Did you foam at the mouth?
Did you
complete? At least once did you?
How will you fare, when asked?
It isn’t as easy as pushing the cabinet around.
For there is a coffin in the room, gets in the way.
The coffin you know is glass.
(suggest that you face it)
It only happened one night, but it happened to two.
It happened, the night with the most number of stars in it.
The night with the greatest fear.
The most desire.
Or it failed to happen.
For there was someone with you, there was someone
always there that you might have gone forward with
there was that someone you might have had
for there was someone, there was
the person clearly finding you
unappeased
there was that someone, who knew you,
who found you in such a state
in such a condition
and asked you to recover yourself, and you did not.
II.
And where are we in the story today?
Page 200? Page 50?
Is it past, has anything happened, are we there yet?
I was told that there would be a crossroads soon
but I don’t believe it. For I was walking with you
yesterday by the house and you disappeared.
I was walking and you just disappeared–
Pfft. Into the air. There you went,
around the edge by the back porch…
When that can happen, when you can just disappear
into the rocks, the briars, the spring bulbs–
when you can just float off whenever you want–
what good is a crossroads?
We left the woods hoping we would discover
something in the museums along the way,
something useful that we hadn’t seen in the woods,
something that would take a little more time to understand…
and it’s true–we did gather a lot of strange noise
in the museums. We learned to use words
that we had never heard before,
we learned how to interpret, how to collar, how to be
taxonomical. We learned the difference
between the tactile, and the certain.
And we remembered our string.
(Of course).
But then, what good is a crossroads?
What good is the light?
I might be mistaken,
but I don’t think we are going to be able
to find our way back without it.
III.
Won’t he be surprised?
Won’t he
Having fought over their bodies, having worked their bodies
into the wall
and Having been so skillful to kill them
and Having been so
terribly excited
Having been through that, having been so courageous and
hacked up and fraught through about that
and all them bones won’t he be
Won’t he won’t he won’t he
but first
If the king and the queen are both dead
maybe we should talk about them
maybe, if we can see them from sleep
how they sleep
how they fare, what they rate
what are their points-of-view
exactly, what could be the drift
of their problem, what could it be a problem for
how could we know
Like, all the policemen will want to know
if it was a single boom, or a boom-boom,
that we heard
but still
I think he will be surprised
I think
I think
I think I just think he will
For every way we tell this story it is clear
For maybe they do it. Maybe the chair is passed. Maybe they think it is so fine
to be dying that they just kill themselves before he gets there.
only it’s real panicky
kill me then stab me through it talk to me do it quick
and we think
if the queen should not be scolded could not remember having loved
before
if the king could not be slumped
over his body
then even this
is a moment we can prefer to lose focus on
and so I think he will
I really do I think he will be surprised
for there is a child now here she sits
she goes back of the door
and she rises
and she is wise and she is wonderful
she climbs a ladder
and she goes up, up, up
Hurry Hurry
before disappearing
IV.
I’m having a vision, he said.
Go away.
We went away.
That night would be hard to forget.
In every town, the story, working.
The King and Queen were going to die.
You and I were going to fall out.
The Prince was going to awaken Briar Rose.
You remember Briar Rose–
stuck up in the castle
with almost no time, almost.
And the Prince had no choice but to be
Superman
and scream and scream and scream
half the world
to a more reasonable halt.
Oh, Lois.
Oh, Hello, you monster.
Well. That wasn’t in the plan, but
we heard it.
Meanwhile, the whole length of the walk back
you were skirting the issue.
You were making the cliff look silly.
I said, don’t fall.
Or fall.
If we’re in a labyrinth, it won’t matter.
V.
Does this picture hurt?
It hurt me.
The first time I saw it I wanted to jump out a window,
run under a passing coach. I wanted to scream,
“I have fallen from a great tower.”
But that’s just the kind of person I was.
I thought that all of life began on the front row.
I thought that it was personal.
I thought that if I drew you tight enough
around me, if I made the circle wide enough,
for you, it could be more personal.
A world on the rims in the ruins of our field goggles.
Now the nest is different.
Now I have to leave the room when we fight;
when I lose control, I count ten.
I say dissolute.
I say Mirror Mirror.
I say Mirror Mirror it is chaste
it is the kind of thing that you
say to someone.
I say it.
I feel like nothing should have been taken
from us, and yet,
it has been.
Where we were going
our sleep became such a cruel rapture
we had to be cut from the tower.
Only one of us reached bottom.
VI.
But really, does this picture hurt?
It’s missing something. It’s missing
a limb. It’s missing a tooth, a nail, a letter.
It’s missing an arm, a dirty arm. It’s missing
a hand, just the hand, the fingernails
cut back to the quick, honeyed palms/sugared palms
over your mouth, rough fingers that dig in
and grab you.
It’s missing…
Snow White, Snow White.
I pulled out my tooth and there was a garden
in the socket. I pulled out my garden
and there was an arm
waving, waving…
Hello. How are you?
Are you missing? Are you?
Push a little ballad from your garden.
Push a little.
It’s quite a garden you have,
my dear, quite a socket.
Push a little.
You could seed a whole set
of false onions.
My, you’re quite a lettuce.
You’re quite, quite a woman.
You’re some Rabbit.
You see, I pulled out my feelings far
in advance of everything.
I pulled you down
and then I huffed and I puffed.
VII.
