It is Finished

I.

Though every life necessarily contains oddness and improbability,

the aberrant occurrences of my life cannot be countenanced:

this afternoon I realize that I have been dreaming.

It is natural that I should have taken the fantasy

for the waking world; women were sometimes very pretty,

drugs functioned properly, the newspapers were unsurprising.

That my love should abandon her vows, in itself,

would signify little or nothing: this is as predictable

as bloody headlines and changing leaves.

Her continual presence at my doorway after our estrangement

beggared my faculties, though now there is an explanation.

II.

This afternoon is Easter, so I was unable to spend my pocketful of dimes on beer.

I had forgotten the holiday until I saw the blank windows of the closest restaurant.

I sighed and turned back. On the sidewalk a woman of immense girth approached.

I stood aside and looked at my shoes, then smelled apple blossoms

and was thrown headlong into memory-

My older sister, brother, and I trade bites from a red apple in our front yard;

the air is hot and the juice runs down our wrists.

What the fuck is this?

A scent memory? I know from encyclopedia articles

that scent memories are quite common and strong,

but in twenty years and more I have never had one.

Deceptions always crack at the borders.

Clever dream, to hold me so long!

How long, then, have I slumbered?

When I die in this place, when shall I awake?

The first day of the month of war, anno Domini 2013,

sleeping in the arms of my love?

The first night that I saw my fallen star?

The moment before I climbed a terrace thick with vines

to enter a second story window and the first woman

that fate had chosen for me?

Lord, some of the women in this dream!

Though I never had more than a few of them, I will be sorry

to lose their clavicles, their delicately curling hair,

their curves and curves.

Listen and I shall paint my portrait.

I am tall, cruel, jealous, quick to anger,

and convinced of my supremacy.

If I were not dreaming,

why should I resemble the gods so closely?

 How shall I escape? Am I brave enough to have steel kiss my veins,

or will it have to be the warm embrace of a train?

I may have imagined many things.

It may be that when I wake much will be lost.

Perhaps in the true world Publius Ovidius Naso

was a lawyer and Andres Segovia lost a hand at six years old.

Perhaps my love, with all the horrors of her life, was never born.

It may be that I am wrong. It has happened on rare occasions.

Perhaps when I take my life, the void will take me;

perhaps there is some factor I have not yet seen that makes all this real.

However, I will not be dissuaded by such doubts.

So I may perish forevermore? What of it?

If this is the scope of existence, I do not wish to take part any longer.

After I have become light I will be with her again.

Alecto

I.

How many years was it before the taste of the pomegranate?

I suppose I am devoid of desire: it is well known that I despise eating fruit.

In any case I have seen a hundred seasons change furiously.

I have brushed, chastely or not, against the lives and lips of women,

And I on darkened days have seen the goddess on her throne and been afraid.

II.

Who would risk the journey to the realm of the dead,

and who among those few should dare to steal the queen?

One such man was highborn, though of uncertain parentage.

Perhaps Zeus was his sire; other common songs

declare his father to be the ever-burning Ixion.

His companions are more honored than he-

one lopped off the head of the Minotaur and freed Athens;

the other, greatest of heroes, was in truth courageous Heracles,

slayer of lions and giants, he whose great deeds are innumerable.

Once before the Great War of Troy, Helen was kidnapped.

Theseus had stolen the beauty of the world, and warlike Pirithous

was envious. He too desired a prize beyond all others.

He set his eyes upon disaster, and so they traveled to Lerna.

The three descended rocky paths through secret caves

and came upon the shores of painful Acheron.

They stepped on the ferry without regard for paying the fare.

Their weight pushed the craft dangerously close to the surface.

The boatman suffered their presence. He did not speak a word.

III.

Across the soulless river the heroes encountered many wonders.

The grandeur of their surroundings cannot be described,

even if the god of prophecy himself spoke praise onto leaves.

They came to a dining hall, carved from granite with incredible skill.

Bright torches lined the walls at regular intervals.

A large table lined with chairs on both sides stretched nearly the length of the room-

at the head of the table were two thrones wrought of bone and iron.

One throne was vacant, the other was occupied by a forbidding woman.

The three met her eyes and in an instant knew her name:

this was the daughter of earth, the raped one, the Empress of Hell.

She spoke to them in a girlish voice,

“Oh, how interesting! Visitors!

That you are yet alive proves your worth.

Come. Sit. Let us speak.”

They obeyed her request. They sat in chairs.

Ropes of stone burst from the floor and encircled their limbs.

A terrible specter appeared from inside the wall.

She moved forward but her feet did not touch the ground.

Her eyes were dull red, serpents were her hair.

“Speak the truth,” the Fury hissed, “or I shall torment your divine parents

until madness makes them envy mortal men,

to say nothing of the punishments you have earned.

 Lie or offend and my anger shall never cease.

Why have you come?”

He that once saw his adoptive father die at the sight of black sails exclaimed,

“I have come to support my brother in arms!”

He that once won glory in battle with centaurs quietly said,

“I have come to take for my own wife the dark lord’s bride.”

The mighty Heracles screamed out,

“You may make no demands upon me! A curse upon you, Alecto!

I defeated the many-headed Hydra, the greatest foe that ever drew breath!

Defend yourself or die!”

With a grunt of effort, Heracles cast away the granite shackles.

He freed Theseus with only a slight strain,

then turned his attention to the other captive.

He lifted. He roared. Each well-trained muscle rippled,

but Pirithous could not be freed.

Alecto laughed harshly then exhaled without a sound.

The demigods were thrown against a wall.

Breathless and white-faced, the two slowly stood.

Serpents seethed around her cheekbones

and she raised her arms as if to seize at throats.

“Leave now, both of you. Or we shall follow.

My sisters delight in pain more than I.

