Brother of Dark Doors

Can I praise this dark hour enough? Now the black bulb of night burns, hot and swanky, cauling the rooks of my vowels. Dazed crickets or naiads heave an expiring sigh, the sum of all spent lovers.

I live here the darker half of my life, freer now without the boozy mortis of bottomless desire, at home in deep night's animal soak of pleasure and death, the uteral swelling and delving of the moon over our garden outside the window I've opened to wash my every sense. Safe in the emptiness of suburbs, awake in Ophelia's kelp-keep of dreams.

Where are the butterflies at this hour, the ones who dance round the pentas all day in luxuriant petticoats of flame? Drooping from the bellies of orchids perhaps, in the swoon of such lavish summer nakedness, the hush of its slowly rocking tide. Praises to the deepest heaven for this dark bath.

***

"The shadow roots the personality in the subsoil of the unconscious, and this shadowy link with the archetype of the antogonist, i.e. the devil, is in the deepest sense part of the creative abyss of every living personality. This is why in myths the shadow often appears as a twin, for he is just not the "hostile brother," but the companion and friend, and it is sometimes difficult to tell whether this twin is the shadow of the self, the deathless 'other.'

"This paradox bears out the truth of the old law that upper and lower reflect another. In psychological development, the self lies hidden in the shadow; he is the 'keeper of the gate,' the guardian of the threshold. The way to the self lies through him; behind the dark aspect he represents there stands the aspect of wholeness, and only by making friends with the shadow do we gain the friendship of the self."

-- Erich Neuman, The Origins and History of Consciousness

***

The sacred tradition of the tanist or sacrificial alternate is the mythologem of this shadowy gatekeeper.

Graves has it that there is an alternation of kings through the great year, the solar hero Hercules (and Bran, Saturn, and Cronos) sacrificed at midsummer, his spirit floating off in an alder-wood boat. The tanist, or other self, appears (he writes) "in Greek legend as Poeas who lighted Hercules' pyre and inherited his arrows, succeeding him for the second [the "dark"] half of the year; having acquired royal virtue by marriage with the queen, the representative of the White Goddess, and by eating some royal part of the dead man's body --- heart, shoulder or thigh-flesh. He is in turn succeeded by the New Year Hercules, a reincarnation of the murdered man, who beheads him and, apparently, eats his head. This alternate eucharistic sacrifice made royalty continuous, each king being in turn the Sun-god beloved by the reigning Moon-goddess." (The White Goddess, 126-7).

The tanist also appears as the chariot-driver of the Irish hero Cu Chulainn who takes an arrow for his lord. That tanist may be the dark knight who jousted with Amfortas, spearing the Fisher King through the testicles and causing his kingdom to fall into waste.

He is Black Angus MacOdrum the selkie king who laughed and satirized St. Columba on the shores of Iona; he is also also Oran, the monk who offered himself to be buried in the footers of the abbey of St. Columba to appease a water-spirit that had been disturbed.

Shall we travel awhile with St. Oran into that dark moist subsoil?



Photo: Relieg Odhran on Iona, the graveyard at Iona. St. Columba said, "No one may access the angels of Iona but through Oran."


ORAN'S VOYAGE TO THE NORTH

Fiona Macleod (William Sharp), in Iona

It is commonly said that the People of the S“dhe dwell within the hills, or in the underworld. In some of the isles their home, now, is spoken of as Tir-na-thonn, the Land of the Wave, or Tir-fo-Tuinn, the Land under the Sea.

But from a friend, an Islander of Iona, I have learned many things, and among them, that the Shee no longer dwell within the inland hills, and that though many of them inhabit the lonelier isles of the west, and in particular The Seven Hunters, their Kingdom is in the North.

Some say it is among the pathless mountains of Iceland. But my friend spoke to an Iceland man, and he said he had never seen them. There were Secret People there, but not the Gaelic S“dhe.

Their Kingdom is in the North, under the Fir-Chlisneach, the Dancing Men, as the Hebrideans call the polar aurora. They are always young there. Their bodies are white as the wild swan, their hair yellow as honey, their eyes blue as ice. Their feet leave no mark on the snow. The women are white as milk, with eyes like sloes, and lips like red rowans. They fight with shadows, and are glad; but the shadows are not shadows to them. The Shee slay great numbers at the full moon, but never hunt on moonless nights, or at the rising of the moon, or when the dew is falling. Their lances are made of reeds that glitter like shafts of ice, and it is ill for a mortal to find one of these lances, for it is tipped with the salt of a wave that no living thing has touched, neither the wailing mew nor the finned sgAdan nor his tribe, nor the narwhal. There are no men of the human clans there, and no shores, and the tides are forbidden.

Long ago one of the monks of Columba [St. Oran] sailed there. He sailed for thrice seven days till he lost the rocks of the north ; and for thrice thirty days, till Iceland in the south was like a small bluebell in a great grey plain; and for thrice three years among bergs. For the first three years the finned things of the sea brought him food; for the second three years he knew the kindness of the creatures of the air; in the last three years angels fed him. He lived among the Sidhe for three hundred years.

When he came back to Iona, he was asked where he had been all that long night since evensong to matins. The monks had sought him everywhere, and at dawn had found him lying in the hollow of the long wave that washes Iona on the north.

He laughed at that, and said he had been on the tops of the billows for nine years and three months and twenty-one days, and for three hundred years had lived among a deathless people. He had drunk sweet ale every day, and every day had known love among flowers and green bushes, and at dusk had sung old beautiful forgotten songs, and with star-flame had lit strange fires, and at the full of the moon had gone forth laughing to slay. It was heaven, there, under the Lights of the North.

When he was asked how that people might be known, he said that away from there they had a cold, cold hand, a cold, still voice, and cold ice-blue eyes. They had four cities at the four ends of the green diamond that is the world. That in the north was made of earth; that in the east, of air; that in the south, of fire; that in the west, of water. In the middle of the green diamond that is the world is the Glen of Precious Stones. It is in the shape of a heart, and glows like a ruby, though all stones and gems are there. It is there the S“dhe go to refresh their deathless life.

The holy monks said that this kingdom was certainly Ifurin, the Gaelic Hell. So they put their comrade alive in a grave in the sand, and stamped the sand down upon his head, and sang hymns so that mayhap even yet his soul might be saved, or, at least, that when he went back to that place he might remember other songs than those sung by the milk-white women with eyes like sloes and lips red as rowans. "Tell that honey-mouthed cruel people they are in Hell," said the abbot, and give them my ban and my curse unless they will cease laughing and loving sinfully and slaying with bright lances, and will come out of their secret places and be baptized."

They have not yet come.

This adventurer of the dreaming mind is another Oran, that fabulous Oran of whom the later Columban legends tell. I think that other Orans go out, even yet, to the Country of the Sidhe. But few come again. It must be hard to find that glen at the heart of the green diamond that is the world; but, when found, harder to return by the way one came.





TRAVELLER

Today's arrival
at the next
cold shore
finds low coals,
seal bones,
a silver brooch
half buried
in the sand.
And as always
the same scrawled
note found
daggered to a tree.

Island to island
west and north
the search, each
new launch
on darker swells,
unravelling
in Arctic gale.

Whenever I
turn a page
I scan into
those marges,
seeking out
bruised regions
where belief
and desire
are bound,

compassed by
that crashing surf
which beckons
in each recede
a deep salt croon:

not here
not here
not here




COLD SONG

This song is hauled up from a cold well
Nearby -- Oran's, I sense, though
His skull is just the topmost phosphor
In the darkened flow. From this chair
In sleepy Florida I taste
The salt of Hebrides -- brutal,
Male, like iron on the tongue, wild
As the huge rollers which smash
The Orkney coast. I tried this sea-
Chantey strapped to a guitar, but
The roar would not be amped or staged
or spermed in nereid blue. All
that puerile wattage drowned the song.
I threw my guitar down a well.
Oran sings from that falling shell.



