What secrets do I have hid up my sleeve
For careless players thinking it’s a game?
I warn them that it’s easy not to grieve
When their persona is alive and sane.
Nightmare of sewers made of rotting flesh,
The ever present threat: Nathaniel’s ghouls;
These horrors from the past, they still impress,
But blind the future to these witless fools.
Your characters will come and go my dears;
They never perish like the one before.
Just tally up your growing list of fears;
The ones that really scare you to the core.
And every time you think the story ends,
I’ll introduce one more of many friends.
Archive for November, 1992
Bishop Speaks Only in Riddles
Posted: November 30, 1992 in PoetryTags: Bishop, Fear, Flesh, Friends, Ghoul, Story
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Eagle Feathers
Posted: November 27, 1992 in PoetryTags: Brother, Cloud, Dark, Eagle, Fly, Horse, Sea, Sister, Sky, Wind
from my hair flutter many eagle feathers,
tied to the dark ends of curls,
framing my face in the chill wind
which flies over flat expanses:
the seas and the prairies.
it is this wind which cloaks
my feathered brothers and sisters
while they hunt with their keen eyes.
in these skies, dusted with clouds,
runs the horse of my spirit
and my name, glancing from
one end of the world to the other.
these eagle feathers tug at my hair
in the wind to tell me: fly! fly!
in the yard of my childhood
stand trees that are no longer there,
they made way for a deck and some stairs.
these trees are ghosts of the wood
that supported the planks
high up in the air,
where Mom would be scared
for me, as well she should
have been. I imagined tanks
and other dangerous things:
Sauron after my candy ring,
and my happiness was my thanks
for being the young king
of a forest of trees bent with caring.
After “The Origin of Nunivak Island”, a Nunivak Eskimo Myth
Posted: November 26, 1992 in PoetryTags: Knife, Mother, Sky, Spirit, Wolf, Woman
I
my knife is bone.
I break in half
my knife of bone.
each half I place
into my mouth;
they’re just like fangs
with which I have
become a wolf.
II
to a weeping spirit woman
saddened by the sky,
I make you cut your hand
and then you break your knife.
III
mother wolf.
“Had he no staff? Then with a dream-thread he held
the illusion. Breathing, he held it; the void, the illusion,
and felt for its earth. There was nothing to feel:
‘I shall gather the void’. He felt, but there was nothing.”
-Uitoto Indian Myth from The Red Swan
He had questions, and thoughts
About feeling nothing but the void,
Wishing for earth to stand on;
Dreaming of thread to hold the illusions
Of nothing, of the void.
Weave the earth from dream-thread
And the illusion of the void.
Where there was nothing,
There is now earth.
Gather the void into itself,
Into the crook of your arm,
Into the fold of your dress,
Also made of dream-thread.
All of you, made of earth.
“Now in the underworld, thinking and thinking,
the maker of myths permitted this story to come into being.”
I want to write you
with my soul;
like a piece of bread
soaked in wine;
to stroke each word
like painting a lover,
then stand from the canvas
and murder myself
for ink.
Scarecrow
Posted: November 20, 1992 in PoetryTags: Crow, Death, Flame, Heart, Love, Man, Mind, Scarecrow
I
to look at you as a scarecrow
doesn’t work; you don’t scare me
like that.
my heavy heart just tends to grow
heavier; strength starts to tear me
apart.
II
you are a singular flame
that sears me awake
from a comfortable death
of being a man with no name.
I need you to love me somewhat;
you must speak your mind
thinking through every breath,
knowing exactly where to cut.
III
this is for no one else but you,
but don’t think you’re not the one.
this could mean any number of things.
This is all new.
All of this is new.
I am new, you are new;
to discover, each other
again,
like children at school.
$ympathy
Posted: November 16, 1992 in PoetryTags: Believe, Dreams, Lie, Love, Song, Sympathy, Trust
so nothing happened between us.
is that what you believe?
is it easy to forget me?
is it easy just to leave?
I don’t want your sympathy.
I don’t know if you lie when you tell me
that you really love me.
what do I believe?
