Grace was a word that spent itself on the pavement. Night was
a word with denial. The gaze stared back then back yet again. Like the
back of the
naked woman where he peered. Over across the lips of the city.
Ulysses found a song and it was Orpheus. A singing head singing
in the rain with the stones of spring and girl's boots. Grace was Ulysses
finding the song, and praying its merit. Over the side of the ship cutting
the water the sadness of waves and bodies that leap. Lithe timber of their
skin and the nymphs song, their glistening buttocks flickering in the sun
water lapped sunshine milkiness. Ulysses was a father, a father of the
woman he wanted to love. Space was what stood between them, and the
dozen bodies of their marriage. In the willow planet of plays and traps,
trapdoors, crystal balls, magic lanterns, weird trains of childhood stuck
in the memory place. Ulysses, the father knew what he meant.
Orpheus shook his head. It fell back on his body. His body fell
down the hole, the tunnel, the burrow. Where once the sweet glades loud
and the animals turned. Tuned fit of animal vision and the spellbound lips
of cherry and apricot, pomegranite. He shook his head, trying to shake
that vision of Eurydice. She kept calling, calling him back, back there
where a look, a gaze had been left. Naturally it was his gaze left like
some mask in her face while she drowned and dragged her heels in the
forever slow space of hell. Hell was a concentration camp where she found
memories that didn't belong to her. They were the names of history and
radiant apocalyptic angels, daemons of the sky. In his body over the trees
where she spelled his name, the unknown man, the loverman, the stranger
man. With his stone gilt wood, with his stone gilt word. Never mind that
it went from womb to womb over roots that knotted bodies together across spaceplace and
crimetime. That was nothing, she cried, and Hades the bastard ripped her
clothes off, chopped her arms, torn her organs out, flayed
her skin, dancing a frenetic farandola while doing so.
He was the boss king around this place. Because dumb old Orpheus
had abandonded her with his stupid look, a look left behind his looking
back. A look left behind he had no desire (but every desire to direct) to
restrain. One order only he had been made to heed. To hell and back with
heeding he thought. She knew what he thought. She was him, she was him,
after all was said and done.
Orphee shook his knotted head again and felt his heart pound bang
bounce irregular as any heart attack about to happen victim. In the end
recondite solutions were of no use. How could he travel
back there now, with the underground rolling past his eyes? How could the
Gaze once thrown be stopped?
Orpheus stuck his finger into his ventricle and pulled it out, the
dirty nail that had crucified him. The dirty nail skewing his heart since
the time he had had to pull dwon the columns in Greece while Hercules
laughed, and laughed and watched. Orphee was not a god like Hercules, or
the Samson one. Just a singer with some contemplation thrown in, and some
performance experience with circus animals and a girl who used to be
called Eurydice. He had not seen her in ages. Back in Montreal (and once
in a church in Paris) in the metro walking with Sappho he had caught a
glimpse of her on the escalator. He was going up, and looking behind at some
lovely creature an adorable desire body of libido, he saw her. He was not
allowed to do that, that was the agreement. Whenever he looked back and it
was her, he was never allowed to see her. But if he did, he was dead.
Stone smash, amulet crack, relic maker - that is his body was pounded to
dust and dismembered. That was not fun, it hurt in a hurry. He
had done it (O Lycidas the fire maker) many times and lived and died
through many lives because of it. Dismembered wasn't fun. Crumbling into
cyber pieces on the ground, the morsels cut (Dionysius had taught
him how to become the glass that cut) his feet, his once lovely pards all
blistery. recalled the days - when
With flutes and timbre of voice pagan puffing cheeks tilting his
body song. But this time he looked, he looked at her again. She looked
back. At him. Eyes met and hearts wound stretched pulled over and
across the air. Then the King Shouted: banshee! maenad! shrieked!
flying nails by the hundreds, crucifying flies, withering glances, dirty
looks spitting faces screaming voices for hours bashing fists, tearing
nails until the body stopped glued to the inside of the cardboard box, and
he incarnated. Another body. One more time, and it hurt. More each time
until the spiral stopped. And he loved again, and didn't give a shit about
all these orders and gods. These goddesses and gods who pounce on the
earth domains in all their corporate murderous principalities. But he
looked this time long and hard. Hard and long he looked into the night of
her gaze eyes. Now he could not undo it, what was done was done. In the
night done of. In the spare night of her body song lip
Yes, that it was a look cost, when the escalator trapped her sigh
in the growing nights.
