It's All Persephone on the Black Jukebox

What is that music I hear, drifting in from the black seams of this 4:42 a.m? From the garden, awoon from the rainless heat of the past week? From my wife's dream, drifitng down from upstairs? From my dream of love, siging from the tangled brake of my history, from the ineffable shore dividing I from Thou? From She who haunts my every word? Persephone, the one who still lives among my lost shades, who is their summa, their blue breasting augment, their wild stormy music from every melusine rock cresting the black sea?

***

Sonnets to Orpheus, I.ii

Ranier Maria Rilke
transl. Stephen Mitchell

And it was almost a girl and came to be
out of this single joy of song and lyre
and through her green veils shone forth radiantly
and made herself a bed inside my ear.

And slept there. And her sleep was everything:
the awesome trees, the distances I had felt
so deeply that I could touch them, meadows in spring:
all wonders that had ever seized my heart.

She slept the world. Singing god, how was that first
sleep so perfect that she had no desire
ever to wake? See: she arose and slept.

Where is her death now? Ah will you discover
this theme before your song consumes itself? --
Where is she vanishing? ... A girl almost ...

***

... Matriarchal consciousness is dependent upon mood, upon harmony with the unconscious. This moon-dependency can be viewed as instability or craprice, lyet it provides a backdrop which acts like a sounding-board, endowing matriarchal consciousness with a special and positive character. Its response to rhythm, the times and tides of waxing and waning, of crescendo and decrescendo, grives it something of the quality of music. Therefore, music and dance, because of their accented rehythm, play an important role in creating and activating matriarchal consciousness and establishing a consonance between the ego and femininity and its ruler, the moon-spirit.

A musical character of an intoxicating, orgiastic nature appertains to the deepest involvements and greatest heights of feminine being. Here, as in music, an emotion driving toward distintegration and a simulteaneous, irrational experience of harmony combine together, according to an inner, invisible law. The source of seduction and transport ranges from the fascinans of a singing voice or the Pied Piper's flute to the ecstatic music of the Dionysian mysteries, the dissolving power of music in orgiastic ritual, and the effect of music on modern woman.

-- Erich Neumann, "On The Moon and Matriarchal Consciousness"



If they did not make a procession for Dionysos and sing a paean to the penis, they would act most shamelessly, and Hades is the same as Dionysos for whom they reave and celebrate their rites.

-- Heraclitus

***

The Hades within Dionysos says that there is an invisible meaning in sexual acts, a significance for the soul in the phallic parade, that all our life force, including the polymorphous and pornographic desires of the psyches, refer to the underworld of images ... Soul is made of the rout of the world ... The other side of the mysterious identity, the Dionysos within Hades, says that there is a zoe, a vitality in all underworld phenomena. The realm of the dead is not as dead as we expext it. Hades too can rape and also seize the psyche through sexual fantasies. Although without thymos, body, or voice, there is a hidden libido in the shadows ... There is an imagination below the earth that abounds in animal forms, that revels and makes music. There is a dance in death.

-- James Hillman, Dream and the Underworld

Spirituality and sexuality are not your qualities, not things which ye possess and contain. But they possess and contain you: for they are powerful daemons, manifestations of the gods, and are, therefore, things which reach beyond you, existing in themselves. No man hath a spirituality unto himself, or a sexuality unto himself. But he standeth under the law of spirituality and sexuality.

- Carl Jung, Sermons to the Dead V


***

Among the folk of vocal and instrumental music in Ireland, only the harpist could aspire to the ranks of freeman -- and he only on condition that he "accompanies nobility." A gloss in the Laws defines the unfree musicians as singers of cronan. The cronan is also used of the buzzing of a fly (perhaps An Chron, Hell or a dread female resident there). In Wales, minstrels were called cler, and a homonym cler means "flies." ... The word was used in reference to poets in general and contemptuous references to low-grade entertainers.

At the bottom of the social scale in Ireland were the disreputable crossain, lewd, ribald rhymers or buffoons who went about in bands. There is an account of a band of nine of them, jet-black and hairy, chanting from nightfall till dawn upon the grave of a king after his burial. They are likened to demons from hell, and when they are dispersed by Mass and holy water they appear in the air above in the form of jet-black birds. Though satire was permissible to all poets, the satirist as such classed with "the sons of death and bad men" -- fools, jesters, buffoons, outlaws, heathens, harlots -- who hold demon banquets.



