Love Letters Unsent To People Unmet poetry by John Robinson ONE TUSK PUBLISHING Atlanta, Georgia 2 0 0 1 ----- "Hello," "The Nature of the Beast," "Per Dolorem Ad Astra," "Postcards from Galapagos," "The Stygian Depths of You and I and All," "12:03 AM," "Why Do Living Things Bury Themselves?" originally appeared in The Usual Suspects Meet Frankenstein, Fahrenheit 452 Press, 1997. Chapbook execution by Area 52 Productions Book and content copyright 1997, 2001 by John Robinson. All rights reserved. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NoDerivs-NonCommercial License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA. First Edition, July 2001. Corrected Edition, February 2004. Published by One Tusk Publishing 2900 Delk Road, Suite 700-289 Marietta GA 30067 www.onetusk.com ----- Introduction to the Online Version 2001. After long and fruitless attempts at buying into the idea that I had to ostensibly "get permission" from someone else to be published, I finally gave up and launched One Tusk. I would do it all myself and reap the whirlwind in whatever direction it decided to go. Since I was sitting on a great deal of poetry, I decided a chapbook would be a nice toe to dip in the self-publishing pond. At the time, fifty copies of a fifty-page chapbook seemed a lot easier to write off than several thousand copies of a three-hundred-plus page novel. And I had experience with creating a chapbook, as I helped to put one together in 1997 for a poetry/spoken word group I had been a founding member of--The Usual Suspects. Our chapbook/audiobook was called The Usual Suspects Meet Frankenstein. That was essentially my proof of concept right there. Well, I'm pleased to say that the chapbook was a success. And the novel that followed it has been a success as well. Anything over and above rotting on my hard drive--anything that actually puts the stuff in somebody's hands so they can read it--is a rousing success in my book. We sold out of the chapbook in just a couple of months. I even created a two-CD audiobook of the thing, and we sold a few copies of that as well. The chapbook has since gone out of print as I moved onto other things. Then I ran across Cory Doctorow's website (http://www.craphound.com) via a nudge from Warren Ellis' online mailing list (http://www.warrenellis.com). Doctorow had apparently taken the insane step of releasing his novel(s) online free for download--and yet was still making money in decent amounts on the physical books themselves. He was basically living what I had been cogitating and preaching about in such places as my Widge Goes Off audio column and elsewhere. Checking things out--I figure the guy had to be doing something right considering his books seemed to have decent sales numbers on Amazon: i.e., better than mine. So following Doctorow's lead--even though he wouldn't have any idea who the hell I am--I figure if this is the party, I want in. So I've created this online version of the first chapbook and it's being made available under the terms of a Creative Commons license (http://www.creativecommons.org). If you have previously read the physical version of the chapbook, there have been some very minor changes in some of the poems...mostly dealing with lineation. Working within the confines of the page sizes for the chapbook meant I had to compromise on a few lines just to get them to fit. Those have been restored. As for the license, the short form of it is this: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0 Attribution. The licensor permits others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work. 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This License may not be modified without the mutual written agreement of the Licensor and You. ----- for my parents, John & Nancy Robinson. ----- Hello Hello. See, that wasn't so hard, was it? Sometimes it can really be that simple. But now that we are talking, we must move on to more important things more important questions, like How have you been? and How's the family? and Who are you anyway? i don't know you from Adam, Eve, or the Serpent, and Who let you in here? and just Who the hell do you think i am anyway? Well, now that we've gotten those out of the way, and obviously i can't frighten you off with my questions, we must now truly speak. Are you aware that inside all of us is a conundrum, and lovingly folded inside it is an enigma, and enclosed in an envelope inside it is a paradox, and when you dial the right combination you get a quandary. And when you pry open the quandary, you get nothing. Absolutely nothing. Because all of this is a ruse to keep your attention away from the second shelf down from there next to the broken telephone and the bowl of rose leaves where sits the shoebox. Inside the shoebox you would find reams upon reams of letters you will never write. You do not not write them for reasons of fear that transcend the haunting memory which is the written word, or the liability which is flesh made verse. You do not write them for fear that if you write them you will wish to send them, and if you wish to send them you will either realize that you have no one to send them to or perhaps worse, that you do. If you have been at this for long, you do not bother to meet these people who you would write these letters to. You simply file the pages in no particular order in the shoebox for the moment that will probably never arrive, the moment in which you might need to skim over lines which do not and should not exist. And you take comfort in it. You will simply buy a cat. And then another when the first gets lonely. You'll believe it. Still, the gnawing question remains-- if the blank after Dear... were to bear fruit would it be succulent and sweet or a wax facsimile? In the case of this emergency, if someone where to actually walk up and say Hello. you would know exactly how to act. you would know exactly what to say. you have the moment mapped out in your head down to your last exhalation of breath. Still, when you're standing there on aisle ten with poison in cart and bag of corn chips in hand and he or she asks if you're married you'll say no, but not ask for his or her number. You see, the shoebox's lid is closed. And there are rubber bands holding it so. ----- The Nature of the Beast The tile floor is cold under your bare feet. The cold of the sink sinks up through