ORAN'S SINK

Taurus dracomen genuit
et taurum draco
"The bull is father to the snake
and the snake to the bull"
-- Cretan symbolon

Coin the motions
I bell here a
Doubloon: On one
face blue Oran,
that dark raveller,
his mouth welling
antiphons of primal
cold: Turn the
coin over and you'll
see me in this white
writing chair atop
a treelike esplumoir,
his dark book in one
hand,a gold pen in
the other, writing
down Oran's slither
round and tween
the lines.
I found and fathered
him on this page,
though it is his
words which
engendered all of
mine -- "The way
you think it is is
not the way it is at
all!" -- a truth which
by its unknowableness
is by nature recessional,
bidding all who seek
to travel further down
and cross the page,
island to island,
poem to poem.
I have written down
what I found,
and what I found
has forged this song,
mortaring poem
by poem this
singing house
577
in buried blue.
The mystery is
as simple two
halves of symbolon,
a knucklebone
split in two and
shared by two parties.
One half is shaped by
lines on paper down
to here: The other
half is what lies
inside those lines,
or what comes after
them in a sheer
drop of white space
off the page -- what
I'll never know fully
upside down,
though each next poem
I surely try. Each
day I flip the coin
and watch it rise
then splash and
tumble down in
gold and black
revolvings, articulate
and not, tumbling
line by line down
the shelves of
ancient dark
til it disappears
from sight, surely
to rest at last
in Oran's skull,
atop a pile of
prior poems. That
bowl of bone is coffer
to these coigns which
have no vantage but
their salt surrender,
at home and free to
whirl the sea-god's
sky which only
seems a wetter darker
blue. Suburban
angel of that
winged descent, I
ride this writing
chair astride the
white flanks of a
dolphin with a dragon's
tail and hooves of
raging bull: A modern
man troping
an ancient rage,
illuminating a black
page which only seems
as pale as bone. I
count my words carefully
into that lost half
buried purse at the
bottom of a wishing
well no one may drink:
For every breath
I squander here
here fresh bubbles
rise from Oran's
cathedral sink.

Personal Orphics

SONNETS TO ORPHEUS I.3

Ranier Maria Rilke
transl. Stephen Mitchell

A god can do it. But will you tell me how
a man can enter through the lyre's strings?
Our mind is split. And at the shadowed crossing
of heart-roads, there is no temple for Apollo.

Song, as you have taught it, is not desire,
not wooing any grace that can be achieved;
song is reality. Simple, for a god.
But when can we be real? When does he pour

the earth, the stars, into us? Young man,
it is not your loving, even if your mouth
was forced wide open by your own voice-learn
to forget that passionate music. It will end.

True singing is a different breath, about
nothing. A gust inside the god. A wind.



THE SONG

Every shaman has his song that
takes him away. There have been
descriptions of how a person first
hears his or her song, walking
along a seashore or being in a
forest. There's this experience and
from then on he's overtaken.
-- Joseph Campbell

Gaelic oran
A song; this is for auran, from the
correct and still existing form
amhran, Irish amhran, Middle
Irish ambr‡n, Manx arrane; from
amb, i.e. mu, about, and rann?
Irish amhar, Early Irish amor,
music. Cf. Irish amhra, eulogy,
especially in verse. Cf. amra
Cholumcille), panegyric.


I first recall the song on
Jacksonville Beach when I
was three years old, sitting
between the sea and my mother
& rapt in a strange middle
music between her voice and
the surf's, a soft drone warm
and moist and smiling overhead
with miles of blue beyond
and below. The birthmark was
still visible then, that heart
with an arrow through it red
above my left nipple: that
beach day was his altar, as
he played in his mother's lap
and rode the waves on a
tunny's back and sang of salt
immersions on a brilliant
plashing bed. The full moon
was in my father's eyes as
he spread my mother on some
night in '56: Their marriage
was brittle and doomed, but
useful to that old progenitor
throned in the sea who came
back to claim me on that
summer beach in 1960.
Actually, his (her?) song was
on my lips when I was born
-- so my parents say -- a smiling
humming tune: water music,
the sound a fountain makes
spilling depths in the merriment
of the sun. The Well I found
beneath my ear and behind
the facts of history is His:
The lover who went under
to sing of chasms and
bright scree between our
isle and eternity's. Such
music cannot pay my
mortgage nor help a drunk
nor mint a better husbandry
of this home: But like a
breeze, it courses through
all the topside motions
of a life in 2003, a song
whose words are just out
of reach, lost in the sea's
collapse behind my mother
on a summer's day so
long ago. I'll name them
yet, or their strange wet
fossils of salt revelry.
Forget all calls to poetry,
that warped & silly career.
This is ball-soak, day-shit,
everything lost to all
we now can't help but see.
A well's deep plumage
is this song's old voyage
a birthmark's long throat
doing brine homage.



BIG TOAD

When I was three
my family
vacationed
at Cape Cod:
I recall only
vague shadows
& that buttery
halflight of first
memories:
But there is
a photo of
me sitting
by a tree
playing a
ukulele to
a frog in a
yellow bucket:
I named him
Big Toad
and sang to
him with my
toy uke: Music
for that swart
appendage
apart and
with me,
a tadpole
longing that
swam so
wonderfully
below: I knew
the pud was
loved and sang
of the big world
it swam through:
Everything was
connection back
then, soft light,
the sound of my
mother's voice
wrapped in
the surf and
breeze: those tiny
songs I found
so easy to sing:
A dolphin's weave
on a bright
cresting wave
carrying me
us here:




FENDER MUSTANG

Winter Haven, Florida
winter-spring 1971

I.

I was 14 when
my friend Steve and
I decided to get
into a band like
Led Zeppelin,
do cool stuff,
get all the girls
We begged our moms
to get us guitars.
For two weeks
we cruelly jammed
that button of love
and guilt in them,
saying how having
a guitar was all
we ever really wanted,
how we would
work extra chores,
vacuum rooms,
clean dishes, etcetera.

Being little men
in houses forsaken
by fathers,
our moms
broke down as we
knew they must
and took us
to the music
store in Winter Haven
to pick out
rental guitars.
After a long wistful
scan at the Caddys
on the top rack-
Strats, Rickenbackers,
Flying V's, Les Pauls
-I lowered my sights
to the rental rack
below and fell in love
with this red Fender
Mustang. It was
a kid's learning
guitar, a cheapo
Strat clone
probably cranked
out in Japan:
ah but it was
also cherry red
like Corvette coupe,
like the dark
wet insides
of a girl's mouth.

That Mustang was
my first real purchase
on puberty, no longer
the fat kid imprisoned
in his room but
newly-tall and skinny
and ready for the world,
ready to rock.

The guy who taught
me to play was
some longhair
who loathed my
kiddie taste for
Grand Funk Railroad
and Black Sabbath,
but since it
was the best
inducement to
practice he
grudged me
three minutes
to puzzle the riffs
to "Are You Ready."
I sat there
as he transmuted
radio dross
to living gold.
Playing the
riffs put me
onstage somehow,
as if the chords
were the first
words of a
new language.

At the end of
the lesson I unplugged
my Fender from
the teacher's amp
(so big and ballsy
compared to that
whippet of an amp
I had at home)
and laid it back
in its case.
The inside of
the case was
a plush blue velvet;
midnight blue
and cherry red
felt like all
the magic erupting
around me those
days, shimmering
pool water and
full fire moons by
the lake and
the blue eyes
of all the really
popular girls,
impossible to reach,
impossible to resist,
my heart impeccably red.

III.

Back in my room
at home I'd go
over the riffs again
and again, plugged
into that tiny amp
& sworn to play low.
Practicing guitar was
one of the first necessary
evils I learned,
that patient start from
the easiest beginning
and then working
through to the end
of the lesson in
that dreary Mel Bay
Guitar System book.
And then I'd head
into the songs
I wanted to play,
going through them,
taking time to smooth
the rough parts.
I remember practicing
the ligature for "Ride
Captain Ride," learning
my first solo note for note.
Playing it & feeling
in my hands something
forming harder than
the lines of my
biceps when lifting
wieghts. Ripe with
the scent of orange
blossom and Boone's Farm.
Thrilling to make
music sure
to thrill girls.

I tried it out:
Derinda one
of the neighborhood
girls who'd visit
when my mom
was out
sitting on my bed
while I cranked that
amp and muscled
"Are You Ready."
Afterwards I
lifted weights
and then wrestle with
Derinda on my bed,
our tongues soon
engaged in a
splashy battle royale,
my hand trying to work
its way down
the top of her
t-shirt to get
to her big breasts
which were always
too far away.
I sorely needed
practice in
everything
in the world.


IV.

Two weeks after
Steve got his
guitar he lost
all interest in
it, surer at
playing football
and riding his Stingray
bike through
the subdivision.
But I remained,
less sure
in anything else,
lifting that
Fender Mustang
from its blue lap
feeling all the latent
power in it, my fingers
at its strings so potent
with longing.
Playing all the cool music.
Getting all the pretty girls.
Ravaging the world.



EPIPHONE 12 STRING

Chicago,
summer 1972

For my 15th
birthday my father
served up a
champagne break-
fast and gave
me Alice Cooper's
School's Out
and an
Epiphone 12
string guitar
that came in
a case lined
with gold plush.
What a thrill
to pluck
that sonorous
pearl from
its shell:
the mother-
of-pearl inlay
on the neck,
the heavy wide
body, each
string an
octave or double
of its pair.
A guitar is
a fence of
taut harmonies.
Each chord
I strummed
on that Epiphone
an orchestral
cry to God,
rich and sonorous
and thriving
with delayed
splendor.

The cover
to School's Out
was some
graffiti- and
gum-cast
school desk
that opened
to reveal
the record
wrapped in
a pair of
pink cotton
panties.