BLACK LES PAUL

From the verse memoir
"A Breviary of Guitars," 2000. This poem dives to the summer of 1983:

As the summer
& the songs
& the wings
we found there
climbed up
like cumulus
inside us, we
found ourselves
demanding more:
Not enough to
jam on Stones
songs, we found:
Not enough
to merely
party: Not
enough volume:
Not enough horses:
Not enough
Florida for
the 3 cups
of our song:
Not enough to
bang on 2
acoustic guitars
in some smelly
sweaty room
on a work night:
Not enough,
never enough:
Neti, neti,
sang the
sassy via
negativa, not
for the arrow
which has ripped
through ripened
silk: That's what
we started
calling ourselves,
Rip the Silk:
Not enough to
get the girl
but to have
your rages
with her too:
A balancing
act between
the usual
abysms, perhaps,
but new in
our songs: Such
heavenly tasks
call for cunning
blades: So
Norman bought
a bass Telecaster
& I a black
Les Paul Custom,
recent vintage,
with mother-of-
pearl inlay in
the frets &
gold gears: Les
Pauls are hefty
mothers, the
body dense with
the mountain
gravities from
which they're
mined: Their
necks ample and
flat, an interstate
with no speed
limit: Surely
some dwarves
in the Smokies
warrened deep
to hack such
black ore which
they then
melted in a
pot & leavened
with dragon
sperm: Because
my solos were
suddenly out
of the pack,
a precise hammer
of wail, the
notes nailed just
the way our
passions cried:
Tasty licks
a la Brinsley
Schwartz of
Graham Parker
round the edges
of "Nobody
Hurts You" which
showed me
how to spur
the beast from
the obliques:
Or in our
song "The Rip"
building a
quick rondo
in Em singing
"God and devil
dancin / Lovin the
spoor of our eyes /
Day and night
romancin / Beneath
the cover of
the sky / We love
a deadly wonder /
& hide beneath
love's thunder /
With a dagger
on our lips /
Livin in the Rip"
Tearin it up
after the bridge
with a streak
of lightning
(well, to me
anyway) out
of nowhere,
sliding through
the notes like
sharpened steel
through lingerie:
We finish the
song and stand
there wildeyed
with our new
axes dripping
sea salts and
a different world
coming into
focus, somewhere
somehow between
Florida's wild
summer & the
perilous nights
we were enslaved
to: At those
moments my
heart was
sunburned, wind-
whipped, raw
like a skipper
holding forth a
new catch of
antidiluvean
treasure in
a glittering
rail of spray:
And it was
not enough to
simply high five
Norman there in
the great American
basement: We
knew we had
to take it to
the streets
of the stage:
Not so we'd get
more pussy (but
hopefully we'd
get more of
that than what
money we knew
we would make)
but because cruel
engines require
mean streets:
For that season
at least our
profane song
was holy,
anethemata
in the hall
where the
warrior gods
caroused round
dragon kill: A
guitar is a
hammer forged
in fire and
flung wild at
the night:
When I hammered
the last power
Em chord on
"The Rip" something
shattered just
ahead revealing
a sharper sword
bridge: I dreamed
one night of
flying over my
father's stone
house to a
beach filled with
angelic orders,
flying beings
becoming women
in the becalmed
and dancing to
my guitar solos,
each note thrusting
the next blue swoon:
Dreamed another
night I met
this girl Jennifer
from junior high
who I carpooled
with, a perfect
Florida girl with
fine tan & wide
white smile &
blue eyes &
button nose &
perky breasts
forever out of
reach of my
fat sweaty
Yankee fingers:
In the dream
I meet her at
a Purchasing
Association
meeting where
I'm professionally
respected but
Jen cares nil
for that, she
just wants my
Rip The Silk
guitar body: I
take her to some
pagan penis
garden where
wooden phalli
sprout from bushes
in a devout circle:
Try to kiss her
but she says
that's not what
I want from you:
Pull down her
panties &
suck long her
oozing sweet
citrus grove pussy
then grab a
woodcock from
the circle & start
working it up
slow into her
greased pussy
as she sighs
sighs sighs like
a breeze over
a shimmering
swimming pool:
I peer up her
cunt to see
a great hollow
cavity up to
her ribs: A guitar
is not a phallus
and song is
no woman's swoon:
Such energies
fool the magician
I was but
apprentice to:
A great practice
didn't give us
license to go
out & conquer
the night but
we raced out
to the dregs:
Fire's wealth is
built on
penurious care:
I knew I could
save enough money
from not drinking
to buy a decent
amp and some
PA: O cunning
energies, manning
us hard and fast
with power chords
& then demanding
we sheathe
the fury: Greater
men played in
greater bands
because they knew
the difference
twist stellar song
& falling stars:
While we were
more in love
with wild cusps
& unblinkered
gallops &
uncounted cups:
More in love
with our
possibilities than
with the work
of making them
in any way
real: "Energy
Fools the Magician"
is an Eno song
and he should
know: Our
miscalculations
were brazen
and perhaps true
too for it: For
the master of
song obeys when
he oversteps: You
just have to
accept that the
hard rain that
gotta fall: Today
is April Fools
Day & like one
I rose at 4 a.m.
to didle & work
again here: Slave
to forges at the
bottom level of
my day: Infernal
plashing in the
foundation of
so dry & dutiful
a life: Soon I
wake my wife &
pray for a handjob
& then foray out
into the day,
shopping & yardwork
& finish taxes &
format the hard
drive of my old
Compaq PC which
I'm giving to
my mother: Gotta
somehow finish
that review of
Bellow's new book
& I promised my
dad I'd start
back into the St.
Oran monograph:
Yadda Yadda
Yadda, Yoda
what's mah quota:
I couldn't
play the big
music for long
but I sure can
write on about
the fringes I
inhabited there
where I was
manned &
unmanned
by an axe:
Doesn't make
me one iota
better as a
husband or
worker: Ebbs
an energy which
may one day
wipe clean my
hard drive (they
say lack of
sleep can kill):
As I was a
fool prince on
guitar so I
dance here on
a conduit of
foolscap: No
street to take
this to, no breasts
to wean the
burden: I'm just
a gnome in
the dark dank
bowels of a
Breviary of
guitars, crafting
this thing laid
up from dead
things once holy
then profane then
holy then profaned
& buried &
excavated with
a lotta wood dicks
and a crumpled
picture of a
girl long ago
who smiled so
sweetly for me:






MY NIGHT WITH PERSEPHONE

Dear Satan, you who
delight so in a writer's
inability to describe
or inform -- watch me
tear a few terrible leaves
from my book of the damned.
-- Rimbaud

Marge and marginalia
complete all I cannot
say here -- that blue-in-
white infirmity which
beckons the loves I
cannot voice yet must.
Their deep saturation
in that song is my salt
dementia, a horse I
must somehow ride,
perilous though his
wild haunches and
hooves. Each day the
portal shifts in changing
surf, no one entry
spread quite the same.
Of course, it may
be I whose sight
has altered, my leap
from some shore
changed by slight
degrees from all
I've written here before.
Today composes from
normalities, the 5 a.m.
perch in this white
chair, Cat Violet in
the window casting her
eyes out to the dark
like nets, and all that's
dark appearing still
and sleepy, though
something inside suggests
that's just a ruse,
drowsing out an ocean
more wild than any
poem can saddle or
harbor or -- fait accomlit!
-- complete. Still that's
the yoga of this hand's
motion, repeating line
for line surf-like emulsion,
dragging up to view
some naked altar
with dark nipples
and eyes so sapphire blue.
Today though she's more
Persephone than some
Triple-X wavelette,
sex in its deepest
sublimation, gone down
under long ago
to queen the coldest
flow of my imaginings,
ever restless to come
home again to where
mortal mothers thresh
the mortal grain--the
house I call love.
I pray today for all those
sad girls who rowed with
me for just one night
inside their bed, giving
up their bodies for
some metaphor for
marriage that fed the
ache like the worst
sort of well-brand booze.
I vaguely recall a
woman from one
night whom I met
in a local fern-bar
round midnight
in the early 1980s, the
both of us quite drunk,
spilling our sad repertoire
of loss into the other's
ear as we drank on.
I told her about the
woman whom I thought
would lead my starry
band, our love and loud
metal guitars housed
in a surfside hut
where all was hot and
cool and going places
to be sure. But (I told
this woman in a
slurry monotone)
we could not because
she could or would
not stay--my heat
not hot enough--and
my life since then
(four months behind)
had been some
a bad specie of
descending doom,
an every emptying
glass of a farewell
she cared little to hear.
The woman I spoke
to was dark-haired,
framing a tanned
face with deep blue
eyes, an even darker tan:
a scorched beauty
with wild eyes, the woman
I could only reach
through drunk stumblings
onto accidental beaches
far from anything
real or true. She
then told me of a live-
in boyfriend who booked
bands and owned a
titty bar, a guy with
killer looks and flush
with all the cash the
night could soak. Love
for him was always too
difficult, she said,
obscured by his greater
love of himself and
his appetites for coke,
strange nookie
and fast cars. He'd
dumped her a
month ago in some
maniacally drugged
episode and was far
too proud to chance
a look back. -- Since
then she'd been
on a binge, ravening
on the loss, taking
men home every night
because she couldn't
stand her bed alone.
Booze and boys were
adding up a toll;
just the previous
night she'd been busted
for indecent exposure
at Daytona Beach,
her bare footprints
against the window
of a Camaro, the cop
hitting on her as he
drove her off to jail.
Yet even after such
sobering arrears,
there she sat again,
settling tonight on me,
the rock pauper
with the endless thirst
for rock fantasy.
I was so drunk that
night that by closing
time I could hardly
speak; and yet she took
me by the hand and
led me out the door,
driving me to her
apartment somewhere
beneath the wicked
sea, and sat me on
her bed saying there
will be no sex tonight
though we'll share
this big bed. I
watched her undress
-- a truly holy moment,
this truly beautiful
woman slowly and
dutifully peeling off
blue silk blouse and
white brassiere, her
small breasts swimming
out fully tanned,
her nipples like darker
eyes on a darker
lower face. She unzipped
her jeans and wriggled
free, pulling down
red silk panties,
revealing only the
