DEPARTURE
And the sun paled the morning I called the doctor, shying from behind the milky clouds. I squinted to see, but I could no longer trust the eyes, watching the stray phantasms released from the dreams I conjured the night before. They walked among us that day.
And I looked her upon the bed, half-drunken in a sleepless tiredness, and how I doted upon her gentleness, a delicacy at the footsteps of doom.
I have washed my hands in my tears, harvesting them from my face; and though I could somewhat conceal my fain desire, I blew my nose and blood ran gushing down like a river of fire.
Hollering uncontrollably at the sight of these things, and how much my love would, oddly still, find a measure of kindness in the face of such insurmountable torment.
There is the one that forgives, and the one that forgets. And there is the one that rages, and takes revenge, and stiches remorse on the cloak of death. And that is the one that neither forgives nor forgets, and that one is all but me. And upon my head a jewel of red light, seen plain from the southern skies. All too neatly put in the winter dome, a queen of gall on her throne.
And I called upon them to join in, and bring flowers from their lands. And down below the stairs, and across the pond and by the street the sound of church bells went weak, suspended in the wetly, coming breeze. And they ceased when the doctor came, and I was a spent storm in clouded forms.
Take her in, place her good. My arms are cradles of dirty, mossy wood. Prick her nice, clean and done; minutes spilled one by one.
Her lovely head, the loveliest of all heads, crowned in encircling, faint stars. She swallowed meekly twice and was all but gone. And when I cried inconsolably upon her back, I wet the buds and forth they spewed their shades of grief.
And there in the hills in the outskirts of town I went for my business in solemness. There in a place I have never been before I put her in. The sleek female cat, blue-eyed and aloof, rests meagerly inside her tiny, female grave. And though the soil grips her lovely bones, the mood that takes us is a sign of her still, and the bane of a grave shan't separate.
And grief is a cat that perches upon some tall cupboard. It lies still and quiet, and all but forgotten, until it rears its head to look down. And when you look up, it rains for a while. And then it passes. And then it's gone.
PENITENCE
The yellow-tinged light flickering from inside the copper lamp sheared the gloom and opened through a path on the graveled land. Slick as shadows the rabbits treaded along the stone-gray road, companions to the lonesome baby bones, selenic, entombed.
Somewhere lost in the dreary woods lies the stillest of all lakes. Its shrouded waters veined from the icy streams of mountains that bore their fate. Hidden nearly a mile below the ear-shattering pressure a womb was trapped, a promise that rang from another universe, where all things our nature prevents have a chance to be.
Its meaty walls smelled of blood and dirt, chained to the bottom with arteries and veins. Swollen like a ripe fruit, painful and red, in watchful wait. Anxious for the time of birth, alas it shall never deliver, for his way is shut from the seas of the Moon above, and right there at the very detail of the landscape, there is the shape of him: a stroke of paint, a sentence written in dry ink.
I know you all too well, boy, from the moon-shaped face, the rabbit-white skin, the nebula in your eyes. Every dream you haunt me, covered in a shroud and bearing chains, reminding me of a promise I am unable to keep. And like an oyster clasped tightly to my ear, I hear the crashing waves undulating down to your stillborn self. The road from the Moon into the body inside the womb is shadowed to us all.
Lovers come and lovers go: this one has green eyes like you. Lovers went and dusted away, and you crossed your fists and stayed. And countless lovers you sent my way, with your etiolated, milky bones. Yet no man could force the links of your womb-tomb and curse you into the world. Not out of love your freckled muzzle should come to be, and that is precisely the penance that obliged me to this song.
My body was carved out from the shapes that could only ever dream of you. And I am a woman only by will, and I am sorry I cannot will you. I own no uterus, I have only ribs to spare, and ribs won't birth you. Baby, listen to the unwavering love notes I send you, coursing in the air to your tidy bunny pen. Frown not, for the greatest act of love I can make is to let you trapped below the ground. Baby, breathe in the waters of the lake, until all your hollering is drowned and I cannot hear you. Baby, whatever lies in store for me, you are the crosses of my Ts, the feathering around my nails and the silence that entails. Baby, I sing this song as penitence for the rest of my days.