your palms. You pull down the bottom of one eyelid. You accuse your reflection, saying THIS NEVER HAPPENED as the woman you murdered shifts in her sleep in the next room, smiling. Angrily, you think at least one of us can smile at least one of us can sleep. You have seen it all before. You have heard it all before. You have been here before. But still, the exit is no easier to find. What never happened? All the lies we promise ourselves All the moments we honestly meant to mean All the things unspoken yet better off unthought What never happened? The constant drip drip drip drip of anticipation filling up a bathtub with days and ways filling it up with hopes and dreams leaning back and pretending to relax but still pondering the possibilities of that appliance near your toe. THIS NEVER HAPPENED You could return to the next room. You could lie down beside her, and in the morning when you awoke ten thousand cold miles of mattress would separate your spent corpses. Any emissaries sent to bridge this gulf would lie bleaching in the mid-morning sun. Then, bound by the schism which is clarity there would be words, but their casings would rattle noiselessly on the ground. As was stated, you have been here before. You know the terrain. Or perhaps it will all pass away in a few hours. You can speak of it as the Grand Mistake, and yes, perhaps even laugh about it. Go back Go back to the night before to that moment before you appeared on her doorstep half out of your mind with a half-formed thought in your head and say THIS NEVER HAPPENED You can think no more of it now. You climb into bed and she shifts towards you. Her head slips under your chin. You put one hand on her shoulder as if to push her away. You want no part of this for THIS NEVER HAPPENED... but her breathing is so contentedly even and as you close your eyes you think, Damn... if only she weren't so warm. ----- 12:03 am Eyes unclose themselves in the moments wet and mundane after the passing of the previous day. Silent stars wear black armbands and peer down through solemnity at your formerly sleeping form. Once again, you dreamed that you were having this dream. A goddess had poured honey upon your lips as you dozed in an unspoiled garden, free of human longings, free of inhuman duplicity, and wormwood. You opened your eyes, but before she could explain the vase and the rose, before you could even cross the room, before you could pose the question, before she could compose the answer, another day slipped through the splintered hourglass, and you awoke with regret in your soul and sweetness on your lips. ----- Postcards From Galapagos 1. Dream a little dream of suffocation. Glance in the direction of the indifferent snore and pray for a skipped beat. It's no longer amusing how he can use a sundial to tell time on overcast days. The ghosts of pleasantries eye us warily. The shelf is littered with their icons: photographic proof of hollow smiles behind, the tide repeating and eating at the shore and sea shells which you won't hear the sea in anymore. This is not a life of quiet desperation, it's just that no one is listening. 2. Here is everything you ever wanted. Here, right here, right there in front of you. It took years to stumble over it, crouched at your feet as it were, but you are forced to acknowledge it now. They fed you the desire and the dream, but instructed you no further. Big as life and twice as devastating, it waits for a response. Close your mouth. We're staring. 3. Reason cries out in the wilderness and no man pays it heed Except-- for the Department of Transportation Officials in their Hardhats, who start putting down Stakes. Evolution seeks footholds in the air like a capsized beetle while Charles spins and laughs and spins and laughs No one wants to grow fur anymore. ----- And When You Returned Home You brought the grocery bags in. You sat them down in the kitchen. You said they had distance on special, so you picked up some extra. You said, hurry and help me, we need to keep it cold so it won't spoil. i could not move slowly enough. ----- Orpheus and Eurydice: a love story Son of Oneiros and Calliope he was, grandson of Zeus the father, and he was mine, almost completely, as i was his, more than completely. He sang of his love for me with such passion, such incredible passion that nature would still itself and give breathless notice, not allowing even the wind to interfere with his song, so that the trees themselves would need to bend of their own accord to give an attentive ear. He sang of his love for me with such passion, such incredible passion that the gods of Olympus would give pause from their petty rivalries and seductions of mortals to be seduced themselves by my lover's song. He sang of his love for me with such passion, such incredible, empty passion that it would make me sick to hear. i fear the annals of history will show me as nothing more than a name, but since we are in Hell here together, and none has ever returned alive from this depth, i will tell you truthfully: That even though in life i was woman, i had a song of my own. But compared to the brightness of my dearest one what was my cheap inspiration? A drop in an ocean, a one among many-- still it was mine, but overshadowed by one i had bound my life to. And just as his song had easily managed to make mine as notes unuttered, so too did his love for art make his love for me, and moreover, my love for him into nothing more than a title for one of his compositions. Lovely though they were, and loved for they were about me, they seemed more against me or perhaps more through me, but never about myself. Never about myself. So you see, when my life ended abrupt, i, at first, wept openly, tears falling silently among the red rock of this place. All of my comfort and familiar was gone-- gone with him, gone with his song. But my lyre had fallen with me, so i began to sing my lament and demanded the deaf stone open itself to me. The damned listened despite their suffering and my song finally found purchase in the darkness of this place, this place where his melodies could not reach. Better to have the ear of one disembodied soul than all the inattentive living things of the world. So, content i was, content i was to dream that Lord Hades himself might possibly hear my despair and give pause. Content to dream i was. But the crass fool would not leave