So my mom's
old admonition
there's more
to life than
a bed, a babe
and a bottle
of booze
rung true on
my 15th birthday
when I
I got a bed
of strings,
a babe's banner
and a bottle
of champagne
thrills. That's
my mom and pop,
the Alpha and
Omega of
all beliefs.
My father
favored such
initiations, and
he's gifted me
with many
guitars over
the years
despite the
difference each
inserted between
us. Every tool
I have come
to use was
handed to
me by him
only I had
to dirty and
diss them all
before they
could be
of much use.

2.
That Epiphone
proved a wise
choice of guiatr,
for it was not
made to rock:
Each chord was
too sacchyrine,
and soloing
was like swimming
in 10-40
weight oil, the
action hard
and high.
But strum
a major chord
in the sanctuary
of my father's
church and Oh!
Sweet Jesus! That
Epiphone was
sublime: plus
a perfect substitute
for the organ
we couldn't
afford to
hire an organist
to play.
And so
that summer
I inherited
the gig of
choir accom-
panist, learning
the repetoire
of folk hymns
with a motley
of earnest if
never tuneful
voices.

Our songs
were something
new and fresh
after so many
years of buckle-
down losses,
and thus
from the ashes
of that mission
church some
spark returned
where it
should not have.
I played "Sing
My People" and
"I Am The Resur-
rection." The
folk Doxology
which we sang
while two
ushers walked
up balled dollars
and scattered
coinage to
the front
where my
father stood
with arms
wide & smiling.

Our music
burned with
all we wished
despite so
many many
imperfections.
That Epiphone
so hard to tune
with twice the
possibilities
of wandering
off -- such
dissonant tunings
I pioneered! --
and the small
gauge octave
strings were
always snapping
in the middle
of those Christian
songs I spiritedly
flogged, always
striking Mary
McKeever in
the face
and spanking
her off-key warlbings
into a second
of pure pitch
before she regained
her paradisal
disharmonies.

I was the
kid sitting in
a ragtag choir
in a mission church
that on Sundays
was littered
with old sick
drunk poor
forgotten
forgettable Chicago,
a church
so meek
to require
massive transfusions
of suburban
cash from
the Chicago synod.
And yet when
I opened that
guitar case
to pull out
my Epiphone,
the sanctuary
seemed flooded
with gold plush
hope -- faith
in things unseen
rising on
the wings of
viciously
heartfelt song.

WORDS AND MUSIC

Autumn 1975
Spokane, Washington


I returned to
college & fine
early autumn
days there
(cool mornings
& shattering
blue afternoon
skies) having
come through
a city craze
and sex daze
-- a man,
finally, at 18,
with rugburns
to prove it --
to enter the
co-ed Creative
Writing Theme
Dorm. Things
started well
enough: a girl
downstairs
came calling
and for a a
week we drank
coffee & smoked
& talked all
about our
childhoods,
loves and
the craft of
writing (as
if we knew).
She seemed
so natural a
progression
for me, now
a man & ready
for the world:
yet in seven
days she
lost her taste
for me and
turned elsewhere,
leaving me
only with a
couple late
kisses and too
much talk
inside my ears:
And as soon
as it had
opened me
I found myself
Ziplocked back
into my
great isolation,
spinning sides
of Genesis'
Lamb Lies Down
on Broadway
& drinking
way too many
beers & looking
at night's
erasure in
the window.
Playing songs
on my cracked
J45 in the
raw split
between wonder
and jilted
thunder. My
old friend John
was now deeply
married: he'd
gotten what he
desired, and
in having shrank
away from our
jackal pack
of dispossession:
We still played
the songs but
he shared their
center with his
woman. How
many guitar
mates have I known
to break their
lutes for love?
There's a
different god
for satiation
-- goddess if
you will --
Ceres of the
mowed gold
grain, Circe
of the island
bed: the dolphin
god sings of
such inclusions
only from
the rim: eloquent
in love because
unloved: to
the satiate
are silent
as the dead:
It was during
that autumn
that I resumed
writing prose
entries in my
journals, missives
to myself --
conversational,
not charged --
the proper medium
for lack's
lamentations:
perhaps I had
been inside myself
long enough
to start talking
or bitching at
myelf, sharpening
the edges of
my exclusion
with despondent
glyphs. I wondered
how one who
had so seasoned
in New York
and then
stepped down off
the virginal
porch to
pour his seed
into a woman's
ready smile
could find
himself now
facing off
inside the same
old same old
walls of fear,
stripped of
any sense
of accomplishment
or confidence.
Hating the
world in
which I had
resumed, madder
and more silent
than ever on
the surface. Taking
it out in full
measures on
the page, beyond
enraged, the
dolphin one
quite happily
engaged.

2.
That autumn
I came to know
how much words
and music
paired and split
in me as I
lumbered out
poems & songs.
They were all
bad, each too
freighted with
the pompous
pout of the other:
I hadn't learned
(or refused to)
that song travels
light with words
and that poetry
prefers to fret
the music with
its own serifs.
My poems sinking
with untuneful
outre art-rock
and my songs
too literal
to fly. It was
a miserable
fall for me,
isolate as usual
and darkly
depressed, stung
as I was by
the irony of
a heart open
to all but
the world.
Nothing good
of it went
down on paper
nor passed
through my
guitar. For
classes I
boned up on
Kant and Hegel
and History's
sad sashays,
beer cans
rattling beneath
my bed as I
tossed an
underlined, wrote
notes and farted.
Afterwards drinking
a beer & putting
lines down in
my journal
like skeins
of ice leading
back to the
center of
my labyrinth
where I
just wanted
out: giving
up as usual
at the same
desponded
omphalos
& shutting
the journal &
pulling out
my J45 and
hurling chords
at cruel angels
who laughed
ghost-tittery
within the
dark soundhole
I was drowning
in all
my brainy,
briny metaphors,
contradicted too
sharply between
love of
words and
passionate music:

3.
I wasn't the
worst poet in
the dorm; I had
grand latencies.
Some gals on
the first floor
wrote fluff
about Love
Forever Yours
in the crashing
surf of rhymed
quatrains. Across
the hall Paul
at 40 penned
long & glorious
returns to
high school
dances back
in '63:
I had written
enough to
know how
lines should go
down on paper,
though I could
not hedge my
knack for
morbid excess
& loathed
revision.
A couple of
guys on my
floor though were
really hitting
their stride:
Mark and Bill
who wrote fine
sustained stretches
of Roethkean light
in blowsy wheatfield,
sharp as their
re-sharpened pencils
in sifting through
the pile to
find what is.
Mark and Bill
somehow understood
the place for
words and
humbly joined
them well,
working so
much more
patiently at
the same
grim fire.

There were
also far
better musicians
in the dorm:
Joel who so
powerfully brought
voice to a
muscular rhythm
guitar: he could so
perfectly mimic
the great ones
that he strangled
his own songs:
or Terrie who
wrote such great
songs out
of the hammer
and claw of
her normal
losses in love:
Both had
song nailed
where I so
loosely struck:
Neither had
worse or
better loves
than I: neither
said much
on the page:
So in the
sprawl of art
that generated
in that dorm
I lived most
purely in
the red
seam between
words and
music, in
love with
both &
damning each
with the other:
that's the way
I made each my
own: why to
this day I
create such
monsters as
this Breviary,
hurling words
like the conductor
of a river, trying
to sing a Name
I can't recall,
mimicking
the waters' roll,
trying to trace
her body with
this infernal
pen, this angelic
plectrum.