O See this it spares your head, but not mine.
Before the twisted moment of its intent and rings
night like a dayland of visitors and heavy lipped words
wrung by rags and hands I hand you over Judas like
to some god, or deity, or gangster style mugger
pretending to be infinite, infinite in his resources
love and justice.
She called him and laughed then. While he winked a laugh in his
divine eyes glittering through the city's narrow corridor. Paris was like
that, smelly winding alleys, close knit avenues with bodies and cars
huddling past. He went to a poetry reading near the river Seine. He saw
Villon there, Villon hugged him, saying look mon ami don't worry she's
coming back, she always does. Don't you know that by now? Villon looked
him straight in the eye with all the courage he could muster. But Mr.
Orpheus was not generally someone one looked in the eyes without great and
exceptional stamina. His head jerked back. Looking at Orpheus directly in
the eyes was not an everyday habit, no matter how much of a poet one took
one self to be, or indeed were. You took a big risk doing that. It was not
an everyday thing. After all Villon thought, he came to me with the words
and the voice. But who is he when he is himself? What is he? Even Orpheus
had problems with looking at himself, and he had Eurydice. Most of the
time, then Sappho. Sappho who carried his head for him, and his body too.
After all he was dead, at least most of the time. That was why he could
not walk in the underworld alone with the shades shining past. Wandering
past him howling, moaning moan and talk and murmur of voice switch and
time patch in the mellow moment of the dead god. And his wife out there
and only her selves holding her together in the Hades temple. Smoke
stacked like death feasts in the timeless hell. And the groups of women
who walked with her guided her, her threads running back to all time.
Space was also her mouth as she reached into the narrow space of her
escaping. Villon's head was spinning as he caught a glimpse of what was
happening inside of Orpheus' head. Looking into Orpheus gaze was not a
game one took on at any moment. Not quite like looking at the Sphinx as
Oedipus or pretending to be a snake as the bright star had, Lucifer man
with his tormented gods of many places taken over by the King god of the
One I am the one God, the jealous god of the 10 laws and their raging
tablets. Not quite, but getting there. How could he bear it? He could not,
and turned away, and Orphee and he sat down for tea. And Orpheus gazed
looked long lasted and burst into tears. The tears filled the cup, and his
cup ran over. His tears ran over the table, and ran down the floor
drowning his feet. The room looked around and saw, and looked down at his
feet. He looked up and wailed some more. The rain came then, like the
horns of plenty, a deluge. He looked down and his legs were almost covered
with water, water from his tears. He looked, Orpheus looked, he no longer
gazed, and she was there in the water speaking smile to him past the god
murderer who had heisted her that night some weeks centuries ago, captured
her. Sappho said, Hello Eurydice, Hello hello you are here. You
are here.
Eurydice looked up at her lover boy, the gaze man, and the underground
man and pulled him into her face lap, and they wandered down again to the
other place where the cops couldn't follow, and the demons could not
pester. Nor the god see. It was another trick they found for being
together. She played her guitar as they walked. He listened deep in his
tears solo wind.
Moon like a dryad dripping silver
Hand like a tulip makes you see
Knee like a dance in your sigh
Heart in the granite dug underneath .
Red the pillow where the blood
Broke the pace, still the air your
Animal lute traced .
I was the cello
Spoke back the cold,
Even you could not fathom it's bold destiny dare .
I am your hand, heart, mouth .
Seize the ringed temple now, dance the tambour
harmonica hums,
I am the dance the jolly lover that
tangles the spell of the dread dead god.
Words he heard in the rich dawn . Words hung round her
threads and pride, her stormy anger at her fingers painting zones, when
the red night came. Red of the democracy and the haunted
happy heard. Cities and taxis, couples to couple in the safe house walked
by them that afternoon. They did not notice the strange peculiar radiance
coming off the rescued liberty of Orphic Eurydice, and the Eurydicean
Orpheus.
Quiet jars of happiness surround them. In the balmy air of a
city's touch in the found ones.
********
"all lovers are found places before encounter"
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