Many Musics, Eighth Series *part 2 of 8*

[cenacle]

Continued from here:
http://www.spiritplants.org/forums/the-library/many-musics-eighth-series-*part-1-of-4*/



The Tangled Gate


(for JBIII)


She Returns to the Island


Remember some things. It's what put me
in this small boat on this great
blood-remembering sea in this melancholic
month of the year, near too cold to sail.
I've left the Pensionne as though not to return,
but look at that blue bag. That's all.


Remember some things. And what choice?
You neared me in my dreams, nearer than
any man had, at least meaningfully.
You neared, you lured, you made off.
"The Tangled Gate. Find me through the
Tangled Gate. Will you choose? Will you?"


It is hard sailing to get to the Island.
This boat won't get me there, I can't make
my friend risk his livelihood. I'll swim,
despite his looks, his friend's wish
to protect me somehow. The Pensionne had
recovered him too. But I am prepared.


I'll swim. I haven't in years, in the sea,
but it's like I'm more fish than girl.
My bag is sealed, hauls from my waist,
I wave a thank you at him in mid-flight
to the water. These blood-remembering
waters took too much from me to ask more.


So I thought. Architect, I thought you &
your prick-addled son both swallowed in
its deep. I thought I lost you to worse
than your uncertainty, your willingness
to take me only with your eyes. No,
it seems. You survived, you live, so say my dreams.


The shore is rocky, no beach where I half-
collapse breathless. The sea lets me leave
but slow, as though something more,
something else. The grey-etched skies, too,
prod me restless, go. Return. Remember some things,
something's ticking harder, little to do with time.


******


She Remembers the Queen


Working my way along the rocks
I remember the Queen, my father's
jealous wife, with her herbs for fidelity
& her witchly cult's screeching songs on
full moon nights. Was this sparkling foamy
beach where my own path began to begin?


The story was foolish but nobody would say
otherwise. The King & his reckless plays with
the Eternals, gamblings with one & another
for bits of power. Agrees to slay the magical
white bull in tribute, then switches out
another. Fool an eternal? Some don't learn.


Fool an eternal? Feel an enraged fist. Now
see the mesmered Queen sneaking off by night,
rouged & primped, a servant carrying her
sex box. I followed by shadow, I watched,
the crashing waters, the bull's wet roar,
the beguiled woman's ass fit high for cracking.


Now gorged with her punishment, now
unseen for weeks, she called me to her
rooms, she touched my hair, my new breasts,
lied & called me beloved daughter.
I waited at the very edge of her bed, ticking,
naming & counting constellations in my mind.


"Don't lead with your heart, child,
it will betray you," she growled.
"How did you cause this? What was your
wrong?" She smiled, a woman handsome
like a man. "When they near you, child,
hooked by your luring blood, do what I didn't."


Silence. Ticking. Counting. "Sniff." "Sniff?"
Silence again. Breathing more complex than
it ought. I should have felt something, or
at least these years later. I remember the advice,
& think only the stupid woman learned one thing to say.
I remember her dragging her sex box home before light.


******


She Visits the Dancing Grounds


Eventually to climb, the Castle on its tall hill,
my father the King & his spy-glass to the seas,
his insomniac patrols in the weaker hours of the night.
He'd say, when I was small, "They're all out there."
Always looking high, in love with night's shiny stones,
the musical patterns of gulls in flight, sleepless too, I'd ask: "Who?"


"Where we come from, the ones who would take all
this. Our heritage & home." I looked hard toward
the star-speckled horizon, seeing the dark waves only
in my mind. Answered his fears with my only powers,
touch & kiss & the breath of few words. Embraced,
sighing, he'd say: "There are other weapons, stranger strengths."


I come now to what he built me later, a remain
of those years. He knew I moved quick like
my white bunny, & light like my many butterflies,
& said I must dance. Showed me books with patterns
he'd kept as he kept little else. Stranger strengths.
We'd study. I'd imitate. He shook his head. I'd try again.


The grounds for the dance'd be raked every evening,
the stones set in place. I'd come before eating.
Some water, a gown, but me nude. Alone, all quiet,
I'd let the waking dream come, move my feet,
shift my body to sing its pictures & noise.
Only companion the morning's movement into light.


The rocks would stray from my feet, the raked
sands scatter. By when the others joined,
the grounds would compose my song & message.
They would smile, pretty & clothed, I would let them.
Not my friends, just other pretty trinkets of the court.
My father the King liked the contrast. Had his choice.


Only one understood, knew as we did.
Friend sister rival, she smiled & danced for noone.
You built these grounds, now savaged by kind time
& human neglect, & let me lure you a true love
by the collision of the magic in my dawn's
erupted dream & the girl who knew no patterns in the stones.


******


She Visits the Castle


When last I saw you, brother, you were in
this doorway, on your way to the games,
convinced in that sweet, soft, thorough way
of yours that you'd win. The pretty trinkets
of the court admired your shoulders & thighs.
I worried as always about your limp.


It happened when you were young & sick,
& I don't know how, but thereafter you grew
quickly, so graceful, & slightly off. You treated me
tender, indulged me brush your hair, sometimes
carry your bag to the sports fields. You excelled.
The limp came & went, an obsession of some seasons.


You mentioned my dreams that last time
all of us gathered here. The Queen tightly
crated in her several best colors, new haughty scraps.
The King my father with the sweet demon's glint
in his eyes, her spread sleeping in a private chamber.
Even the Architect, who saw the limp too.


