"...And men, going at it blind—
"As is very proper for those
"Who tackle a darkness."
It was the type of day you sit around and watch paint dry on the wall.
Blasted off me knickers.
Loafing on the breeze.
"Grab your gun."
"What?"
"I said,
Grab your gun, this isn't just for fun anymore—you can't
Just do as you please."
Step inside this house and I will sing you a song.
Tell you about where I've been, shouldn't take too long.
I'll show you all the things that I own, my treasures you might say.
They couldn't be more then ten dollars worth, but they brighten up my day.
This book of poems was given to me
By a girl I used to know.
Funny how life works out,
Trust me, I would be the one to know.
"Softly," she said, bringing a plate born in light.
"Slowly we go, position inherent."
"A tree is love," she says, looking up then pointing,
"Those bricks were baked in love," the building imposing,
"That plaque and who is named with it,
"This bench and the ivy beneath...
"Musty spiders, dusty footprints, lonely war fiend
"Crying baby, broken tele, craving morphine..."
And on and on in fashion,
She talks and I walk and listen.
And I still sit in awe and admiration
With great mirth and human fare:
Desire and admonition. There is never
Any ending only on to the next stair.
Now I'm watching ceiling fans go round
Trying to catch that feeling. It's instrumental.
I have my pencil and plus my paper
But it won't be over til that big girl from
Decatur tells me—sing! Say well what
You mean, no more withholding,
Decisions need to know their names.
I've been hiding out for weeks,
I've slept atop a haystack,
I've lived beneath the sea.
In this there are three things that will be:
Pressure, practice, and patience.
Now let's watch what grows from this seed
And where this road will place me.
I'm seafaring, this is just a levy, an appropriate highway.
How many more roads? Each connect in tribute, a
Fountainhead, bending adaptation, strong in any wind,
A mast will always sway, sunny rhythm twirling come what
Will or may.
(Entering the roadside diner, the clatter of dishes rise up to greet you
from the back of the room. The bar is arranged in a lazy half moon
Shape, Sojourner Truth is in the center of this take, I'm
Off to the side sitting in a daze.)
Cast -
Sojourner Truth
T.S. Eliot
Robert Browning
Proteus
Casually glancing, pouring me over
sideways in the rain, the looks she gives me. Pass me over another piece
of toast and she's all sunshine and smiles, Amarillo Reststop, shoulder the
load. The last few weeks had been forward; somewhere to get to, somewhere
to go. It's true the blue jeans have stained my memory, awash in a sea of green—a track left imprinted into infamy—and could you sing me some Edith cause I haven't even heard of regret. Where I'm
from we go to sleep with the sun and get up with her again. Aurora is her
name, but California if you speak so plain. My people, humble people who
expect the same—Mexicans. Fresh accents. Flowing in day after day.
Hope of some portion maybe sprinkling in sometime next may. The smiles are always tucked away here, held up at best. Someone
pours me coffee, notepad tucked away on her breast, the ever passing
moments. The five best ways I can think
to say hello to this fine mess are only an afterthought, a blank check, a
blatant expression. I would cut loose kid, sing the road again, but I love it when this place is open, I love her very breath, a funeral pyre in my head, let the Triumph speak loudly now
it’s been a long road friend. A smile left its best now do the same—revolving
doors and lime-light jests, interwoven candy men, I see one Pan. Camped away in a truck
stop purveying all the deities and don't say this is the last time again,
I'm sick of that old system, always wrapped up in believing, my fingers kept
slipping, always grasping at the dregs of that city; unreal teething, little dog howling—bark at the moon or give it all away.
The new day's light leaks in through
the slats of the blinds pouring lines on the sheets, mingling memories and feeling, twirling complete. Steady hands and steady feet. I woke up just about noon and put on my shoes.
I heard Eliot was rolling through. Mr. Browning had been poised in
the diner for about three full days now, waiting to give the old bugger a piece
of his brain's steed! I float in on the breeze to listen to them speak.
Eliot- "These days are unending, nothing new here to be seen.
The sun still beats down, and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket
no relief…time for you and time for me, and for a hundred visions and
revisions, all before the taking to toast and tea."
He went on too long, revealing much that was from his mind, and much that he had patiently refined and created. If you have the time, go find out, for what is in the Wasteland is a burial of self.
Proteus- “Now for some light hypocrisy —”
Browning- "Eliot you're wrong! I want to paint that
across the Septum of my Song or make it the title of my 50 plays finished so I
can really say it with conviction! You did well to shroud things in mist, to
hide what you see, but the problem that exists, as you can agree, is in accessibility.
Where the heart lies, let the brain lie indeed! What does someone
who could never even read think of Dante and his Dream?”
Gesturing towards Sojourner, he leans in like the spring, listening.
Sojourner- “Well now chile, I kin tell you what I think.
Everyone has their own little piece, and what's good for you ain't goin’ta
be all that good for me."
Eliot- “Well said, you see—no poet, no artist of any art, has his
complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation
of his relation to the dead poets and artists, as well as his relation to the
other living things and beings. What
happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens
simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it."
Proteus- “—the ever changing landscape of thought and seeing, the
prodigality of nature, healing in sleep and dream.”
His words seemed to mingle in with their voices as if a presence
guiding the oration, patiently gesturing, and silently waiting.
Browning- “I'm afraid I absolutely must agree, but I offer this as an inquiry: Dante once prepared to paint an angel: whom to
please? You whisper, ‘Beatrice.’ While he mused and traced it and retraced it,
Dante, who loved well because he hated, hated wickedness that hinders
loving. You and I would rather see that
angel, painted by the tenderness of Dante, would we not?—then read a fresh
Inferno.”