well enough alone. At first, i was happy-- happy for him, happy that he felt so in love with me remembered me for a moment that instead of his song he had given my soul chase, taken the time to descend and win my hand again by robbing Lord Hades of a single tear. i was to return with him, return to him, return to the world above and i was happy. But i had the realization, one step from life: That things would no doubt return to as they had been, that the song of this man would coax the affection of men, women, children, animals, winds and gods-- and then what of the song of poor Eurydice? Be dumb, child, we have come for the song of Orpheus. But it was too late, my hesitation upon the stair had made him untrusting turn. Then the damage was done, for with the loss of Lord Hades' tear we were torn from each other forever, as i was torn from the ear of the monarch for eternity. My lover's song had invaded even my private corner of Hell, and the damned were even more the damned for being denied the words of Orpheus. Now and again, i would catch a drift of the dirge, his lament for my loss, and could feel nature bending itself to his sorrow. So i must ask: Was it all for me, love? Or was it all for your song? Did you go through the suffering only to rape more inspiration from your harlot muse? How many epics did you wring from my untimely demise? But this is Hell, after all, and they will not take my lyre from me. i have tried to lose it many a time, only to find it there in my hand once again. i am a woman with a song to sing, and not even the damned will listen. For it seems no one will pay heed to the notes and words of woman, no, neither in Heaven, nor in Hell, nor anywhere in between. When i heard they had finally rend you into pieces, i felt no loss at all but neither did i feel freedom. This world has already been tainted with your art, leaving no room for mine. So despite my love for you, nay, because of my love for you, i wished a handful of your flesh for my own. i am sure that when your crown drifted downstream and was swept into the sea, you were still singing, Damn you. ----- Another Poem About Your Eyes The thing I hate most about being a poet. I'd like a poem about my eyes, you know, For once. Just for a change of pace. No one's ever written a poem about my eyes. I constantly draw inspiration from what I see In the eyes of others: the light, the spark in them. There's no spark in mine that I can find. I can't start kindling with it. I can't even find my way to bed with it. Instead, I keep tripping over your shoes. ----- Never and Always Five and a half feet and still going down. Sweat ripe for the picking from my brow. Dirt under my fingernails, reminding me I'm alive. Frenetic with hesitant expectation. Waiting for the sound of metal striking wood. Breathing hard, not as young as i used to be. You're out. I've seen you. Haunting me again. Reading the ingredients off the backs of mirrors. Sculpting clouds out of dragons and wishing all the seeds away. Six feet. Anytime now. A nod to worms, trundling black things. They will excite joy in my unmoistened throat, will bring life again from the dust, my life, and i can crawl from this hole reborn in exchange for musky death, relose filthy gills and inhale the moon. Six and half feet and standards break down on the subatomic level. There is nothing here. Nothing here but dirt and more dirt and myself, more dirt. Where are you? Seven paces from the tree at the fork, these two words interred before, this undergrowth a spearcarrier in all my forgotten dreams. Where are you? ----- Sharing There's ink on my fingers-- enough to incriminate myself, enough to mark you for life, the scar, a letter, a circle, fading and growing in the sedentary light. Mine still itches when it's cold. It's like a divine blessing. Believe me. You want to pass it on. ----- untitled i would weave you an untruth if i spun for example that i have this feeling. Instead, this feeling has me. i speak so and so the precipice yawns and feigns indifference but will receive me once again. It calls me by my secret names and bids me fall. The tumbling descent is familiar but this time i have time to count the trees as i go. It is a delicious avalanche indeed the tide of white washing clean the mountainside erasing the slopes below but never gaining speed. Uncontrolled but submissive it will die at the base it will die at your feet. What you might hear me say is that i do not want this that i do not want this at all. Rest assured, i could promise you if i still believed in promises that this would be the only lie i share with you. ----- Get Well Soon i don't miss you. i won't mince words or lie to you for that would be too easy. And you know me, always the difficult one. You rise up now and then, and shake your tiny fist You'll try to convince me you know what you want, and that's as maybe, but you don't know what you need. You strap yourself to the mast and pour wax in the portals of your ears. You sing offkey at the top of your lungs. You're trying to defend yourself against singing siren or mermaid, but they don't bother with either of us. No, not anymore. No, the only person here was me, and wonder of wonders, but that was the malady. Here's your remedy. ----- Hesitant Love Letter God pricked his finger while spinning your hair so an angel told me i am afraid of you because you are exactly who i would like to meet in a dark alleyway. You see, in my dreaming hours i gather kindling in the cold grey of the valley to keep such thoughts at bay. i ponder your name, and roll it along my fingers not daring to let it pass my lips for fear of invocation for once in flesh, what then? Those fingers, one of yours brushed against one of mine once and once only but it was enough to set in motion things which only desired to remain still. In the darkness, the darkness of your eyes opens wide and wide almost inviting me to look inside but i fear watching more than being seen. You see, there are letters sealed, i know. But postcards are cheaper. Here is one now, read it, it says Wish You Were Here. Please sign it. ----- Habeus The casualty lies casually still and lets the plush carpet sponge that it lies upon soak up the humours that stream out. If natural selection did not rob me of my smile then certainly it must have been you for it looks so flimsy hanging there beneath your nose. No