GIG ONE

Spokane, Washington
Late Summer-
Early Fall 1979

How flip we were
about completion,
as if it was too
distant to ever
take seriously:
Slick Richard played
three gigs, and
they were like
stag wounds of
our eventual
demise: We
just weren't good
enough, or we
just couldn't like
each other well
enough, or we
just liked the
parties so much
more than the work,
or we unleashed
far more than
any of us knew
how to serve:
whatever the case,
three gigs form
the tale of a
local band who
could never rise
far enough from
their basement dreams:
Gig One was an
End of Summer Party
at Steve's girlfriend's
parents' house while
they vacationed
in Europe: mansion
enought for Spokane
with a basement
ballroom: big enough
for a proper
kegger: We were
nervous and couldn't
hear shit (no
monitors): We
banged out
Cheap Trick
"Hello There"
in cubes of
personal and
faint peripheral
fury: Hello
there ladies
and gentlemen
hello there
ladies and gents
are you ready to rock
are you ready or not
Some door opening
within us as
the partiers
cheered &
the beer flowed
like gold wheat
through the room:
We for once
played together
unleashing the
beast: "Dirty Weekend,"
"Whole Lotta Rosie."
"Tie Your Mother
Down," "Respectable":
Take a break,
highfive, get some
more beer, slither
through the
glistening
labial lips
of the room
O fulcrum
of desire:
Second set
and we're
tight and
thundering
& chicks
are up dancing
in front of
us to Rod
Stewart's
"Dirty Weekend"
You book
the hotel
I'll pack the
bags honey
You call
the airlines
I'll call the cab
Well when
you return
ramblin all
your plans
just tell your
mother that you're
stayin with friends:
A guitar is
the key
to the sugar
suite just
watch those
chickies swirl
like tongues
around our song:
I'll bring the
red wine you
bring the ludes
your mother's
doctor must be
higher than you
we'll hang a
don't disturb
sign outside
our door
I'm gonna rock
you till
your pussy's sore
After the set
we partied all
night on speed
and pot and beer
liking each other
for a change
high-fiving and
planning the
work ahead -
gotta get an
agent, gotta
get more PA,
gotta add more
songs gotta
gotta gotta:
I got the girl
who danced
all night for us:
We took a swim
in a chilly pool
in the blue
washes of dawn:
Up in someone's
bedroom I
peeled back
her black bathing
suit to suck
on her cold
brown lumpy
nipples, my
tongue igniting
her darkmotherfire:
O plunge and plunge
I'm gonna rock
you till your
pussy's sore:
Afterward I
talked on
about how this
was just the start
and man we were
gonna kick ass
but she had
fallen asleep:
Fucked up
now fucked
by the number
one rock god
of the night
she had completed
her transit
of the party:
So had I, though
I would have told
you to get fucked:
No stopping now,
I thought, the
dark crashing hard:



LAST GIG

Central Florida
In mid-July 1986

Innocent Thieves
rose & fell
at Rock Against
Racism: I have
three sources for
the story--my
journal, a
video of the
gig & a
review in Calendar
magazine by
then-music critic
Thom Duffy
(he's with Billboard
now): This poem
refracts from those
triangulating
beams of what
Innocent Thieves
felt like onstage,
what the camera
saw, and how a
journalist observed
a local scene one
hot night in July
1986: Though our
band had been at
it in some way
or another for
six months we
still weren't
ready for the
stage: George had
practiced with us
but a few times:
Paul just wasn't
getting his piano
parts and moved
stonily between it
and his sax:
I was rough on
riffs I reached
for beyond my
skill: Rick had been
with the band for
only a short
while: But we
went for it
anyway knowing
some stage time
would do us all
good: We collected
at an American
Legion in south
Orlando on an
afternoon gnarly
with hard storms
taking our turn
with the other
bands to set our
gear up onstage:
Everyone cordial
but Jesus all the
other bands were
hardcore punk,
fresh juvenile
faces smashed
with nihilist
angst: Us the
aging rockers,
ikons of a passing
age, asshole
Uranus steppin'
lightly round the
progressive scythes
of smartassed
Kid Kronos:
Some storm in
full fury above
while the bands
barked out power
chords & bang
bang banged on
drums: We split
after that to change
& eat, each going
our own way, back
to our separate
armoror's halls
where we prepared
in our own ways
for the battle
we would soon
engage: Me back
in that tiny hot
garage showering
then roostering
my hair, slipping
into tight black
jeans & a black
dago t & elegant
black shortsleeved
shirt with leapard
spots on the front
(from Dana): All
the disorder &
loneliness of that
apartment coming
to fruition in
that moment as
I readied to walk
out for the work
all this was poor
preparation for:
Drove to Bailey's
to have a Bloody
Mary and another:
the musician with
the big hair
heading for his
gig: Drinking
to feel loose-
limbed in my
lumber, lanky
& sleepy where
I could easily
pass on the fire:
Drove back down
to the hall through
rain now steady,
a drowning wave:
Inside a curious
melange of
skinheads &
the rest of young
Orlando, geeky
& stylish preppy
& cowpokish:
We were fifth
on the bill,
so we stood at
the bar in the back
drinking beer while
punk bands hurled
their two and
a half minute
invectives at
the mosh pit:
The style of those
bands was a
uniformly slow
metalish start
which stopped
in its plod
for two clicks
of the drummer's
sticks and then
dashed maniacally
toward a none-too
-soon death: Song
after song it was
the same: Declared
Ungovernable had
a drummer in
a red Mohawk
and a singer with
massive spikes
sticking out every
which way: Cmon
yew dicks yew
cunts, get off yer
asses n start
dancing, yew
fuckwads he growled:
a few sheepish
skins left the shadow
ranks of their
periphery to
assemble in
the pit, most
in fatigues and
jackboots, traipsing
about in dainty
trance for the
early slow part
of the song,
plugging in
suddenly as the
tempo changed
to glance off each
other ever more
soundly till at
the end of the
song they hammered
& whacked
like jackals:
The seekers 'n'
gawkers who came
because the show
had been plugged
on WXXL 106.7
(an oily top 40
FM station),
watched from
their own uncertain
shadow, bemused,
scared, fascinated:
In back of all
that I drank
my beers apart
from the rest
of the band, bored
and ashamed:
We don't belong
here, partially
because we aren't
ready, but mostly
because there's
no one in this
crowd who looks
much like anyone
we'd care to
reach with our music
-- -Slam dancers and
Michael Jackson
dolts: All wrong, I
thought, my ears
ringing from the
noise & my
head fuzzy
with booze: But
we heed up there
anyway after the
3d band
finishes,
setting up our
gear quick and
nervous: We launch
into ''Face
of Fire," a mean
choppy number
where all of our
problems become
evident: the PA
system is fucked,
can't hear anything
on the monitors,
Shawn's guitar
impossibly out
of tune, George
wandering off
on drums, and
me playing too loud
& distorted: We
look odd, too:
(I'm watching
the video here)
Paul at the left
in white slax and
a purple jacket,
Rick then Shawn
in jeans and
sleeveless t's,
George in a
runner's getup
(shorts & sneakers),
and me far right
some gangly
Rod Stewart
caricature:
We try to
concentrate, arrow
closer in to each
other, recoup what
is obviously lost
in the confused
noise: Horrible to
us but we get a
surprising ripple
of applause after
wrenching to
that song's end:
Maybe they're just
relieved we aren't
so punk: On to
"Ball and Chain,"
Shawn dropping
his guitar in
disgust when
it goes even
further out of
tune then playing
the singer, which
he does best
anyway: Shawn
and Rick have
been in so many
bands that coping
with whatever
onstage catastrophe
is no big deal:
Shawn thrives on it,
really, he is most
and best onstage,
performing, a
singer's singer,
bopping smartly
to his songs:
Me, I'm up there
just trying to relax,
sweating bullets,
my licks awkward,
nervousness
running a lead
pipe up my spine:
Wrestling with
larger angels
is one thing but
so obviously losing
to them onstage
is another: We play
Rick's song and
his soft pop
voice is lost
in howling mix:
He plays the same
solo on his Strat
and doesn't risk
anything and
it sounds great:
I leap all over
the neck of my
blue Hamer
Phantom, trying
to wail, botching
enough to make
Rick glare at me:
The next song is
mine - "Best
Losers in Town" -
-that "hit" song
my vocal coach
reworked for me
into a bouquet
of schmaltzy
pop hooks snarled
in metalish grinds:
"Beast of Burden"
sung by Michael
MacDonald, except
when I sang it,
hoarsely, my
diaphragm became
an iron wall
round my belly:
Rick and Shawn
sing harmony but
the pretty lattice
can't hide the
ruination inside:
Launching into
a solo I know
in my sleep
my hands flutter
and fail like a
plugged duck:
By the time
I finish the song
I'm feeling
defeated: Rare the
moment when I
stood onstage
looking out
rather than
looking on: To
look out on eyes
that size me
as I sized bands
onstage as fitting
or not: Feeling
now pinned
by that indolent
gaze & judged
unworthy in
my motions
& I agree, feeling
them not false but
awkward & self-
conscious: How
foolish I was for
believing I
belonged on this
side of the stage:
A flying boy
with cirrus dreams
inept & mottled
on the stage of
the real so
unable to
measure up
to those stones
my father raised:
A dessication
of spirit shrinking
& shirking the
notes as the set
collapsed round
us: Resolving into
the resolute angst
of Aw Fuck It,
admitting the
defeat of not
measuring up
& finding in
an annihilate
sigh the wings
of abandon:
Who the fuck
cares? Especially
on this night?
In this band?
For this crowd
of punks and
pussies? So
just unsheathe
the loathing of
it all and feel
it limn my
moves, my solos:
Crank that fucker
up & to hell
with fitting in or
pleasing these
assholes: Lift up
from that sorry
ass stage out of
that Legion hall
to join the
beggar angels
flitting about the
balconies of storm,
up where the air
is free as Mary
Poppins sang
with Jane and
Michael Banks
& even their
dour now happy
father, oh, let's go
fly a kite:
Sky bartender,
serve me up some
of that white
lightning: And
so I play through
the rest of the set
with the ease of
a suicide at
his last party:
The playing
always much
better when you
give up hope:
I switch to
keyboards on
"Touch Too Much"
and our sound
seems to congeal
at last (was it
simply subtraction
of a diseased
guitar?): I bobbed
and weaved and
danced over the keys
and Rick hopped
up and down to
the beat while Shawn
smiled, languishing
over his notes:
Even Paul seems
to be getting into
things, nailing
his sax solos
with something
resembling fury:
We sound like
some cross between
Squeeze and Roxy
Music: stylish
bubblegum with
an axe to grind:
Then it's "Lonely
Town," our studio
piece, and we play
it well, hitting
all the notes:
It's the only song
where my guitar
parts fly past
Shawn: Meant as
fills, support,
they're too bladed,
too confident, too
exquisite: Shawn
must feel likewise
because at the end
of the song as I
solo the sweet
lyric turns he
starts mimicking
hitting me:
In jest? I was
out of that band
in two weeks:
But we got our
best applause to
that song: Even
Skins smile: Shawn
made some joke
about Quit That
Rock Shit and
watching the video
I know now he
meant me: Next
we launch
"Scarin' Me," real
confectioner's pop
here, Beatle-ish:
A couple of fat
girls get up to
dance: We finish
the set with
"Down Down Down"
our only co-written
song, the one
with that lingering
progression in
the middle I solo
through which I
can't manage
(again), sweat and
booze and
frustration
finishing off
the rest of what
ever I brought
to the stage
that night: We drive
to a cluttered finish
and it's Goodnight
everyone, we're
Innocent Thieves:
Drifters in a lonely
town & me going
Down, Down, Down:
We heed back to
the bar toweling
sweat thorough
an envelope of
indolent indifference
which moments
before had been
hard applause:
Oh well, drink
up boys: Damage
the headliner
punk bend sets up,
friends of Shawn's,
three synths and
drums: Ten
minutes into
their set one
of the slamdancers
slams askew
into some geek's
girl and the
real fighting
begins: Skinhead
pummels geek
to the floor:
Chair flies across
room: More fights
break out like
lightnings of
a storm: Then the
whole room conflates
in fire with curses
and fists and debris
and shrieking girls:
Shawn tries to get
the baud to stop
but the singer
sez shit man,
this ain't nothing:
This is rock
against racist
violence, not
violence per
se: Chanting,
the skinheads
phalanx out
the door then
suddenly reappear
with fists flailing:
Au obvious clash
of cultures: Cops
arrive, then
fire trucks and
paramedics:
some blood on
the floor (not much),
someone's glasses
stomped into
starbursts of
shatter: I downed
a last couple of
shots of whiskey
from the bar and
sneaked out of there
with just my
guitar, leaving
the bend to pack
up: No honor
among Innocent
Thieves: A bit of
real rock n roll
Thom Duffy
enthused in
his Calendar
review the
following week:
He thought
the energy of
slam a wonderful
& pure antidote
to what we
played (only
our band name
was mentioned
in the review):
And the violence,
ah heck, that was
just overrated
punk abandon:
So my only
media notice
as a guitar player
was for what
happened when
I wasn't playing
what turned out
to be my last gig:




ONE LOVE,
ONE SONG

Singing cannot much avail
unless the song wells from the heart,
unless it's noble love you feel.
My singing's then supreme. For, bold
in the deep joy of my love, I hold
and still direct my mouth, my heart,
my eyes, my understanding art.

-- Bernart de Ventadour (12th cent.)
transl. Jack Lindsay

My love for you and this song
are one in this singular travail
across the empty, gorgeous sea.
Though my ways seem
pathless, I follow my heart
which knows the way
through the wilderness
of waves, seeing with
eyes we share the deeper
darker path of love, an
ache as low as the moon
hangs high over that
silver, abyssal tide.
Our love cannot be
requited though nothing
else will do than that
day or night when
we'll merge at last
and dream and drift
off together into an
endless, clear blue space.
No matter all the
mortal loves that failed
to find you. No matter
all the instruments I've
blunted in my dowse
and reach for you -- penis,
guitar, pen, boat-prow.
No matter this ocean
of ink that grows
between us, filling
the hallows of your
every departure (or
were they all mine?)
with angel-burning tears.
All that matters is
the pure note welling
in my throat with
clarion and halcyon
desire, lofted over that
crystal thalassa like
a breast of pale blue milk
or the lucence of that
afterglow which brimmed
a few beds on a few
nights along this lifelong
row to you. I'm just
another luckless troubadour
marked from birth to
ache and sing to you,
my lady of royal blue seem.
Perchance today I
sing well enough of you
to stir you from your dream.
Smile for me just once
on whatever shore you
now walk. Bless these
penny verses with with
glint of your pure silver.
Kiss me once just over
the crest of the wave
I send to you from
the bottom of this art.

PASSIONATE MUSIC

That passionate music -
How it erases the one
who meant to ride it,
godlike, on a dolphin's back.
Love is not personal
though it wakens in a face.
The sweetness of an idea
blooms redolent in
a shared history,
but this music passes,
like spring. And then what?
Trapped in vernals
of I and Thou, I cannot
write poems. It is only
by taking wing
over the embedded
pair that I have any
measures to sing. Not
that the lovers care
for anything more than
their sighs, their sweet
fricative margins.
Oh well -
on this goes.
Eros now husband
to Psyche. Groom of
orchards far beyond
any bed, I waken
and hunger and surrender
to these words. Forget
that passionate singing,
for it can never end.



SONNET TO ORPHEUS 2.29

Ranier Maria Rilke
transl. Stephen Mitchell

Silent friend of many distances, feel
how your breath enlarges all of space.
Let your presence ring out like a bell
into the night. What feeds upon your face

grows mighty from the nourishment thus offered.
Move through transformation, out and in.
What is the deepest loss you have suffered?
If drinking is bitter, change yourself to wine.

In this immeasurable darkness, be the power
that rounds your sense in their magic ring,
the sense of their mysterious encounter.

And if the earthly no longer knows your name,
whisper to the silent earth: I'm flowing.
To the flashing water say: I am.

An Orphic Scatter

The music of Orpheus can still be heard today, high and distant, like the sound of a woman's voice inside an ebbing wave or harp-strings feathering the softest billows of a breeze. But we have to hearken far back into our past, into the mythic background, to source those Orphic remnants. He is an interface for mystery and history.

Son of the Thracian King Oeagrus and the Muse Calliope, Orpheus was presented a lyre by Apollo and instructed in how to play it by the Muses, so well that his song enchanted all of nature, not only wild beasts but trees and even stones. A song which "built a temple inside our hearing," as Rilke puts it.

His song was so good that he is made an argonaut by Jason and voyages in search of the Golden Fleece, his music charming gulls and fishes, a sort of aural sextant for the quest.

That music was put to its greatest test when his wife Eurydice was stolen from him on his wedding day; she is bitten in the heel by a serpent and dies. Orpheus cannot let his wife go and travels down to Tartarus, singing his way past the monstrous dog Cerberus, causing the Judges of the Dead to break into tears, moving even the heart of Persephone at the darkest mordor of Hell. It is she who convinces implacable Hades to let Eurydice go. The condition is simple: Orpheus must not look back on the face of his beloved until they have cleared the last ridge of the dead and they are fully in the sun again. The sound of his lyre alone is what guides Euryidice in that darkness. But Orpheus is not divine, and his eagerness to look upon the face of Euyrdice (whose name is associated with the moon, the true source of all creativity), and just before they have cleared the night, he looks back and like a dream which dissolves into a pillow at waking she fades, lost forever to him.

Grief for Orpheus is bitter and transforms him in an ugly way. He renounces heterosexual love and becomes a devotee of solar Apollo, vaunting instead love of young boys. (Catholic priests suffer from an Orphic cultural souring.) His denouncement of Dionysos puts him in the crosshairs of the Maenads, who catch up with him one day and begin to pelt him with stones. At first his song charms the projectiles, causing them to swoon and fall; but then one stone grazes his head and his song begins to falter. The stones start regularly hitting their mark. Soon the Maenads are on him, tearing him apart with the supernatural animal strength their master bestows them.

But the song does not die. The Muses collect his limbs and bury them at Liebethra at the foot of Mount Olympus, where they become singing nightingales. The head of Orpheus was thrown by the Maenads into the river Hebrus where it floated, still singing, all the way to the sea. Eventually it washed up on the isle of Lesbos, sacred to Apollo's mother Selene (another moon-figure). The lyre, still playing, washes too up at Lesbos. The head of Orpheus sings and prophesies so loudly that it angers his patron Apollo, who doesn't appreciate the competition. To his former priest he says, "Cease from interference in my buisness; I have borne long enough with you and your singing." And the head falls silent at last.

Orpheus is reputed to be a mystic founder as well, instituting the Mysteries of Apollo in Thrace, those of Hecate in Aegina, and of Demeter in Sparta.