His hands were flying passionately as if he were speaking to a full house. Sojourner starts to let out in a quiet hum of an old spiritual
song as she gently sways back and forward. Eliot was pacing about.
Eliot- “The Divine Comedies were Dante’s personal Purgatorio, if you will,
and inasmuch as he felt compelled to his duty he did do it—and truly! Myself
included, I know that at parts it’s a bit off-putting—”
Sojourner- “mmmm—mmmm, now you’s finding the truth in it.”
Eliot- “I am, indeed, at times, at bit too obtuse, at times
almost, The Fool.”
Proteus- “The wasteland reserves its spot among the cultural
consciousness, for me it makes not one difference how it talks, or if it is
unimaginably dark or what, come now Mr. Browning, let’s not judge something by what it is not.”
Browning- “'Come now!?!' Can you even see the Septum of my Song! Ginsberg brought back poetry
that was a shining portal, Eliot immersed in gloom. I don’t know to whom he was speaking, his
intellectual bemusing, academics praising, very elegant phrasing but what is
the value? This is a respectable issue
I’m broaching here; I reject the old and make room for the new. I am bidding drink to a live—'
Proteus interjected in the most subtle of waves, a thought came
into Robert’s brain, unbidden, “There are only the dead in this place,
everything returns to the sea, from where it became.”
Browning- “—crowd beneath me!
Know where my heart lies! Make no
mistake!”
At this point Sojourner broke out full on in tune!
Now when Truth started singing you really had no choice but to get
wrapped up in the meeting and lost inside of those words—and her voice, her
voice rising up in a non-proselytizing murmur of maternal rejuvenation. The raw emotional charge and earnest chagrin
of her soul proofed by hardships had no equal in this land. This ever changing landscape of our own
redemption (at least that’s what the cats called it); I leave that place of constant reviewing. Her voice still echoing in me, “…the meanest
child of glory,” hmm, what on earth could that mean? This still song lingers clear. Even though I have the trappings of an
ethereal king, some things still remain shrouded in fear.
Proteus- “Better make sure no one is following my scent.”
I sit down and perform the prescribed offering. Burning and spinning a basket of light-wisps
up into a whole Pollux-spring bed of text. Sure that nothing unsavory was listening in
on me I began.
Proteus- "A fractal cistern turning to everyface, complex
simpleness displayed, now I will speak my fortune in verses as what the Thunder Says—"
This is why she gives me those looks,
Sojourner- "What's that you be sayin Mr. Shape
Changin' Mistah Crazy?"
I like it this way. I love the looks I take in. Day
after day the shape is always changing, shattering emphasis and attention,
impervious to opinion, now listen:
A jewel drips down
Against the lion's cheek, starts a speech
Of sparks and trees, the sudden illumination
Then thunder speaks, once more for
That sunken floor underneath, the giant's feet.
Ungainly enemies but a clever little fiend, lacking in no
amenities, Loki Loki
What do you see? The crest and star of Lucifer, consoling
the people
In dream. Star-light, star-bright, first star
I see tonight, light of fire atop the trees.
Let sleeping dogs lie by and by on the side
In eternal suffering and cling with the breath of directness,
In each and every forehead, like the eye-opened
Orpheus of Greece. Living antiquity, light-like
simplicity. Implicitly
Impervious. In mystery I saw garlands of the goddess
Crowning roses. The flower and thorn of kings, petals
falling nearer
To my heartstrings then the intellect of the many. They may
Skewer me proficiently, but sentient? I doubt with
intensity.
Consider it, crazed whim, brutal payment.
Feverish abatement, let the wine brew for Brutus
So he can ease his day's end. It's the sound of the pin
Drop drop to the pavement, I have no need
Of names, it makes not one difference. Once I held
Respect and reverence, and once I felt the breath of
Resentment. The Lords of Light-less Decadence. I
cannot
Refrain within this placement, black and white is all
But black and white in me, shading, do you see it, but
It makes no difference what's been said of it
I don't care for that insanity, the cup just turns to dust.
Instead, I draw a skeleton key from inside of us and
Watch the some turn into galaxies, then take
A drive on down the turnpike to see my friends and family.
God, this dream can't really be, I feel so
Weak I'm faltering. Trouble, trouble toil and double!
For one so meek and grim. Desire and admonition.
The weight of the pen; poor men and prophets, most often
Where it's least expected, buried behind piles of jest, but
anything less
Is left uncollected. Tell me what’s best, coddling
collective?
Give me solitary contentment, a stand on the moon or the trees.
To the
Tops of each pleasure and the depths of each winter
We season two birds in one stew. Pan—so specific and
splendid,
Sordid and senseless, relentless and restless and cruel.
These days are indeed unending.
I’m just a traveler here, I deserve no mention. A storied destination at the border of time
and place, my Reststop of need and haste, I don’t know what current under vein
pumped me into this, but the tracks were bare, and bore no names. All I remember them saying were, "Please, forgot why you came. Step inside, please sit down, the air here is clean and the grooves show the way." It's almost too much to be seen but I can hear that front porch calling. I can feel their dreams. Scattered across yesterdays ashes She digs down deep asunder to gleen, lovingly plants down her footprint plainly, pulls out all the maybes and leaves some mold in the way. These flowers I have shored against my ruins,
well then, shall I at least set my lands up to gain?