matter what happens between a you or an i it is always the third party involved, the us who sustains injury. The words that are now shoved inwards to the hilt, are illegible, partly due to the stains which had burst forth from our side when the phrases were thrust there and partly because my hand had stuttered and shook so while writing them in midair. Before they could vanish like a smoke ring a small thought brought them into solid reality and sent them home-- here between two ribs, sheathed in our side. They paused only long enough to finish their own chalk outline, which i had begun in a parking lot in December and which you finished months later in your living room. Friends, you said, and if we say it over and over it will make it be so. It did not cross our lips often enough, it seems, for i walk down the street, my hand at my side, applying pressure. Every night, i should have knelt and murmured it like a mantra, each repetition forcing it to be so. Every night, i should have gone to my home and suffered in relative silence. Instead, i suffer the deafening, that of no phones ringing, of no words spoken, of future selves stillborn. ----- Still Lives ----- zero Stay, stay, stay, said the bird: Mankind cannot bear too much mankind. Comfort without comfort -- Stay. The car will not arrive until four this you know as well as your name -- Stop. Do not rise and peek through the blinds. Do not let the barbed sunlight sting your eyes. Hide beneath this canopy. Hide within your flesh. Reside inside that which does not make you what you are not. Remain inside your remains. Or, if you feel driven to action, compelled to be compelling, do not wrap your head in a cloth, let it go naked up the stairs to the roof, throw open the door if you must, lean over the precipice to the world below you. And, look at them. Look at them, all of them. Pass by each of their open caskets and remark that they look so much like ourselves. Listen. Do you hear it? Listen to their desperation. Listen to the spiritus mundi sigh. Listen. Listen. ----- one She was dead. She was dead, and she pronounced herself so mere moments after she had opened the door and entered into what was left of her fantasy for the very last time. On the table by the door sat an ashtray into which they would leave their keys. When hers clattered down alone it was the emptiest sound she had ever felt. She would have called his name in an attempt to bridge this gulf, to shatter this silence self-imposed, but it would do no good. Much later, she would make the rounds and find spaces in the closet, under the bed, in the bookcase, and elsewhere not unlike the ones in her stories, locations and people that either were visited and did not exist, or the other way around. So there in that moment of endings, she thought about what it must have been like at the beginning, when she still had control, when she was the one arranging the fruit and the bowl, and not the fruit itself. She had a half-empty ashtray a half-full story about her tardiness and the knowledge that she was dead but with years left to live. ----- two She meant no harm. She truly meant no harm. She would walk up to paintings in museums, unthinking, and place oily fingers on oiled canvas. She only wanted to see what they felt like. Years before, Keats tried to convince me that it was better this way. He was muttering something about the beauty of unconsummated and unconsummating love and pottery. That one moment of just before for all eternity. i rebelled against this idea stagnation through ceramics "Better to get to the point and get it over with," said i, "no man can teeter on the verge forever. "Gravity may or may not be a truth, "but hearts and pots both break when they fall from shelves." "Or if they are pushed," he added. "Or if they are pushed," i agreed. "Just remember," he said, "you were warned." His words echoed in my head as i realized she meant no harm. She truly meant no harm. She would walk up to people's lives in the world, unthinking and place tapered fingers on tapered lives. She only wanted to see what they felt like. ----- three Underneath the overpass he takes another pull from the bottle as the cars ignore him and turn up the ramp up Highway 15 and out of his life. To all things an ending, he thinks, it's just that some endings take longer than others... so he spits out a vapory laugh to the fluorescent sky. He wrote their names together in the pavement. That was long ago, in another lifetime. Things were simpler. There were still some things to believe in. But last night, he lost all of the misbelief he had once held as true. While seeking contentment in the flesh of his latest soulmate, he breathed out a name. "Kori." And that name belonged anywhere but in his bed, in the ear of the woman he feigned to love and who did him the same favor in return. It belonged here in the sidewalk next to his cut in the stone which marked her bed cut in the memory breathed in the ear of that long ago lifetime that long ago bonding of souls. So he pulls again from the bottle and smiles grimly. He thinks of endings, and then he thinks of endings. His thoughts are carved in stone, and more than her name is encased within. ----- four When she arrives home it is long since dark. It is exactly like it was when she left it. The lock rattles as the door opens to permit entrance to this particular fantasy. That of home, and the smile of welcome which she should have received walking through the door. Or so she thought. The ideas of home of welcome of welcome home, she had dreamed of them since she was a child. But there is no smile here, heralding home. Only a grimace given for the note which is in its usual place on the kitchen table. A promise of a time to return which is flexible as all promises are. She climbs into bed and wraps herself in the blankets reaching for some touch besides her own. This was her today. And this was her yesterday. And if the cold was not so comfortable she could wish for a different tomorrow. But instead, always wishes and words, well-intentioned, but never good or made good upon. So she falls asleep and half-remembers something Goethe said about being free. She can never recall how the quotation goes, but she will die with it on his lips. ----- five The shower beats down upon her. Her eyes closed she gives her unmoving body over to the movement of the