A complex story; it has the sort of mythic mash of agonies and ecstasies we found in unravelling the Demeter mythologem. Here is the first singer, a great lover, the aggrieved solarist, the tragic scattered hero whose song lives on. It is a parabola of transformations which ferries a music to the many shores of a life. Always that song in the bow, pointing (or leading) the way: questing for a Fleece, charming love back from death, becoming love's apostate and rebel; singing on beyond personal death.

It's interesting to me that the courses Orpheus takes are all heroic and ego-driven, a sort of willful contest against the gods and divine law, powered and enobled by a gift which is wholly divine -- not really belonging to Orpheus at all. The song endures despite his foolish and all-too-human gambits. He may help Jason find the fleece but he cannot prevent Jason's hubris and fate; he may woo a maid with it but it does not guarantee a marriage; he may try to woo back Eurydice from death but he cannot best his own eagerness to see her again; he cannot endure defeat and thus becomes love's opposite, scorning Aphrodite and embracing Eurydice's (the moon-goddess) opposite, solar, ever-youthful, eternal Apollo; he preaches against Dionysos and ends up a bloody mess for it.

All the while that blessed music is there, leaking from his lyre, leading him on, teaching him many things but not granting him the sort of wisdom that would make him content just to be. He may be a priest of the Mysteries but such knowledge only causes him to suffer. His gift is his curse, awesome and awful. It is a knowledge lost on human ears, beguiling and aloof. Ariel's music is both sweet and cold, nearby and infinitely far; it leads men to doom and entrances lovers and haunts the dreams of old men.


The music of Orpheus is that sense of life's intimate mysteriousness, the presence of the eternal in the local, haunting because its is both so close and so far, maddening like a gold fruit hanging from a silver branch just out of reach. That music is in my ache for a beloved I can never find though I swear she is near by, perhaps on the next shore, in my wife but not, fading ever as I think I finally see here.

That music is in all questing for bliss, ever leading us argonauts of mystery on to the next source, the next story, the next excavation, the next exegesis, raising nipples and hardness from old dead things, enlivening the sources, making abysms shimmer blue, goading the hooves in my hand to write faster, get it down, get across a void of white paper toward that fleece which my gut tells me is just over the next page, down beyond the last line I write.



It is a bittersweet sound, gorgeous and tragic, infinitely tender and achingly sad, enthralling and bewitching; like a siren's song, it is impossible to resist and perilous to engage. One should never compass via siren but we're all fools to that music, running off in every direction to slake our ears on it, leaving wives and careers for a bit of its mad blue moon jazz, drinking it to dregs which have no bottom, no sufficient slake.

Or, older, wizened, wiser if only for the damage suffered to the equipage and the life, we find a way to stopper our ears to that music, only to discover it ringing still there, like the sound of the sea in a beached conch. The music which sounded like it was out there is really inside, a commotion of muses which weave mystery and history and delight and woe into a sodden and airy harmony, all heavenly spheres revolving in the song of the heart, all mighty gods circulating in fragile chambers of mortal tissue and ever-spilled blood.

Confusing the harmonies is all too-human; it's our mortal bone and bane. We hear it everywhere, usually in the most surprising places. We can't get away from it -- indeed, to wall ourselves off from it is to invoke its darker retributions -- and there's no way to fully swim its billows. Damned if you do, damned if you don't; can't live with it or without it -- these are classic hallmarks of the presence of the Orphic scatter.

The story(ies) of Orpheus have grown more human over our history, in reverse direction to most myths where a human king becomes divine over time. Orpheus is conjectured to have been a shamanic figure of sorts going back to the second millennium BC, able to transcend mortal boundaries with his song. He becomes a semi-magical poet in Ovid and Virgil with a human failing which renders unsuccessfuil his quest to rescue Eurydice. By the Middle Ages, Orfeo must rely upon his chivalric background to assist him in his dealings with the Fairy King; it is contemporary social practices which ensure his beloved's return. The song has never departed from our history, but we have distanced from it, understanding that though we hear and sing it, we are not made of such immortal stuff.

Yet it seems, finally, that for all of the mortal confusion and misery that surrounds the sweet song of Orpheus, like thorns around a rose, the essence of that music transforms back to the mythic. Our hearts are thus wombs, fertilized by that music through the porches of our outer and inner ears, where our fates are engendered. The next day we light upon a figure standing by distant waters, and something leaps forth from us in that direction, taking us on our next quest, the next strange installment in our history. The song of Orpheus is the magic of our own natures, whistling along as we move on down the road, circling through a life (or lives) all the way back home to first dreams, mythic sources, scattered though they forever be, like diadems of moonlight on a midnight tide.




THE CONTAINER FOR THE
THING CONTAINED

Jack Gilbert

What is the man searching for inside her blouse?
He has been with her body for seven years
and still is surprised by the arches of her
slender feet. He still traces her spine
with careful attention, feeling for the bones
of her pelvic girdle when he arrives there.
Her flesh is bright in sunlight and then not
as he leans forward and back. Picasso in his later
prints shows himself as a grotesque painter
watching closely a young Spanish woman on the bed
with her legs open and the old duenna in black
to the side. He had known nakedness every day
for sixty years. What could there be in it still
to find? But he was happy even then to get
close to the distant, distant intermittency.
Like a piano playing faintly on a second floor
in a back room. The music seems familiar, but is not.

Synecdochals

SILENUS

Just which cocktail pickles
a rumpy young satyr into
horrid old goat?
Our cocksman doesn't
know, but the nagging
suspicion that he crossed
that line too many years
ago is one he tries to
drown harder every day.
The drill is by now
is so ancient as to be almost
rusted out: drive home from
work with the radio playing
contemporary hits he can't stand,
crack a cold beer in his trailer,
slam a Swanson's in the microwave,
watch sitcoms on syndication
as Florida in the window
roughs up Lake Fairview
and the semis whoosh
up and down 441 like
basso deacons. Shower,
second shave of the day,
do the thinning hair but
good, slap on the old Aramis
and dress carefully in the
cracked floor-to-ceiling mirror
& trying to ignore the
wrinkles around his eyes
and the flecks of grey
like whitecaps in his hair.
What the hell -- and he's
out again by 8 to head
to his warm-up bar, knocking
back shots & beers &
bullshitting Gloria the
barmaid who he's known
for years; he's never gotten
her to come home with
him, but he still thinks that
some day she'll come to
her senses and see what's
she's been missing all along
--and man, will there ever
be some serious fucking
that night! Only she
better hurry up and
come to, he thinks
for the ten thousandth
time, knocking back a
shot of Old Granddad
and the refocusing on
his image in the mirror
across the bar. Surely
he'll be outta this
drab circle of losers soon.
He pays, she pours, they
bullshit as they usually do
about nothing in particular
the way old spouses do
and then he's off again
on his usual commute
to the standard round of
bars, thinking as he
usually does that tonight,
oh tonight will surely
be different: That the
woman he might meet
(for years now a slowly
thinning possibility, so
slowly but surely that
he cannot see the thread's
long been cut) who might
go home with him who
upon waking might turn
out otherwise than
all the others and they
will give it that try
that works where
the couple others failed
and they'd make it
to Love, Marriage,
Family, The Works.
He sighs. Why does
he bother? He's 46
and the bottom that he's
been ravening on
is near impossible
to hide from anyone,
even himself. He's
partying this night
on a credit card with
barely enough air in
it to float the evening's
tab -- there's maybe one
more night in it, if he
doesn't pay for anyone
else. The ex-wife is
screaming louder for
child support,
some judgement is
in the works. He
drives a '93 Camaro,
no babe car anymore,
it lurches epileptically
through its gears and
is still faintly redolent
of the night he shit
his pants in a blackout.
The last women
he's scored (two in
the past six weeks)
were real jackals,
horrible, bottle-club
closing-time crackhead
drunks, gals he'd had
to wait til they'd
done all their drugs
& passed out before
roughing down their
jeans & turning 'em
over to fuck 'em from
behind, almost flaccid
in their neardry cunts
& trying not to think
of that girl from the
Christmas party
who called to say
she'd tested HIV
positive. Awful.
Yet here he is again,
somehow further
on down that ladder
of diminished prinicples
and expectations,
switching the channel
to the oldies station
where they're playing
Journey's "Don't Stop
(Believing)", and it's
just the shot of hope
he needs, and he rows
down the his drivers
side window to let
some of the summer
night air in, post-storm,
wild and humid and
rich with ions, and
he feels all of the
possibilities rising
within him just as
pure and unequivocal
as the touched him
when he was fourteen
years old at his first
high school dance,
the band onstage
playing Grand Funk
Railroad's "Are You
Ready" and all of him
shouting Yes and the
girl in front of him smiling
Yes. Up ahead he can see the
bar is hopping, lotta babes
heading in, all ripe for
the picking, and surely
among them there is just
the one for him, sultry
and salty and ripe for
the plucking, her heart
made of feathers and
blue gin, spread to receive
his eternal thirst
for someone else's heat
and heart and motion
-- six deep inches of
sufficient-enough ocean.





