by Sixfold
Down by the river side, down by the river side, down by the river side
The silver smooth of the needle shines like a tiny skyscraper.
He meets its eye in resignation, watches it disappear into his arm.
I’ve always been the type to avert the eyes,
learned early not to look.
I don’t remember the pinch of the needle sliding through skin
I don’t remember the blood draining from vein to tube
I don’t remember the waiting room or the walk back to the car
all I remember is the Polaroid of him
protocol for paternity testing, verify identity.
I was ten
and already a man had ripped apart the ribcage,
sliced my heart open
just to see.
I ain’t gonna study war no more
I ain’t gonna study war no more
I ain’t gonna study war no more
The nurses exit the room.
For now, their job is done.
Eyes closed, he claps his hands to the beat.
We sing.
Our Last Days
I. Monday, April 14th
Convalescent homes
house blank stares where
urine stank and ammonia air
fistfight florescent lights
straining to see
the million memories
suspended from the stucco ceiling
prayers scattered everywhere like rogue shooting stars,
dying as they soar.
A backwards culture we must be
leaving our elders to endless claustrophobic days and cherry Jell-O.
II. Tuesday, May 20th
My voice dangles mute from my neck
as I wipe the running from his nose
try to console the boy inside his eyes.
Sometimes he recognizes me
always meets my gaze at least once during the visit
the illusive layered dimension is lifted
together we march this sorrowful slow dance
to music we cannot remember
while earthly things like apologies and birthdays
spin weightless around us.
I want to relieve him. I cry into his chest,
savor the gift of time like a peasant at the Queen’s feet.
Wish him a good journey, free him from himself.
III. Wednesday, June 11th
Morning.
We’re calling to inform you that the patient has expired.
As if he were a quart of milk.
I had seen him on Saturday, sang “His Eye is on the Sparrow,”
held his warm hand, long brown fingers
against the smaller beige version, mine.
The three days between Saturday and Wednesday
trampled me, a stampede of sorrow.
Rushed to the mirror to look at him in my face.
Angry fireflies
Traumatic experiences do not dissolve in the wind,
sweep away like dandelion petals
they do not eat themselves for dinner
disappear, a gruesome sliver
they like to hang around
pacing like an alligator in an elevator,
a swarm of angry fireflies,
spelling out the same story in the sky each night
intrusive visitors who climb in through windows, defecate on dreams
blues and greens is the song they sing
when you are in a yellow mood
admiring the moon
they tip toe in through the back door and hijack your laughter
lift your eyelids to paint a dull hue
force you to look through fun house mirrors
long after the circus has left town
being angry with god will
get you nowhere on a fast train
after the halo of stars has stopped windmilling around your head
and your face stings like a cement wall has kissed you hard and long
and you try to get up but can not make your body move
just when the world is coming back into focus
and your ribs are kicked in
the train will arrive shiny and smooth
serving complimentary champagne and warm croissants
the window seat view will be beautiful
you will have time to replay every moment
a swarm of broken and bent promise
flashes of half-hearted dreams rotting in the wind
you will lock yourself in the bathroom
the woman in the mirror will greet you with a piercing gaze
she will say you are meant to fall
to understand the meaning of flight
there is no bargaining
look down at the blueprint map on your palm, make a choice
healing is a profound art
no one can free you but yourself
the damn train is going nowhere
and you might stay on that motherfucker for years if you’re not careful
you may even drift to sleep, a cozy still
they will bring you a pillow and a mint
the tracks rocking in rhythm like a mantra
the angels will not give up on you
even when you have traveled miles and miles
they will keep the faith of your return
the porch light stays on so you know you are welcome
inside where your life is waiting
J. Lee Strickland
Minoan Elegy
Starting with Europa and with Zeus,
the flowers and the beach, the rape and rapture.
All the sordid excesses of gods
that lead us, in the end, to what we are.
Torches flare
and break into the long oppressive night.
The labyrinth walls, the floor, the vaulted heights
are tortured into hardened shapes
by leaping blades of light.
The glare wounds eyes pulled wide
by timeless time in lightless dark
and Minotaur recoils (a move he instantly regrets).
The brilliant feast is crumbs now snatched away
as darkness falls again,
broken by false ghostly shapes
that dance across his eyes.
If we could see him now what would we see?
Skin bleached white by life in constant night.
A massive taurine head perched on
a lean, hard-muscled, naked frame.