thinnest pure white
tan-lines, a thong-
road leading to a
dark brown bush, all
secrets hidden there
in a proud thick lush.
There was none of
that for me in that
night, but in truth
I was almost too drunk
to care, and almost
grateful just to be
held there in that
bed, beneath covers
so heavy we seemed
to tumble down a
sea into the void
of voided souls. The
next morning we groaned
up to the sound of
ZZ Top on a tinny
small radio. She kissed
me on the forehead
and got up to hit
the john, leaving me
there to come to
in another far-too-distant
room, like an island
without a name
and by day proved
for too harsh and real.
Time to go. She drove
me back to my car
and that was that.
I never saw her again.
That night was almost
20 years down the
well I call my history,
and surely she lives on
in my Persephone,
throned in my worst
sort of falling and
forever roaming there,
unquenched of the
life she couldn't live
on her own, her
addict-greed for warmth
married to my own
that single night
for all time. Who knows,
she's probably dead
by now, if all that
awfulness failed to
find a healing shore.
Or she could be
truly married to some
other Lord of Hell,
whatever emptiness inside
that beautiful carriage
in thrall with a bad
man's hearse and hard
hooves. I could have
meant something far
different to her back then:
I could have said
a word or two of real
solace had I not been
too drunk to speak,
told her to get help: I
could have stuck around
a little longer with
no intent for sex
just to help ferry another
human being back
to shore: Hell, I could
have rowed on with her
toward some truly
engaged and vital life
-- Dream on, oh Kore
wheatfield of a heart.
The only reason I ended
up with her that night
was because I was so
lost in hell, my self-
inflicted wound bleeding
just the way she
needed so to drink.
She would not that
night have wanted
the man that I became,
sitting here in this
married house two
hours before dawn,
my real life chiseled
from hard work where
love is so much about
not getting what
you want, but wanting
what you got -- however
short of shored blue tidals
it forever must be.
No: she is lost down
there, as all the dead
are in their oblivions,
combing their hair
in vacant mirrors,
crying in the empty
rooms of one vast
apartment complex
at the bottom of
the sea. My reverie
of her here is now
near an end -- Violet
has jumped down to
join my wife in
bed, and the dark
outside the window
is slowly paling
toward first blue.
It's time I joined
my day. Still, I can
light a votive for
her at the tidal end of
all this verse -- and
say a prayer for one
of the darkest saddest
and most beautiful
woman I ever met
in the long night of
my personal curse.
She was dark in
every way -- black
hair, almost black tan,
a black narrative
heading for the
darkest of all ends:
Yet her blue eyes
almost sang in the
dark of that darkest
room -- minted from
ice for sure, but
also somehow some
daughter's pure
sea-glass, the lost
child who never
stops staring up
in all the ways I
stare back down
for news of where
she's gone. She and
I are shore today
to this poem of
hubris and amends.
I don't know where
you are today, sweet
lady of worst sorrow,
but I pray you've
found a way to
escape the hell you
chose. I wish you
better, I pray thee well.
Now send this
poem on to endless blue
upon your bitter swell.
My marriage hauls
you like bilge and
ballast; may I never
err again in finding you.



Our garden, summer 2004

Waking, remembering only music

There between the pillow and the dream
I heard a music rising from the seam
mellifluous as oboes a soft and wistful mood
breezing through the boughs of an ever darkened wood
It was late at night and in the sill
a blue moon heaved its lucent gill
gilding our bodies in a silver mane
cleansing our hearts of all the workday strain
caressing us down an long and winding stream
where all the reasons we married flicker and gleam
When I woke nothing but the tune remained
like the ebbing sound of the sea's blue dream
I marry it to you with that kiss that has no name
just the music of a distant heaven we make today again