water down, down along the sheath of her skin descending a familiarity though she cannot remember without checking which direction the spiral goes here north of the equator. She faintly hears him whistling a tune in the kitchen punctuated once by the rebounding fall of a pan. She smiles despite herself and runs her hands back through her hair letting the falling water encompass her form as his thoughts of her encompass her mind the way he would touch her cheek and sigh the way she tried to shrink back inside herself It was the potential of the moment that frightened, the realization that the actualization of one moment would either destroy her or make her whole once more. This thought was more compelling than the fragmentation of a lifetime scattered and still, half-formed emotions slipping as they walked through beaded pools languishing on the faucet She moves, and realizes the stopper is in place. This whole time she has been wading through these thoughts, deep water shrouding her feet. She pulls it free and calms herself with the knowledge that all things rise and fall all things return to the norm whatever that norm might or might not be The water escaping through the hole dropping out of sight decidedly clockwise she frowns, i must have been wrong... and it drowns out the humble music from the kitchen. ----- six The waves outside go in and out nonchalantly erasing some child's forgotten castle. The sky is clear, and the bloated moon hung there looks down with disinterest on the solitary man, lying awake in the vacuum that is a sprawling two a.m. bedroom, his wife pinned beneath heavy slumber beside him. The moon knew for some time what this man has experienced in this moment of epiphany: His entire life is a lie. What the patriarch laid out for him, he had done, just like his father before him. The few paintings he had been proud of relegated to a forgotten corner of a rented storage room across town like some guilty family secret. The loving father who had uncapped his dreams and squeezed them down the garage sink was somewhere else, sleeping the sleep of the just, next to his own smiling trophy. This is where most men would ask in that shocked man voice, "My God, what have I done?" But this one knows his crime to the letter. He goes to the glass door and looks out and up. He would fly if he still could, but it would do no good. Not even moonlight could restore the wax he had once worn upon his arms. ----- seven She goes to the lake to seek peace. She hears the soft ripples of the water calmly making promises to the shore. She feels the caress of the wind on her bare arms, she crosses them in front of her as she walks. Dusk stands in the doorway, barring night's path, and the reddish clouds resting on the horizon to the west mark a place not yet reached. She looks back eastward, half-expecting the light trailing her to be an overeager dawn, but instead, it is the bite of arc sodium, and the lines of windows, lit only by the dull flicker of television screens within giving her a gnawing flicker of recognition within and that feeling comes again: "I do not belong there." The water is clear enough during the daylight hours but twilight makes its depth an uncertainty. She bends and brushes the back of her hand across its surface as one would a familiar cheek. She thinks of descending, stepping forward out of one gray shallow world into another, embraced by the comfort of cold escape. But the circles caused by her hand stretch outward and the circles formed by her hand stretch inward and that feeling comes again: "I do not belong there." She stands and looks out across the lake, seeking peace. Her circumnavigation has run its course. Canadian geese take to the sky, but will never see Canada again. The breeze wraps its arms around her, she wraps her arms around herself, taking comfort in the chill. She smiles, and says aloud: "I cannot stay here." A dog barks for her to awaken. She thinks, i will go after one moment more. i can go given one moment more. ----- eight Forty-five miles from his destination all four windows came down the music came up and the freezing cold came in for he had slipped and forgotten he was alive. As the flesh on his bare arms stood at attention and the joints in his fingers gripping the wheel stiffened he watched abstractly as the orange leaves on the trees descended into shades of grey only half-convinced as he was that it was due to nightfall. And as an orange line was drawn across the horizon and the birds taking flight reminded him that a body in motion still has a tendency to feel emotion his eyes watered only half-convinced as he was that it was due to the cold. And as the dashes in the road disappeared underneath his headlights he thought of them suddenly as the perforation of the world waiting for the gleeful hands of gods to rend it into pieces. He laughed then, and watched, crying, as the laugh clouded his windshield. For he was alive. He was alive. ----- Grey Spirit Yearning A fin cuts a swath through the shallow pool of memory. She trod barefoot across a crowded room, until the water came up to her knees. the oceans of her eyes too full of doldrums, quadrapedal spectres. Not enough rope to be bound to a mainmast, neither any nails to consume the deed, but no song learned passed fresh lips to draw me deeper, and for that, thanks are on order. I kissed her once with undercurrents of raw betrayal, the only time we ever shared skin. A hysterical front moved rabid over the surface of former calm and washed the seeds of any ghosts of growth away. Gratitude for moments past because they are past and not lodged in the gears of now. Karma or some other blindness has taken its tithe and Possibility without enough for bus fare must wade the long distance home. ----- The Stygian Depths of You and I and All We stand upon the shore and offer up mistletoe, rumored to give safe passage across the sea of empty space that makes up everything and everything. Our merest pieces exist on the fringes of existence. Particles with our signature have touched the vast faces of forgotten worlds, but the dog still has not been fed. My patterns recognize yours each time you step through that door, for actions and reactions and counteractions on any level higher than the invisible give pause and precious moisture exhaled from pores. The leaves breathe in, the leaves breathe