If I were a healthy person, it would be a different story.
It would be the story of you and me.
It would be the walk back to the house
with seeds in our pockets, down the familiar road.
It would be about how we drop our sticks and agree
to talk a little
about action/reaction, about making use of the available light
while we are still in it,
about how we should hush again (how we hush)
when we pass the motorcade
receding down the bright hill; how,
when we reach the open lane,
the beekeepers beckon in their invisible nets,
the zookeepers in their huts;
the climatologists grow cooler weather,
and the lion tamers sit on the cages.
Otherwise, it’s just hard, too hard,
with the bristling of bees at the edges of vision,
to separate.
And so we keep on going until we reach the final house
to collect the orchestra.
At the end of that road, (I’ve heard)
the baby stalks grow skyward,
and we might have been able to laugh, once
meet me in an envelope
in a bag
in a little seed bag
but our aversion became such an aversion, it fed us.
Magnetism
I. Get Up and Go Out
Time to go to the mall, OK?
Just put on your clothes.
Put on your shoes, your make-up,
your Nez Perce necklace
that allows you to find everything.
Find me.
I’m behind this fence.
I’m setting apart the broadsides.
I’m making one kind of a tool
that will open all the locks.
I don’t want us to get lost out there,
in meaning.
In spite of the heat there have been
reports of bears, a solar system
pulsing around the parking lot.
II. How They Tried to Kill Henry
Drive-bys are converted from drive-ins
which used to be ‘theaters of sex;’
you don’t see many of these now.
All the sex takes place inside;
within walls, with the plumbing
it’s literally whitewashed from the scene.
(Said your ideology to me…)
It takes goods, it takes looks, it takes friends,
flowers from a regular joe.
It takes his freedom and it says to him
“there’s liberation in judgment.”
–and we believe that.
Now we have a bed: who’s hiding
underneath us? who’s there?
After all, these fields are pickets,
are fence, are incongruent. In dreams
you go on watching them forever…
III. Let’s Go
Do we grow in the mall?
Can you try on a few more shirts while I pee?
Yes, that looks good on you–let’s go.
I’m dreaming of Demeter while you–
hold it–I’m dreaming of Demeter.
Yes, the whole thing looks good on you.
Now can we see that movie?
Stay in line. I don’t know if I can evoke a sauna.
But I can dream. Where were you in my dream?
Oh yes. I had found a convenience store.
I bought green tea and a Snickers bar.
I crossed the grass. Demeter was reading,
elbows against the back of the theater.
Yes, I mean outside. The lines in those days
wrapped around and around the buildings,
millions of us outside.
–I thought we were surrounded. Let’s go.
IV. Doctor
Do we need a cortisone shot,
something to stop this itch?
I feel like I should stop.
Or you stop. A glass slipper?
Would be sweet.
I want to hold your sweet parts.
Lick your dirty foot.
There is a prism,
a billboard. Time. And you realize,
the Novocaine had no effect.
It was like the negative–
no sentiments.
It held us up, it threw us out,
caught our image and tossed our image
to the glass.
But that was just seeing.
Beyond this there is another
picture.
Beyond the drape
that is true, impudent.
A most charming picture.
V. Teaser for Anne Boleyn
Tell the other to come out of hiding.
I’m awake. I’ve had thoughts. In dreams
I’ve pulled you down by your ankles;
I’ve grabbed your throat.
So we’re not in the King’s retinue anymore.
So his pavilion slips into the water,
gives its shimmer to the greater shimmer.
So it bleeds. We must not mind this.
Follow the gaming pattern.
The steps lead to a sunny room, an apartment–
with three sides open to the audience,
the outside, the lush wildlife retreat;
the fourth kept garish, oversized, flat
with windows and knitting which presuppose
an alternative purpose. Something
was killed here something wild
out of neglect. Finally the chessboard
which means next to nothing which
(although it is small and sits on the table
between us) opens
along a central fold that keeps the two sides
as far apart as it can.
Do you know how to win this one,
Is it even winnable?
VI. Just yourself thinking about me
Look at your formatting.
Demeter is not appalled by this.
Demeter knows.
I talked to her in the car
about her sister. I sat in the car
at the top of the hill
in the police cruiser. I said (her daughter)
I said that we were lucky
to be thinking about the same thing–
that was rare.
And the moon the same moon.
I asked, whether she had parted ways
with her garden, or not.
*
I sat in her garden.
I said, I know.
the picture will hold you up
the picture will arrest you
you will not be able to forget
the picture
the picture will argue with you
from the wall
*
She had no talent for miracles
she said
(just for the mirror)
I said that was a lie
I was a musician
I said
*
try music.
now Two things:
Thieves
in the New American Gothic
have a tight grip on the handle
and the woman, she
isn’t smiling.
*
What do the others know about me?
Postmodernity
I feel like a vagabond in that neighborhood.
No one lets me eat.
No pies on the windowsill, no money.
My bark capsizes in the rain.
I see the animals are well-fed though–
especially the fish.
The fish had better watch out.
I am like a pond, unstocked, on the other
side of the lawn. The unclean spirit,
the house in the woods.
They put me out, they see I have no magic
in my pocket,
no fat, white rabbit
to yank through a hole in the backyard,
or into the wide windows of the diningroom.
Oh isn’t it wonderful?
Everything to become dinner…
Now, with the whole family seated to say grace,
who will say grace?