An odd time, potent and empty, silencing as something large, it seems, starts to rise, wavelike. Whether I should pay attention to the yet-dark wave or toward what next shore it heralds, there is the sense of gestation having grown toward a unnamed fullness, preparing to break waters, groan, deliver ... What mewling boon is out there in this predawn darkness which today is so still and barely trembling, flattened with sleep and the toxicity of age and weariness and detumescence?

How did I arrive at this silence? The long poem-cycles -- guitar, well, crannog, cathedral summer, road of dreams, immrama, Cape Blue, dark drowse -- each soaked in a Theme till words harrowed the nooks and doors, slept with all the river-nymphs and rode every black horse both on and offshore. Arriving, exhausted of means, on a next shore with its next Theme.

I dunno if I regressed or progressed through the poems, if I found myself any closer to a God or beloved or apt image or simply washed deeper in the resonance of their absence, a mysterious organum which always returned me to the same white writing chair at the hour of rising and all daily demands.

Sometimes it just seemed that I'd written my way down into the same singsong noodlewhack of a poem, groovin' in the same old same old, the greased muse of dead ends. How many times can I say She's ever on the next shore I can't reach? Is that just masturbation, one of my stock reveries, the shape of eternal love standing naked in the surf with her ass pointed my way in the ligature of wave-ebbing departure? Is that pose sufficient for all dark ages?



Certainly there are more productive and useful tropes in a writing life. I've written my way almost out of poetry -- years of daily drafts, not much revision, no real hope for publication, no real interest in that either. The inner turbine which gets me up at such a silly early hour is not octaned that way, driving instead toward an invisible, eternally belayed or simply lost shore, one that vanished years ago when I put penis to vagina and then pen to paper trying to capture a wild fleeting thrall. What is the couplet that always finds its way into the poem? --

... I'll never quite find you,
though again I try ...

-- A sense of hopelessness married to an indomitable will which demands that I keep trying. Like those 1001 nights I headed out to get drunk and find love: futile and rigorous, as if I were inking penis with whiskey the poems I later wrote. Which now seem pregnant with something not poetry at all, maybe not even writing. I don't trust any words to be specific enough in directing me on but I do trust the process, for better or verse.




FIRST, LAST, EVER

Each poem sails toward You as first and
Last and ever, singing in the
Surgency of Now's blue curl, wild
Smash, pale sigh. The cavern of my
Isolde reveals its secret door
In drowned Ys only this once,
When hot words plunge deep in stone.
A kiss to waken sleep, blue light
To see deep: The wings which my song
Lifts and fans are feathered in moon
Milk and whale jets, cold Thor, orange
Bloom. And when the spasm ebbs all trace
Of you away, it joins the other
First and only songs on the beach,
The sum of Yous I'll never reach.

***

Jung names the process well in his essay "Conscious, Unconscious and Individuation" in CW9.1:

We call the unconscious "nothing," and yet it is a reality "in potentia". The thought we shall think, the deed we shall do, even the fate we shall lament tomorrow, all lie unconscious in us today. The unknown in us which the affect uncovers was always there and sooner or later would have presented itself to consciousness. Here we must always reckon with the presence of things not yet discovered.

These, as I have said, may be unknown quirks of character. But possibilities of future development may also come to light this way, perhaps in just such an outburst or affect which sometimes radically alters the whole situation.

The unconscious has a Janus-face; on one side, its contents point back to a preconscious, prehistoric world of instinct, while on the other side it potentially anticipates the future -- precisely because of the instinctive readiness for action of the factors which determine a man's fate. (par 498)

***

Animals in dreams lately, a great silver bear crossing our yard with our stray idiot cat Red nipping too boldly at her heels ... a cat on a porch with huge translucent eyes, apt for seeing a greater dark than mere dark ...




BLUE LANTERN

June 2005

... all that you need to find poetry
is to look for it with a lantern.
-- Charles Wright, "The Secret of Poetry"

Here in the dead of night
I'm writing maps and copying
psalters, looking for old leys in
dark folds by which to
lamp my pen as I wind
my way into the heart of
that stillness. I'm like a
child playing hopscotch,
nine steps in nine steps out,
quarrying (here) the darkest
minerals I found down and in
the resounding cavern with
its canopy of cold, timeless drips.
It makes for long sentences,
sea-crossings and love-bowers,
each line pushing some limit
like stones falling all the way down
into the exclamation of silt
to disturb everything lost or
tossed there, a skull or
Prospero's little black book
or an ancient sword my
Lady of Meres haunts
like a sheath. Even down
(here) the world above
has a say; some cankerous low in
Georgia or the Carolinas
keeps sucking huge draughts
of the Gulf of Mexico,
dropping hasty thick washes
of rain in its wake -- the
fifth day now of this crap.
Such storms make the
garden outside at this
black hour loll and snore
like a lover in those first months
of abandon when the sex drowns
everything else, shower upon
shower and the sun ever more pent
and stout and gilded from those
glidings, a brilliant horse galloping
in a sighing singing dark. Quench
me O Lord but never let the thirst
be expired -- that's the sound of
first lovers, of the garden in June,
of this rapacious pen rising and
falling down the page when all
else drifts in a dark swoon.
Blue lantern, moon of my harrows,
shine just enough for me to see
when I've come to the last step
of the song (here) furthest
and down. Grant me blue lysis.
I pause for a moment (here)
to soak the full nougat
of the prima materia, this
blackest of hours; and then
turn back and round, jumping
from stone to stone
toward the last singing line,
door back to day paling far
under the east, this next poem
in hand still dripping with
the lucence of that now fading land.

On, Voyager

The first artistic representation of Orpheus appears around 600 BC, as part of a relief sculpture from a treasury at Sicyon, a town in northwestern Pelopnnese. It has Orpheus standing on a ship with a lute in his hand, and his name written next to the figure. The ship is assumed to be the Argo, thus a reference to Jason's adventures in search of the golden fleece. Orpheus travels along with Jason as an argonaut because his song can charm gulls and fishes.


PEREGRINI

Clearly I am no more salted
by your disquieting gaze
than any other man
to stare too long offshore.
Look: the far islands are
reliquaries of desire,
each wave ferrying
a saintly skull or dark
pelvis bone from sands
we once walked
together on. Between
the fourth and fifth
centuries of our age
the drifting uni-boats
were legion, each
ruddered by a
man in exile,
his eyes faint upon
the vast blue main,
his heart that psalter
which you intone
with a voice from
every hurtful door.
That tide of saints
washed on every
lonely shore with
the same force that
would later raise
cathedrals, wave after
wave, with such
high and massive
stone. Those coracle
motions I repeat here
in daily jaunts from I
to Thou -- peregrini
of ink on paper
which leave every
known and home behind
to sing the next psalm's
distant shore, each
one wondrous as wine.
Around and far behind
me chant the shades
of such desire,
waist-high in time's
lost sands.
Fathers of my fathers,
toll with me here
this lonely matin hour
which calls every boat
from shore to shore.
Join me in this song
for ageless sailing
towards her futile,
fructive and famished door.

***

According to "The Voyage of St. Brendan," Brendan burned a book containing stories about the wonders of God's creation out of disbelief. For this reason he is sent on a voyage so as to see with his own eyes certain divine manifestations which earlier he had refused to credit. In this way he is to recover the book by refilling it with the wonders which he witnesses on his voyage. The majority of the phenomena which he comes across are related to man's actions and behaviour in this life and the circumstances consequent upon them in the Afterlife. Brendan encounters souls in hell, heaven and paradise. The astonishing and sometimes frightening experiences restore his belief.

-- Clara Strijbosch, "The Heathen Giant in the Voyage of St. Brendan"


***

In Immram Brain Bran returns from the Otherworld and relates his adventures to the people of Ireland from a boat at the shore. He writes down the poems (which form the bulk of the text) in ogham and then sails off, never to be seen again.

-- Keven Murry, "The Role of the Cuilebad in Immran Snegdgusa"

***

A poem by the bishop king of Cashel, Corma mac Cuilennain, who died in 908AD, contemplates a journey of penance on the sea:

Shall I go, O king of the Mysteries, after my fill of
cushions and music, to turn my face on the shore and my back on my native land?

Shall I cut my hand with every sort of wound on the breast of the wave which wrecks boats? Shall I leave the track of my two knees on the strand by the shore?

Shall I rake my little black curragh over the broad-breasted, glorious ocean? O King of the bright kingdom, shall I go of my own choice upon the sea?

Whether I be strong or poor, or mettlesome so as to be recounted in tales, O Christ, will you help me when it comes to going upon the wild sea?



