pina bausch, 30 June 2009

She, the world, have parted. Ouch
the landlords say--their pay decreased.
I loved what her bones could do with her--
Always the dissonance stood
beside the beauty by arrangement.
The heinous sister making the other more
marriageable: a sister learning to feel
lucky, later--elated. The work
killed, it captured, held and manipulated
by eyes it hurt, by no means honest
except that it was work and work
is honest. She, a cigarette, mounds
of earth and pubis. The increase, exposed
breast as intensity, frustration,
famine of them she moved. She moved
by manifesting hunger in each limb.
Final bough: the report of a gunshot.
Broken cradle, a down-come
baby: opportunities for the exportation
of grief. And inside every grief--
unstill living. What I leave upon her
grave is this, my vague fire--a vanilla
frailty, a file. I laugh for her here, then
shoot my rifle away from the stage.

You never give me flowers, oboe. And I never do.
I had a bad last last night.
The winter.
I was not connected, the dots.
One, two, five. Three, four, twelve.
The wrong processes were engaged, peristalsis.
I swallowed a pearl and this made me clam up.
Someone somewhere is a c.
Someone somewhere else is an f.
If you fish for the truth, it will snap.
The jewelry box held all the treasures of the other wife.
The other wife is a piranha, a ghost, a life-eater.
It is the reason diamonds are cold.
You never do. I never do.

Not viable. Presque. I am this close to holding my own, and then they fall off, digit by digit. I was counting on you, I scold them, and they twist like worms in dirt. What remains for me are square mitts of palm. I clap like a baby. Yay for me, phalanges gone. Yay for me to be so unable to manipulate, use a zipper. I high five myself and it looks like I am doing tree. Just for fun I rest my sole against my knee. No balance, and I put it quickly down. The toes are useful in that way you don't notice at the keyboard or opening a door. I can't pick my nose. I can't write, well, only in prayer, the whole body involved in the script, the heart compressed. To write is to dive. Love letters were meant to be written not with fingers but with shoulders, the torso carving each word in subtle heave. Fingers ought to be left writhing in the dust like landed minnows, their nails--hard, blind, singular eyes. Incapable of depth.

A father, a fathom, a depth. I can reach my arms around a father. It is a length of rope. A boat, the solid ground, an aspect for the feet. Be thee there, be thee there. Can such a thing be a shadow? Yes. Can such a thing be a mountain? Yes. Is a mountain the shadow it casts, its tide? Is a long shadow proof of a mountain? What when a father moves--is that a mountain ebbing? Is beyond the frame forlorn? Furlonged? Purloined? Stolen when the father is a ship is sleep. Sleep is where we follow a father, through the fallow crests, yielding fish we cannot flay. They are diamond fish. Hard, cold, worth more than the ore we care for. I can reach my arms around a father, but it is the father reaching wanted. To be swaddled in mountain, the soil and sail wrapped tight into our infancy to set us free. Be thee there, be me mine.

She entered the ocean. Shunned the tiny climbers into the sand, they wigged her. She grew wings because of the black-headed gulls. More intelligent, sandwich grabbing gulls. She ate fudge, lounged not at all, whipped children over waves by their armpits. When the scary-eyed scubaman at the boardwalk museum asked for her ticket, her or a child began and could not stop screaming. The cake was tense. Her ankles wobbled through gate after gate at the nearby racetrack. Nothing goes fast enough. Every single large thing has already fled after a rabbit or fox. The tiny climbers up into the world center thread through the dream. Black mosquitoes circle her head, their dangling limbs. The deer not retreating from the highway into the pines. The deer still. Hydrangeas, azaleas, begonias, boo. A million burrowings. Each wave unearthing what does not wish brought to light. Blood--its simmering bisque a mere meter below the beaten sand.

The child of fish gnawed at the bone. The table was dark because her eyes liked dark. She rarely got up from the table: to relieve herself, to stretch when there seemed no room between her ribs. There was always more. She slept there at the table. It suited her to be half tucked beneath, half slumped over. She imagined herself as having two distinct portions. Her upper half chewed and swallowed, it used its limbs to slough the food towards her maw. The lower half was more refined, and increased but never by its own efforts. It is always the same thing with children--they imagine themselves to be something new, exotic, with a purpose. They imagine themselves interesting. She once had a thought, but dismissed it as a play of the light that sometimes filtered down to her from the surface. She was not a fan. The thought moved across the floor like a ray. Others like her were startled, but not one of them looked up from its table long enough to engage the thought. Leisure. Without it I believe there is little that is not of consequence.