out, and all of this and more mingles with our remnants that you wipe off the bookshelf. Here is the hand i first caressed you with, on the endtable, and here are the lips i first kissed you with, in the sofa, and here are one hundred thousand vague and distant memories falling, as we walk through these halls haunted by the waking dreams of our own dead skin. Give me seven years. You shall change, and i shall change, but the patterns remain. Exchanges on minute levels bordering on the cosmic and cataclysmic fall then each and each second. Now... now... then now... again now. We are all empty space in the end. All of it, all of us, stuffed with fear and misgivings. Alas. ----- Why Do Living Things Bury Themselves? You and i stand there and hold mirrors up to reality, searching for the confused fog that lets us know it is alive. Was that a diminutive sigh? Did a nostril stir? No. Then to the garden with it, let it return in returning, let the convocation of worms commence. Worst case, a little sleep and not the entire pie served on a platter with your crown and so transfigured, wash it down. Children will skip around in a ring and an awakened hand will begin to ring the bell for the end of everything-- Except for you and i. If you wander toward the back of this hall, mind the signs there, they say COME SEE THE EGRESS and you should know the rest by now. Rats' alley beyond, and beyond that-- we forget. Mankind can only bear so much fantasy and the little bird is dead. Easter the cat grins chesire and does not wish to repeat herself. The handle on the alley's side of the door. You recall it, i know you do. You were crouched in a cardboard box the first time i stepped out so long and long and long ago. Purest silver, the handle it was, and we could come and go as we pleased. They melted it into coinage struck a manmade god into it and rendered it in exchange for a kiss. The doer of the deed still mumbles by occasionally. He could not reconstruct it if he tried. Perhaps, instead ask Why do buried things live still? If our dead partner was to appear now he would wear his chains and rattle them, yes, but they would not be forged in sin. Each link instead an amalgam of broken promises, still held together with regret, words no longer echoing, love letters unwritten to people unmet. Let them go, let them leave, their feet are covered by the sheet and they can harm you no longer. The dead can fend for themselves and the living sometimes catch a glimpse of the little man behind the curtain of the acorn fallen on fertile, unfriendly ground of the leaves full of children and the children full of straw. The dog's nails are ragged. He will not cannot find us down here. We fester too deeply for shallow minds to go. We decay so well so the infant hand will grow. When you have shed your outer shell, i somehow still will know. But i cannot find your hand in this dank, musty place. These roots they clutch at my moral remains. Sweets to the bittersweet, my love, you say as the pathway here loses the memory of human feet as the innocent ceremony is borne down by its own dress as is written an unauthorized autobiography of all of our sins disremembered. God is in his world, and all is right with heaven. Ask the roses to sing you this song when they bloom forth from me. You will not hear your answer inscribed in the air with a vegetable tongue: Some things cannot return to dust fast enough. Now leave me to Adam's blessed curse, my love. i am thirsty for my sleep and the wind is shifting away from the south. ----- Requiem: a mass for the living in four movements (translated from the original English text) these ruins i have shored against my fragments ----- Requiem Aeternam I. The chosen have already left us their cars on the side of the roads bumper stickers and sheep's blood as sigils to call a rain of angels down upon them lights hazarding clues as to where they went from here i do not know for sure i only have an educated guess. So here we sit the rest eternal eternally at rest eternally left behind to suffer in blind ambivalence denied the doorway denied the steps into darkness denied the pass through the dark mountains to the other side instead with each egress we digress and regress and always come back out again at the beginning and always then at the middle this shore with no passage no passage to the other side only watching and waiting and watching the grains of continents drift away in the surf and perhaps sometimes drawing strength from a universal half-truth of erosion. II. So roiling in the surf (as i roiled on the shore) a tennis ball which i plucked from the foam and forced into metaphor. or rather, the attempt was made: The ball itself would not be so moved. There it was, constantly reaching the shore but rolling back again into the sea and i thought, yes, it is the same but without man or hill and then, Ah! What a happenstance rife with meaning! "What portents do you bring?" i asked. Nothing, it replied. "Impossible. You must mean something." Nothing, again, nothing. "But..." i screamed, "this is madness!" "When the larger, seemingly-significant events in one's life lack even the semblance of meaning, it is only natural to look to smaller occurrences such as this for succor." Such are the births of religion, it said. "But..." i continued, "the universal truths, "the universal meanings, "they all escape me. "If i cannot piece together enough meaning to impose it on such an inconsequential moment as this..." Such are the deaths of faith, it said. Now we are getting somewhere. III. So the rest is silence? If so, how much rest can we achieve in this quiet cacophony? We swear we will speak only the truth and therefore our mouths move without meaning soundless and furious we attempt to force from our lips promises which no language can truly muster. Therefore, we, the rest, are indeed silent. Speak we eternal, but eternal, we silent. ----- Donaeis Domine I. We were told to immerse ourselves for he was coming back home. This fine patina of promises and prayer will keep us safe from all manner of disease destruction despair Forty years and more we have wandered in this waste land, still never getting the joke laid before us that those who strike rocks in anger are punished while those who throw rocks in righteous fury are granted eternal life But still how long must endurance stretch? These nigh two