I don’t want your sympathy.
don’t stay if you really don’t want to.
you’ve got to tell me,
what should I believe?
do you think this is fair?
is this what I deserve?
you came crying to me,
and I’m the one who gets hurt.
(chorus)
iIm trying to blame myself.
you give me nothing to trust
while all the dreams of your love
crumble into dust.
(chorus)
I am Adopted
Posted: November 14, 1992 in PoetryTags: Blood, Bones, Mother, Mountains, Ocean, Rain, Rock, Stars, Stones, Water, Wood
Adpoted, I adopt my own ideas
About who my real parents really are.
My mother; ocean and spring rain; the dew
On grass stems sparkling, a field of stars:
All water, blood that courses past my eyes.
My father – rocks and wood and muddy bones,
The mountains laid behind and raised before,
All sturdy piles of softly mortared stones.
A Dream of a Ship
Posted: November 9, 1992 in PoetryTags: Believe, Bones, Dream, Eye, Magic, Mother, Night, Ocean, Rock, Ship, Sky, Stars, Tears, Water
I sag into my bonds,
bound to this wooden chair
with water from my eyes
six inches deep on the floor.
I feel all alone on a ship
gently rocking, back and forth,
water rolling, sighing
from bulkhead to bulkhead.
my head is down
and my hair is in my face but
if I was to look up,
my pupils would birth stars;
they would burn their way to the sky.
my hands are tied with
my own intestines, wetly coiled;
every movement
wrenches my stomach
in dizzy circles, hollow
like an airplane ride.
the chair holds me up,
gives me something to be tied to,
roots me to the deck; an anchor.
my mind hurts from
holding these stars,
squeezing my eyes shut and bearing
the sting of gas
leaking through my eyelids.
sails snap in my ears;
I grow a mast for a spine,
grasping handfuls of air
through canvas fingers.
I grow old and feel my hull
rotting as it surges
through these black waters.
I grow very tired from dreaming
of the sound of surf
on rocks, a shore.
tired from creating all this magic
for no one to see.
below, I flash open my eyes
and stand forth from the chair,
wet bracelets hanging
from my pale chafed wrists,
and I climb slowly to the salt air
of the deck of my ship.
I balance on the railings,
ignoring the spray of rain and sea,
and the call of oblivion
in the depths of the ocean,
my mother. finding strength
after strength after strength and
whittling them into kindling,
like so much driftwood.
teetering on the edge of falling
from the railing into myself
forever, I like being here:
I am myself — I have nothing but me
and my starry eyes and
my wonderful rotting ship,
intestines around my hands
and an emptiness in my stomach.
there are no more tears to cry
in the hold of the ship
for the toys I have lost
when I was younger,
refusing to grow up,
to grow old.
nothing can destroy
my beliefs; without them,
I go. I would let all the stars
that I have created
stream to the skies,
shrieking for me,
for what will become of me,
a bag of bones, a sack of skin.
I remember my stars;
they will remember me,
whispering my name
through the nighttime.
My Mother in the Ocean
Posted: November 5, 1992 in PoetryTags: Beach, Blood, Moon, Mother, Ocean, Salt, Sand, Sea, Sky, Tide, Water, Woman
it is something, standing by the sea,
feeling my heart and my blood
fashioned rudely out of ocean-salt
and the milk of beach-foam.
I feel the pull of the moon
on the tide standing here,
examining the sky
in the sheen of the wet sand,
in the surface of the water.
I smell the wet sexuality
of my ever moving mother;
a lover of immense strength;
hypnotic, the woman with depths
for her eyes, skin wet and fluid,
salty hips and buttocks and breasts,
cheeks and lips and thighs
in the flexing of waves and
in the rolling of the water, the foam.
On the pinnacles of cloudless happiness,
I must reach down to pull my friends up.
In the depths of darkest sorrow,
I must push to keep friends above me.
If I have all my wealth in one glass,
Then they are the mead in my cup.
And when I have no strength for the morrow,
It is these riches that carry and love me.
if you come to me,
I will be whatever you need.
I will kiss your tears,
I will be your strength,
you just need to call on me.
I can’t tell you
what the answers will be,
but I’ll hold you tight
against all your fears,
you just need to call on me.
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