Inexorable the tide which carries us from first sources, ever weakening that old magic music. Orpehus was at first a magician of realms, travelling back and forth on a verbal mojo which later became song, the eerie and bittersweet sound of passage beloved by women so much that even dead hearts awakened and returned. Then that sound became courtly and civil, a cultural code which many knights might use to charm their way into castles no longer on the bottoms of lakes but at their brightening rims. Down to our age when he is a whollly internal function, wooing thresholds of psyche, allowing passage down and back.

The tide carries us ever away from mythic shores toward personal ones which themselves vanish, bleaching that music into gleaming sands at first light.

So why did I eat all that sand as a child at the beach? Or why did the sight of pretty girls passing by our window fil my young heart with such desperate glee? Or how at seven years old, I'd lay on my bed and press my face into my "pillow television," watching me save a girl who had fallen into a deep lake? My history keeps delving me to that other tide which circulates the other way, back toward shores which name every hole in me Orpheus departed through.

Though days have changed greatly in the march of civilizations, our hearts have changed little or none at all. My heart is ever the boat with the man in the helm playing that infinite lyre, a song both rudder and crashing shore, augmenting all that is lost with blue meters, high airs, the witching of doors to castles and underworlds in deep waters below. It is not a poem, not even a tune, but harmonies of an infinitely darker incantation, like gleams of moonlight on a night ocean where the moon is every remembered kiss which shattered me into an infinitely wilder bliss.


***

What Perseus has to do with the Gorgon's head would never occur to anyone who did not know the myth. So it is with the individual images; they need a context, and the context is not only a myth but an individual anamnesis.

-- Jung, "The Psychological Aspects of the Kore," CW 9.1.319



HE GETS THE GIRL

As a kid I changed the world
by going into my room
and acting out James Bond:
Killing evil Blofeld
at the crack of worldwide doom
then lounging in lazy billows
with his yeasty girl.
The James Bond theme
would ease my steps
back into the real world,
a little while: Before all
the cold winds conspired
to blow me back to smithereens.
I could turn tin to gold
by placing my face
to a pillow, changing
the channel to David
Gets The Girl. I watched
a pretty girl edge round
a deep pond then fall:
I dove in and hauled
her back, her gratitude
flooding me with this
sweet, presexual warmth,
like milk straight from
gold-knockered Pussy Galore.
When the real leaves you
homeless, there's always the peel,
the pith and rind of surface cool.
I yearned and learned to
glide there lubed by
cool quaffs of Bond and
my own bouncing balls,
chasing the Laylas of La-La.
-a mystic of moments,
a bra unclasping its double
wealth, the shoosh of
jeans sliding down
their white daughters.
O splendid crucifix,
crying for immortal nails.
-That was the dance, those
Penthouse Letter-moments
where, Dear Reader, I found
what I never thought
I would personally ever
encounter. I dropped out
of the monastic mill
of college to play rock n roll,
hurling the delights
of a few nights with Becky
into the coiffed frenzies
of boogie brawn, each song
another dive in her rocking,
ululate bed- holding my guitar
like a surf-pole, casting
out these chord progressions,
humming a while, then
hauling up a solo that was
at once glittering, fierce, and
wild. At least, that's what
I sure hoped for, and tried
to live for, amid a howling
ruin of wasted hours,
initiate and annihilate
twinned in a 25-year
old boy. Rightburn, I called it,
that perfect balance
of opiates (booze, pot,
speed or coke) carrying
me out on the coracle of song,
a triangulation of
wish fulfillment, drunkenness
and balls, unsheathing a
bright blade after the
second chorus, tempered
cruel and swift and
eternally sharp. Such moments
came as frequently as
the perfect babes. Dear Reader,
it never happened, some guy
on staff wrote all that crap,
the whole fantasy of sex
and drugs and rocknroll,
knowing exactly what we all
wanted, what we prayed
for each night we walked
into a crowded bar. It
was the entire exception
to the rule that I prized
above all else, thus dooming
me to the quest for a chalice
which in truth proved
the millstone of my years.
It seems I'm always
investing in fictions
and pay dearly for them all.
Has much really changed?
Here I labor away
on this overlong, overly
autobiographical lyric
meditation, earnest as ever
to ink a gleaming fish
on white pages, the mirror
of a life deemed greater
than what it can only refract.
I'm entertaining at best
a troop of ghosts in my
own head, bandmates,
lovers, all the guys
who played James Bond,
the solemn poets. Having
written this far it's a struggle
to shift back to the day slowly
waking outside, now washes
of blue warbling along
with scattered birds.
My face always felt strange
lifting from the heavy warmth
of that pillow-TV, protesting
the effort of returns to the real.
What can you say of a life
spent voyaging the top feet of the sea?
What have I learned
but to ink obliquity?
No matter: I'm hard wired
to the James Bond theme,
walking round that deep pool
whose waters shake only what's stirred.

***

There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about the sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath.

-- Herman Melville


To seek in the brine what is promised in heaven --
anyone with sense can plainly see the madness of it.

Vitae Sanctorum,, II, 293

What everybody in the group shares in a hidden way, or needs to share, comes to expression in a writer. It is as if works of imaginative literature were a set of dails on the front of society where we can read off the concealed energies. What happens in the imagination of those individuals chosen by the unconscious part of society to be its writers, is closely indicative of what is happepning to the hidden energies of the society as a whole.

-- Ted Hughes, "Concealed Energies," in Winter Pollen


"... Knowledge of the Trinity is porpperly likened to the depths of the sea, according to that saying of the sage, 'And the great deep, who shall find it out?' If then a man wishes to know the deepest ocean of divine understanding, let him first if he is able scan that visible sea, and the less he finds himself to understand of those creatures that lurk below the waves, the more let him realize that he can know less of the depths of its creator."

-- St. Columbani, Sancti Columbani

How deep would your knowledge fain to go? When the crew of the Pequod have caught their first whale, the head is cut off and tied to the ship -- later it will be mined for the spermacetti trapped in the honeycombs of its skull -- while the crew works at stripping the blubber from the corpse and boiling it down for the whale oil. After the crew retires below decks, Ahab comes upon on the deck and contemplates the massive had hanging there, as if he were Hamlet observing the huge skull of the jester Yorick:)

It was a black and hooded head, and hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the sphynx's in the desert. "Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet hear and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is within thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. The head upon which now the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid the world's foundations, where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot, where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned. There, in the awful water land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went, hast slept by many a sailor's side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw'st the locked lovers leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw'st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insensate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed -- while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to make an infidel of Abraham, and no syllable is thine!

-- Melville, Moby Dick, 339-340




LOVE SONG

Ranier Maria Rilke
transl. Edward Snow

How shall I keep my soul
from touching yours? How shall
I lift it over you toward other things?
Ah, I would like to lodge it
in the dark with some lost thing
on some foreign silent place
that doesn't tremble, when your depths stir.
Yet everything that touches you and me
takes us together like a bow's stroke
that from two strings draws one voice.
Across what instrument are we stretched taut?
And what player holds us in his hand?
O sweet song.





SEA LABYRINTH

Just beneath my trackless
ocean course between
this lonely shore and you
there lies a labyrinth,
an ancient code of your travail
which I enter as I launch
and wander as I sail,
finding the next isle
at its center not quite
sea or land but both
& you fresh gone,
the water in the well
there almost burning
with your blue, harrowing
the dregs of my
every lost carouse in you.
My job as I see it
from this chair today
is to make that
circuit canonical
and nude, an abbot
with his psalter
intoning lines over
singing wavelets
with nipples bigger
than I have mouth:
that in those Nones of
stern devout your
gauzy peachy salt-
glazed Nietzschean
may pulses a bossa
rum sashay,
causing archangels
to go stout and
clamor for a fall
down to the
saltiest names
of God. I see 'em just
beyond the breakers
tumbling in a row,
those pairs of blessed
ankles and pale soles
vanishing in blue,
each like a book
tossed on the wave,
another vespering
poem. My job is
sound the depth
of that well
and count every bed
that's lost down there,
each an inkling
of desire,
an arrow's shiver
up the mortal sense
that you're staring
back up from that murk,
imploring all my seed
and ink and nouns.
My job's to make
that view a shore
enfolded by incessant
tide, each wave an
antiphon and greeting
and taunt to mount
the coracle again
and chance once
more the main's
desperately empty dazzle
with that spiral
dancing floor hidden
a mile of fathoms down
where gods and whales
and undressed lovers
sport and roam. Each
plunge and peramble
here comes to you
at last, or at least
that resonance
which hallows these
ears and haunts
my turn back home.
Each return is to
some higher deeper
ground where even
less is known and
the tide pounds harder,
like a kiss, a clench,
the next blue
widening door.

(For the full peregrination, go to www.immrama.blogspot.com and sail the archives.)