millennia have come and gone quickly like a dream that upon waking you realize you never really had. Flickering images of false fire gift us with assurance that all is well Es un mundo pequeño despues de todo so get some sleep and try to feel better. II. So the rest is silence? No. The sum is silence. Or is as it should be. The endless mocking voices of five billion parrots all echo as one large quiet cacophony and yet no words are spoken. Rather, the masters the maestros throw words at jet engine noise and watch them splash against blank canvas i ask for meaning, and in reply, they cry "Where were you little man, when we remade the world?" i answer with no more than a shake of the head. i know which way the wind is blowing. i know which hand you use. i know that i do not what i do not know. Which is more than one can say of you. I can see her now in my mind's eye, The Creator, adjusting a pillow by her head and saying, that that was not what she meant at all. that that was not it at all. So preachers in pulpits, and friends on boxes and lovers on bedsheets in backstreets and elsewhere all of them paint for me. III. i say there shall be no more promises. Those promises made already may live. All except one. That one is already buried with the tearful woe of ten-thousand imaginary brothers piled on top of the pine box. (There are two words in the box.) i forgot the path to the gravesite. (The first is NEVER.) There were flowers growing there. (The second is FOREVER.) i forget what they were called. You see, i thought i was in the middle of the path she said i was in the middle of the path but i was out of sight out of mind in the box with two meaningless words. i hear the man in the plot next to mine. He says, "At least your bell will ring." "At least you have a rope to yours," i reply, unfazed. IV. We have neither mastered reality nor fantasy, yet seek to make them both obsolete. Our souls, more precious than gold, have been melted down for the fatted calf to which we offer praise. i will lay my hands upon it. i will say that i believe. But have pity, for pity's sake, though pity like patience has worn thin. So for heaven's sake, and in heaven's name, do not promise me anything. ----- Et Lux Perpetua I. We staked our claim on the shore. These forces these small forces shaping this foot of coast and small forces elsewhere shaping their respective feet of coast my own feet mired in infirmity here my own feet sired in infinity here buried in the wet remnants of memories i feel those same forces lapping up and washing away my own particular shore. Standing in what used to be my...demarcation? declaration? Who knows? i know that i was abandoned by my fellow scripters i cannot keep repeating myself in impermanent bliss for the tide always wins and washes my words away. And those scriveners who deserted my sinking islands they float just out of reach held aloft by delusions of mediocrity. There is something to be said for writing in the sand. "Impermanence is better than nothing at all." i wrote these words, and even i do not believe them. My fine floating friends, they make letters in the water with gracious hands they draw oaths in the foam with tapered fingers they do not comprehend the short span of these promises. At least i can offer this sand, which will hold a word or two before it is consumed. It can hold three words quite well if you write them over and over. And choose those three words carefully. For you see, even a fourteen-year-old girl knew better than to accept a pledge sworn by the moon. But yet, her fate was no different. II. i am sitting on the steps and writing this poem. Four lifetimes stroll past, arm in arm with fifteen pages. When i look up again, a boy is there, watching me write. "Hello," i say. "What are you writing?" he asks. "Words, words, words." "Why?" "It's all i was given," i say. "Some people get wealth, some love i words." "I would like to be given words," he says. "i've never thought of it as a gift," i say. He asks, "What is it, then?" i tell him about being a boy of his age, of wearing a hat that was too big playing a violin that was too big and playing for a girl with a smile that was too big a song that was too small. He did not understand. i spoke of having to write one's thoughts down and having to pretend that you cared about the things that troubled you. of watching couples walk by and remembering when i needed help to make my hands as cold as they now are. He did not understand. i told him that once you have drunk from your own imagination no earthly drink will satisfy your thirst afterwards. that once you have drunk from this well of truth the lie that is life will not satisfy you again. He did not understand. He still wished for more than these words and no collection of words i could gift him with would satisfy him. He left me there, bathed in frustration. Can it be that life had undone even one so young as this? And then that voice again-- "Now we're getting somewhere." III. Bring me an honest woman and i will find you an honest man. Though your search would last eternity mine would stretch longer still. i set out in the streets one night, i held a lamp aloft my eyes squinting for the goal. One better than i had quested thus before, with much the same result. For you see, blacks and whites, truths and lies, loves and indifference all converge into this dull gray fog that permeates our existence, and keeps us from fulfilling our quest, lamp or no. This mist of belief disbelief and rebelief that is around us even now. Every word you misconstrue is another wisp of smoke confounding communication. So breathe deep. It cannot hurt you, but hope it will numb you to the unnatural shocks which are to come. to your unnatural shocks which are to come. We've seen it all before. We've heard it all before. And anyone who accepts a smile and a solemn word, merely has another lesson to be learned. IV. Rockabye baby thy cradle is green, Father's a nobleman mother's a queen. You will be taught by the great god machine The great sacred lie which is nearly obscene. For groom bearing black and bride wearing white Will make grey the vows which color their night. ----- Luceat Eis I. i find i am choking on the coin which you left in my mouth a premature and useless but appropriate gesture for which i thank you. Signs we have tried on this side-- Once a great golden bonfire