A body fitting of the offspring of a god.
And sadness . . .
So great a sadness the beast in him
must bear the whole.
That, too, worthy of the gods
if ever gods showed feeling for
the sorrows that they wrought.
In darkness he listens.
The first low moans come
mixed with whispered bits of speech
as the sharp smell of fear reaches his nose.
The voices are new. The ritual is old.
He doesn’t know how old, for
he cannot say, awake or in his dreams,
how time goes by,
the calculation linked to long ago
when light and dark had equal weight,
their alternations ticked the passing days.
Now, like the only tick of some great clock,
the torches flare and unseen hands thrust victims
to their final night,
to Minotaur a signal that
the senseless dance of humankind
continues just above.
The moans grow more despairing
as these lost souls slowly move apart.
Each thinks to find a way back to the gate
through which they came,
but all are wrong.
Fear and darkness confound every sense
as tortured angles of the labyrinth
do their part to trump the unaccustomed ear.
The Bull-man’s nostrils flare.
His ears keen to each separate, novel sound.
He moves easily in the inky dark
going toward the gate.
He knows each scruple of the stone-strewn floor,
each crevice of the chiseled walls.
His hands trace knowing patterns as he walks.
He knows already the fate
of these sorry pawns of sacrifice.
They, like all those come before, will stumble
through the labyrinth’s twisted gut
first thinking to discover some way out,
then hoping to rejoin their doomed companions.
Finally, failing all,
just moving, moving to out-pace
the brutal fear that eats at their insides.
Perhaps a ravening monster would be
mercy measured by this bleak prospect,
but such a one will not be found
within these damp, dark walls. Instead
each will find a separate cul-de-sac
among the labyrinth’s countless halls,
there to wait upon the cruelest beasts
of hunger and of thirst.
A hundred twisted steps before the gate
the Bull-man stops. There’s something different
in this group, a novel hint that slices through
the spreading cloud of fear.
There’s one who has not moved.
Minotaur smells the strong odor
of a male
and hears the even breathing, calm
without a hint of panic.
He senses the repose of one at easy rest.
Then torchlight flares anew
and burns his eyes
as voices rise, a woman’s, then a man’s.
He knows his sister’s voice
though he’s not heard Ariadne since a child.
“I have your sword and here, a shuttled thread
that you’ll unwind as you go on.
The other end I’ll fix here at the gate.
Be careful.
Daedalus himself was nearly lost
among these walls,” she says and
fear adds its harmonic to
the quaver in her voice.
The man replies, curt words of one
intent upon a task.
The light withdraws.
Here the moment dreams foretold.
He wonders if his lips will form a word.
“Theseus,” he whispers with unpracticed tongue.
“My brother, come to take my life.”
The Pantheon is littered with the spawn
of venal lust. Poseidon’s whelps, these two.
Though innocent, they bear the tragic stamp,
cursed to be clothed each in the other’s fate.
He waits unmeasured time, unmoving.
In Theseus’ stumbling, halting steps
he hears no plan, just blind wandering
marked here and there by muttered curses.
He moves to intercept the human’s course.
“Theseus, you have come at last.”
“Who speaks with such strange accents?”
Surprise quickens Theseus’ speech.
“You are no Greek who calls me thus.”
“I am the one you seek, Theseus.
The one that you call Minos’ Bull.”
“A monster who can mimic human speech?”
“I am cursed to have a human part,
to be not wholly one thing or another,
but I speak.”
“You speak? Then tell me. Where are the bones?
I thought to find it strewn with bones.
You keep a tidy house.”
“I do not disrespect the dead
that others choose to kill.
I’ve honored them as decency
and circumstance permit.”
For Theseus the hunt is joined. He reaches
toward the voice. His outstretched hand
meets only rough-hewn stone.
“Honor me and tell me how you
come to know my name then, Freak?”
“I have dreamt the smallest detail of this day,
although I laugh to call it day.
But, tell me, is it day or is it night
beyond the gate?”
“There was darkness everywhere when I came in,
but why this talk?
You could be feasting on the flesh
of my compatriots.”
He moves with care,
His fingers on the clammy wall.
“You and all your human cohort
forget who I am.
The beast in me is sickened by
the thought of eating flesh.
You press the worst of yourself
into a mold and call it ‘Monster’
but it is you, just you.
A mirror works as well.”
“I do not eat the flesh of my own kind.”