"Will you tell them all goodbye for me?"
you whispered as we embraced. No louder
than a breathy thought. I nodded. I knew
I wouldn't see you again by daylight, though
I wondered about other hours. It was the last time
we all stood together. You sprinted alone to the boats.


The Castle is returning to field, perhaps even
forest one day, the one which covered most of
this Island long ago. Many stones fallen,
rooms collapsed, I climb stairs half-gone
& think: this is truer life than all those
anniversaries of the Crown & its stolen secrets.


Finally, to my room, at least the chamber
that held it. There's little of me here,
even less than ago. I lay out my bed roll,
my brush, my totems, my knife. I'll sleep,
finally, but likely not dream. The place in the wall,
its tunnels, its caves, won't open again, no matter my tears.


******


She Passes by The Tangled Gate


A few steps at dawn on the dancing grounds, just a few
for now, to see how it feels. Strange is a meager word.
My blue bag is waiting, & the next place to see.
Places, really. What remains of the Tangled Gate
now, the one in my sweetest of childly dreams, &
the one you, Architect, would not let me pass.


Find you in there? Time's hand has been no less kind,
human neglect again her partner. Just a few steps in,
the great Fountain that greets all, insists a drink,
looks half-swiped down by the years. Not just a drink
but a decision: left or right? A crux to distinct
paths, each a phantom hand, reaching, encouraging.


And yet the Gate itself is not fallen, little rusted,
a stubborn collaborator in the matter of its passage.
And its small legend still clear, a lily's glow:
"For those lost." I read it, & read it again,
as though my pout or my wink or what mind
I've gathered to me could loose its first riddle.


For those lost. Someone read those words
to me the first time I saw them. In my chamber
through the hole in the wall in my dreams,
yes, it was strange. Yes, I was small. Yes,
it was real like important & beautiful things
in this world are real. Yes, this belief wears
& wearies in my mind. Yes, it's why I've returned.


And yes, to find you through the Tangled Gate,
Architect. For minutes & then more of them
I stand here stupid with griefs, where
I come from, far from home. I try to remember,
claw into my heart for its old wounds & stars.
The cold sky bends me lower, & I let. I release.


I remember one thing, small, but a place
to put my steps. Deep in the Tangled Gate,
we faced a cave, a featureless maw,
the Beast just two more roars & a crash
away. My friend smiled, took my hand, said to me:
"No way out but through," & we went. We went.


******


She See the Tower, Again Trebles in Time


Was the King my father who first brought me
here, to meet the Architect, see his chambers.
I felt tree, I saw Tower, I dreamed star craft.
Are there still rooms along those impossible stairs?
Are the faces in the stones still clear, some crying out
yet some smiling? Some not men at all.


They set me on a stool before a spyglass too heavy
for me to move. That day I saw what I'd see
again in dreams, the innards of the Tangled Gate,
its branching roots, its shadowed-out mysteries.
And movement in there? I looked & looked,
not yet knowing what thing this was.


A noise behind me in these half-lit chambers,
I turn. A branch pokes up through the roof,
behold a patch of speeding stars. I open my mouth
but another cries out. The King my father
is angry, waving off the Architect & his plea.
They are long words, somehow clung to bark & earth.


We leave, I am roughly carried, the stairs
pass more like dropping straight into water.
I do not return for years, am told not to,
not just by the King my father who forbids
me nothing otherwise. Those I love in
the caves & tunnels behind my chamber wall:


They say I treble in time. See was, is, &
to-be at once. Our last banquet, every kind
present to honor my birthday. I talk of the Tower,
of other dreams than these with them.
Hundreds of noses raise & sniff. Silence.
I've decided. Or maybe my new woman's blood has.


They forbid me return, my love for them
their only power to protect me. I shake
my head, I go. Fear all of this for days
until I am standing again in this place,
looking up. I will move your spy glass now, Architect.
I'm ready to ascend your tree, your Tower, your star craft.


******

[cenacle]

*** Many Musics, VIII, #25, She Returns to the Island - This is the first poem in the Tangled Gate series, loosely inspired by the ancient Greek myth of Ariadne, Daedalus, and the Labyrinth . . . but from the begining I seek to write a new story, something cinematic in a way, in the sense of someone returning home, called back from her current life . . .
*** Many Musics, VIII, #26, She Remembers the Queen - There is a White Bull in the original myth, & so I worked that in, by my own variations . . .
*** Many Musics, VIII, #27, She Visits the Dancing Grounds - This poem introduces the Princess's Dancing Grounds, and also a girl who beguiles and seduces her father, the King . . .
*** Many Musics, VIII, #28, She Visits the Queen - This one introduces the Princess's brother and a mysterious "place in the wall" in her old bedroom . . .
*** Many Musics, VIII, #29, She Passes by the Tangled Gate - Much of these poems take place inside The Tangled Gate, my name for the old Greek myth's Labyrinth, which distinguishes it from the traditional story . . . The Gate is a vast and strange place to discover . . .
*** Many Musics, VIII, #30, She Sees the Tower, Again Trebles in Time - Now we learn about the Architect's Tower, another prime location of these poems . . . and the Princess's strange abilities too . . . and more about her mysterious friends "behind my chamber wall" . . .

[cenacle]

Continued here:
http://www.spiritplants.org/forums/the-library/many-musics-eighth-series-*part-3-of-4*/