we lit all to gain a certain captain's attention but my embers died, and returned as moths only to fly disgruntled to find the effigy untouched and cold. "But what reason do you have to complain so?" she asks, and no more expects an answer than she understands my pain. And she could not withstand my pain anymore than i could withstand hers. Our torments are handtailored for the individual. You see i see her chains, just as i see she sees mine. She has gone to the trouble of polishing hers, and look at how they shine! If you must wear it, i guess you can be proud of it. i suppose i will go to sleep and try to feel better. II. The chosen ones have left their cars by the side of the roads and the authorities tow them away before we can find the universal half-truth perhaps in the glovebox, perhaps in the floorboard, under the tracts and the empty beer bottles: Life is the only true sacrifice the only true martyrdom left to us. The only true saints are those who hurl themselves upon the knowledge before it could destroy us all. The weak carve apologies for their weakness in their own skin. The scars of my own petty pleas for forgiveness, though faded still spell out their truth to me: The true death is life and the true life is death, which, of course, will lead us to life yet again. So the world sleeps, and tries to feel better. For nothing has anything to do with everything. And though this is not a rock to build a church upon, it will do for a place to stand alone. So i daydream of sleep, and cannot feel better. i have been here before, and you have been here before, and no amount of gold on our eyelids or tongue will bribe us from returning. For we are not blessed. Merely eternal. III. It is nearly dawn when i see the shore again. It is always nearly dawn on this shore. It is always on this shore. This is the sum and bane of our liminal existence: one cloud, one horizon, one moment too early or too late one light and one hope, both just out of view they linger beyond this vast moving yet stagnant pool and the sun is caught in the ebb and flow of the tide. Instead of sunlight we are washed up things to amuse ourselves with: balls and boys and bombs and metaphor hope and hate and want and need faith hope and love and the greatest of these is indifference. This grey stillness showed me once a girl in black sitting knees drawn up to her chin staring outwards to the everalmost dawn. "May i sit with you a moment?" i asked. "A moment is all you will have," she said. "I won't stay long." "You never do." "No, I never do." Silence. "They said that we were getting somewhere," she said. "Yes," i said. "That's what they said." "I think...I think that they lied." Silence. i offered to take her hand, but she refused, excusing herself that her hands were too cold. Her hands were always too cold. i took her word on it, though. i found it the easiest thing at the time to believe. Silence. IV. What has here been joined in the name of God let no man tear asunder. So it is written, so it is done. Requiem aeternam donaeis domine Et lux perpetua luceat eis eternal restless light perpetuating grayness dimness shining forever Silence Silence Silence ----- Per Dolorem Ad Astra Civilization is in the wound of the beholder. The pinfeathers of an angel are mounted on the wall next to the broken barometer and the vibrantly dead fish. Even the rain here feels dry-- it beats itself to a steaming death on the blistered asphalt. The old men on the front porch sigh and take comfort in the fact that something is making an attempt to ascend. Our feet are nailed to the stars but our eyes are drawn to the ground, to the odd billboard and the even cold-blooded stare of stony women toppled from pedestals and the muddy tracks where webbed feet tried impatiently, impotently to bestow godhood. Where are the treats we were promised? Where is more than mere tarnished copulations? Where is the line? The new line? Drowning in the wine. There is a beast that knows the hundredth name, but the most important thing to know is that the name is not yours. Between the conversion and the omission Between the stigmata and the regalia Between the consecration and the decoration Falls the self. Only that, and nothing more. ----- Highway 15, Heading North I missed my exit because I was thinking of you. This did not give me more than a moment's hesitation and a fifteen minute detour but all was well for the sights were worth seeing and I was in no hurry. Later, on my path again, I remembered something that I had left unsaid forgotten in the casual flow of conversation from the night before. I had a grasp on it now, and turned to your place in the passenger seat to relate it to you. But, of course, you were not there you were seventy miles to the south instead and the distance growing. This gave me pause, but still it was no cause for alarm. I kept moving. Later still, still on the path, I passed the waterfall you know the one the little one just beyond the county line? It is very small, not more than a notion really, but still a beautiful memory of rainfall descending the mountain. Still, the thought struck me: That there was no one I would rather see it with than you. That's when I knew: That I am lost. I am truly lost. ----- Gratitude: In addition to my parents, to whom this book is dedicated, I would also like to thank my wife and partner, Maegan, for her support during this undertaking. As well, thanks upon Jenna Leith, who is a most splendid writing partner. Special thanks to Grant Tatum, graphic designer extraordinaire, for his assistance and advice in creating the look of the book you now hold. I would like to thank the poets e.e. cummings, T.S. Eliot, Dwight Humphries, Ezra Pound, and Gary Snyder for being guiding influences, though I only had the honor of meeting one in the flesh. Also, the artists and writers: Tori Amos, Ani DiFranco, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Henry Rollins, Tom Waits, and Robert Anton Wilson--all of whom have served as inspiration and life preservers in various forms over the years. Being my first book, there are a score of people who deserve to be acknowledged and thanked. Many have not been mentioned here, but I would ask that it be attributed to space restrictions and my easily-addled mind, rather than a lack of affection. For that is certainly the case. John Robinson Atlanta July 2001