The Greek’s response is clipped.
He wants the beacon of that other voice
To light his path.
“On this day you will kill your own brother
who you call Beast and Monster.
Do you think the goat or lamb,
the wild bird of the field, the mountain stag
are any less your brethren than I?”
“Brethren? Bah! Your talk is babble, Beast.
I have no brothers.
I am my father’s only child.”
The Bull-man laughs, a strange and fractured laugh.
“Your father cannot keep his girdle tied.
His progeny are spread from Attica
to far-off Tyre.
His blood informs a mighty, ragged tribe.”
“Your pointless riddles bore me, Monster.
Tell me something plain.” His tone is mocking.
“If you do not foul your virtuous lips
with human sacrifice what do you eat?”
“There are roots that break through from above.
I graze on them and . . .” he hesitates
and wonders at the pain of speech that plods
so far behind the lightning of his thoughts.
“I am otherwise provided for.”
“By who? That fornicating beast-lover
you call Mother?”
“Do not provoke me, Theseus, with
your market-place vulgarities.
Poseidon raped my mother
just as he raped yours.”
The voice so close it is as if
the stones beneath his fingers speak,
And yet his way is blocked.
“Aegeus is my father!” Theseus shouts.
“Poseidon is your father
as he is mine.
You forget I am a beast of those
who smell their kin and love them.
We do not stalk our kin and kill them.
Your nose is plugged with fairy-tales.
Breathe for once and try to smell the truth.”
“Enough talk!” The air is hot with Theseus’ rage.
“I’ve come to kill you.
Let me be done with that.”
“You’ve come to set me free.”
“If death is freedom, freedom you shall have,
and so will I the Greek bones here avenge.”
Theseus’ anger makes him careless
and he stumbles once again.
“Your sword is poorly aimed for that blood-task.
The blame you would abate lies higher up.”
“With Minos and his copulating cow?”
“Higher still, my brother.”
It is Minotaur who moves this time,
bringing new acoustics to his speech.
“The gods spill all this blood for their dark sport,
then goad us into spilling more and more.
The killing will not end
until you make yourself. Throw off the stamp
of petty
tyrant-gods that you call fate
and recognize your own will is your power.”
Gods tremble when they hear these words.
Their power hangs on ignorance. If such
a tool as Theseus learns to choose his fate
their temples built on faith begin to fall.
Theseus has turned around.
He loses contact with the walls,
trying to assess the vector of the voice.
“Your poetry is touching for a beast
but empty babble to my ear.
What meaning can it have to make myself?
The gods make everything.
We are but their thinking turned to flesh.
Just as now, I think I hear you talking.
This talk I seem to hear from you
is but the crazed imaginings
of a mind twisted by this curséd dark.
I’ll be glad to see the end of this.”
He tries to get a hand on stone
but even that is gone.
“The end of this will not make you glad, Theseus.
Your life, however long, will be for its
full length cursed by what you do this day.”
“Cursed? By what? Killing you?
I’ve killed many in my life.”
He grips his sword hilt.
“You will be but one more.”
“Cursed with truth, my Brother.
Surrounded by the fantasies of others
you will be cursed with truth.”
“So, Beast, you know, too, what is to come?”
“Here in the labyrinth time is naught to me,
past and future all the same
and equal to imagination’s sight.
I see what was and what is to be
with equal clarity.”
Theseus, forced to crawl, has recovered
the comfort of the wall and moves again.
“Entertain me, Beast. Give me some bit
from your vast store of prophecy.”
“Men always wish they knew the future
’til they see it writ . . .”
“Come, Monster, just a sporting hint?”
The Minotaur draws a great breath, a sigh
and says,
“Before you see your Attic soil again
Ariadne, who loves you
beyond all reason, will be left by you,
abandoned on some bleak stretch of beach.
And, too, the one who calls you son will die
because of your own thoughtlessness.”
“You say these things but to provoke my wrath.
I’ll not leave Ariadne!
I have pledged myself to her.”
“Think of the snow that caps
your sacred Mount Olymbos (here
Minotaur stops to savor that
one word so fitting to his tongue and lips).
Your pledge is like that snow,
beautiful to see but try to hold
it in your hands and it is gone.
You will leave Ariadne.
By the sorcery of your own mind you will hear
my voice in hers, my imagined touch
in her touch. My hideous face
will spoil her beauty.
And you will see my death in her eyes.