You can only run ever so far from me.
PANDO
O Pando, if I could muster a wish from the shattered bits of me, I would that I could grow as you do, softly above the soil. That even in my old age I could find ways to push up trunks, but now there is nothing I can do but to sit and die with you.
Trembling Giant, I read words below the face of your leaves, quaking dearly and yellowing at the mercy of the world. It ages with you, and I grow old like you, and I left youth behind. Streched like your white bark, I weirldy decompose.
When will we flower again? I am so exhausted. Could you wait a little longer? I am not quite ready for this world.
HEX
Fathers would tell
About an extraneous spell
That came ringing by the doorbell
That awful and tolling death-knell
It keeps tolling and tolling
And ringing, unfolding
I'm every father's cautionary tale
Hold up your charm
And try to do no harm
When he pulls you fast by your comely arm
To bring you into his family's farm
He should know better than this
The boy-like tinge faded upon her kiss
I'm every nightmare that makes you grow pale
The bell of that spell
Keeps ringing near me
And whenever I cross his unenchanted well
It was you that locked me here with your key
Well I'm a wry maid
A confounding charade
A female with strange, taunting arts displayed
Or was it a female they called me, dismayed
When the marred my limbs around
Spread out piece by piece across the town
The fey boy who hides behind a girl veil
Pushed me downstairs
Chopped me in squares
When he found out what made me so rare
No-one should fall for a monster so fair
Forever my parts are sown in the field
But where my heart lies no man there would yield
From beneath the almond tree issues my wail
MYGALE
Slow, nice and slow
Ever slowly must you rise from the plié
Adagio, lift the comely leg
Alas, the poor, sickled foot
Well now the lithe limb limps lowly
From the breaking of my old bone
Laden with a gruesome, burdening ache
Broken in two places: I broke it there for you
And down, where the wind stirs the waters
Where the spiders craft their endless, patient homes
Numinous, stringed lyre-homes
Our tryst concealed from all
Come and find my broken leg
That never shall turn in satin again
Subdue the raging of your heart
Nice and slow, press against me
Telling me of your dread
Well do tell me all about it, dear
"Tarantulas feed upon their lovers"
I didn't break my bone for this
I spun; I whipped
As best as my twirling could sway
Why do you recoil?
My feathers are not black
Poecilotheria; Grammostola
Acanthoscurria; Haplocosmia
I bear none of those names
Allay your learned phobia
And wade gently and quietly
Into these graceful arms
I do not lie; I do not sting
I love, and love still
Despite everything
I believe what everyone tells me
I love still, despite everything
MINA
Mina
Estes são os dias que tivemos.
Saia das cobertas, venha ver o sol.
Eu mal estive com você,
Na busca insaciável dos anos
Em que falhei em ver que você
Era tudo que me bastava
Eu te vi crescer e trocar de cor
E no detalhe das lembranças
Lá estava você, quieta
Em aguardo, para dormir em paz.
E dos segredos do universo
Do pó das arcadas estelares
Circundava a promessa
De que eu iria te encontrar.
E você esperou a hora escura
Para se unir a mim
E com o verbo felino
Me ensinar o que eu jamais entendi.
Estes são os dias que tivemos,
E estes são agora os dias de saudade.
E no calor do meu abraço
Se desfizeram os seus amáveis, frágeis,
Pobres ossos, tão queridos por mim.
E tudo que eu sei,
Tudo que eu tive ou cultivei,
Tudo que eu vi passar e arruinei
Está agora diante de você.
E se eu pudesse voltar
Aos dias mais simplórios
Isto eu diria a você:
Saia das cobertas, venha ver o sol.
(Deita no túmulo,
Aguarda o meu chegar.)