Thousands of red winged blackbirds fell from the sky, their lungs imploded as though from the enormous pressure of vertigo, their wings spread like black fans as they splashed to the pavement, their shiny beaks opening and closing, some still alive. In the water, thousands of drum fish hit their final binary fit. In the earth, a buried creature with dirt in his eyes sang along to it.
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the reckless and the grateful and the one
| A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore a risky and unfeeling act to send it out into the world. How often it must be permanently impaired by the eyes of the vulgar and the cruelty of the impotent who would extend the affliction universally! | ” |
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— Mark Rothko
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drumbeats red robes and tiger lillies
What did the tiger lily say?
“Do you hear the drum? Boom, boom! It was only two notes, always boom, boom! Hear the women wail. Hear the priests chant. The Hindoo woman in her long red robe stands on the funeral pyre. The flames rise around her and her dead husband, but the Hindoo woman is thinking of that living man in the crowd around them. She is thinking of him whose eyes are burning hotter than the flames-of him whose fiery glances have pierced her heart more deeply than these flames that soon will burn her body to ashes. Can the flame of the heart die in the flame of the funeral pyre?”
“I don’t understand that at all,” little Gerda said.
“That’s my fairy tale,” said the lily.
from The Snow Queen
we want it too easy
and this is the hardest game.
more from What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire
maybe if we write well enough
and live a little better
life will improve a bit
just out of shame.
(from Bukowski’s Christmas Poem to a Man in Jail)
dissociation, or, how to be everywhere at once
The scene changes: It appears that the audience, in this case
me, joins in during the last act. One must kneel down as the
Good Friday service begins: Parsifal enters-slowly; his head covered with a black helmet. The lionshn of Hercules adorns his
shoulders and he holds the club in his hand; he is also wearing
modern black trousers in honor of the church holiday. I bristle
and stretch out my hand avertingly, but the play goes on. Parsifal
tal<:es off his helmet. Yet there is no Gurnemanz to atone for and
consecrate him. Kundry stands in the distance, covering her head
and laughing. The audience is enraptured and recognizes itself
in Parsifal. He is I. I take off my armor layered with history and
my chimerical decoration and go to the spring wearing a white
penitent’s shirt, where I wash my feet and hands without the
help of a stranger. Then I also tal<:e off my penitent's shirt and
put on my civilian clothes. I walk out of the scene and approach
myself-I who am still kneeling down in prayer as the audience.
I rise and become one with myself22I
The Red Book, Jung
stay in and take a stab at salvation
When the time has come and you open the door to the dead,
your horrors will also afflict your brother, for your countenance
proclaims the disaster. Hence withdraw and enter solitude, since
no one can give you counsel if you wrestle with the dead. Do not
cry for help if the dead surround you, otherwise the living will
take flight, and they are your only bridge to the day. Live the life
of the day and do not speak of mysteries, but dedicate the night
to bringing about the salvation of the dead.
The Red Book (hey. it’s been awhile.)
Honest Apple and Fourberous Orange
was a small zine put together by a guy named Pat which featured my poems Martyr and Weathermen, and Poetry Motel a poetry mag that supposedly published a particularly poor poem of mine about making out in the back seat of a car (I never forked over the few bucks for a copy), but I cannot find any links to either on the internet, so yeah…I am an expert at losing track of time.
l noelle mclaughlin 