Your comrade belongs to me. Forever.”

IV.

When will she come with a gift? She often comes when I am awake.

What will she bring? A small peeled piece of an apple,

the delectable scent of the sweat at the nape of her neck?

After many years it occurs to me that I have never glimpsed

the dark cloak of Hades, nor his famed impassive face.

Suddenly she walks into the hall and sits far from the lonely thrones.

I say to her, “Where is your husband?”

She giggles like a young girl picking flowers and replies,

“He cannot be seen. He cannot be seen.

Only a man would require that death had a King.

Tell me, why are the Fates and Furies women,

if mortal men imagine they have power?”

She tosses her hair and the torches are extinguished.

She laughs. Her voice blackens like the air.

“Fool! For many years I have not seen the sun,

though it is my right to surface when spring bursts upon the land.

Has my mother not noticed that I remain ensconced in darkness?

Does she believe that her brother and I have become happy?

“The vain gods of thunderbolts and earthquakes

have often forgotten their unseen kinsman,

but soon enough they will burn pyres and proclaim footraces.

They will swear to exact revenge when they know what I have done.

Let them come! Charon knows to give them safe passage;

I fear them as lions fear elderly horses.

Already in this very hall a god was slain by my hand!

I am anxious to greet my father and uncle,

to scar and scorch and bury them in dust,

but until they arrive you will have to do.”

She kisses me. My mouth thickens with blood. The snakes hiss.

Not Just for Sugarcane Anymore 1.1

The top third of the edge is marred with rust.

The smallest notch interrupts a sheen of light.

It sends back tales of metal slabs turning life to dust.

Preening imperialists wielding them had, once,

courageously followed the gashes left on jungle-strewn continents,

through hacked up vines and bodies, filling in the inevitable gaps

in their souls with whiskey and the softness of the living natives.

Blades are interesting because they all appear to be what they are.

This is not a condemnation towards those who love a dissembling life,

but armaments have maintained a strong presence in history

when faced with pacifist and warrior alike.

What a marvelous thing such power is! I will say nothing

of certain discreditable “women’s” thinkers, who have many times noted

the passing resemblance of knife and spear and slashing sword

to one of the portions of male anatomy that seems

to be most offensive to prudish minds.

It is perhaps not intended to be taken as an actual argument.

After all, if it was believed that weapons fashioned in the manner

of tulip bulbs would efficiently kill others en masse,

it produces no doubt that these new terrors would be condemned

by the professoriate on the grounds that they resembled

the inner ear (or nerve clusters) of a violent man.

An Apparition

Andrea, not long ago I saw your face on a cold Tuesday.

I had just been fired. I was drinking in a bar and I saw you.

You were at a table with several people I did not recognize.

I hurriedly walked over and everything morphed monstrously.

The girl seated at the table had no music in her laughter,

her hair was glossy in an artificial way, her eyes were dull.

She was clearly American but wore a bright green tee-shirt

emblazoned with certain unrelated Greek characters.

I walked up to her and said, “Khaíre, Alecto.” She looked at me stupidly.

I said, “My mistake. There were Greek letters on your shirt, so I assumed...”

I turned on my heel and bit beneath a fingernail until it bled.

It is uncomfortable to weep in public. Pain is cheaper than humiliation.

I walked back to my barstool, sat, and raised my finger to the saltwater blonde

who worked behind the bar. She was wearing tiny white shorts and smiled.

She always enjoys my company because I tip well. She came over.

I ordered three cheap vodkas and drank them as she set them down.

Oh Andrea, if we had been in love I could have replaced you.

Carmen 44

What is it to be alive?

Hunger rises and falls, the tide of life that will outlive the moon.

Women are beautiful, or they are not. In any case I do not see them now.

Convents and Brothels

The first time I proposed to her we were in a car

and I did not know that she had just drifted from our conversation into sleep.

Two days later I arranged for her to receive a copy of “Lolita”.

I knew if she was to be in my life, she would need things to make her happy.

I gave her a new book to read each time a month arrived.

I hoped to delay her departure, and there was slight success,

but for no longer. She has flown.

She sometimes returns, usually when I am gone securing the next week’s wages:

She pairs my socks, hangs my laundry in the closet, washes the dishes

piled high in the sink, and smoothes the blankets on the bed I studiously avoid.

She wants to come back to my arms, to curl her fingers within mine,

but if I asked her to do this she would seek one ocean or the other.

That she should mirror a kind, sad woman from Bukowski’s poems

is difficult to believe under any circumstances.

Combined with knowledge of the current situation it is absurd.

It is enough of a strain that the tragedy of Hamlet should contain the tragedy of Hamlet

played out onstage. When a man reads the tragedy and imitates the prince

in his own life, he commits to this course knowing that one afternoon

he shall encounter a group of actors who have prefigured the day of his death.

That living plagiarisms of Shakespeare should exist is not surprising,

but that they should intertwine with the lives of those who imitate

the lovers of drunken factory workers is an utterly curious thing. 

The Legacy

Gradually I came to understand that I was bound in this cavern by some sort of magic beyond my capability or experience. I deduced before sleep on my first entombed day that no longer requiring sustenance or water must be the work of an otherworldly influence. I am embarrassed that certain other realizations took weeks, or months, to arrive (this was before time had died). To give an example, three quarters of a moon passed before I came to appreciate that no longer urinating or moving my bowels was also a change that could not have occurred without the intercession of some great power.

I speak of time but there is never light, not a single ray. To ease the uncertainty this blindness places on my speech, I establish every moment after waking as day (and every moment after sleeping as night). I can no longer spit, though my mouth is seldom dry. Each day I rend at my flesh with my teeth to find that I cannot bleed- I have been robbed of all that is sacred. A mere cupful would be enough to draw the circle and call the god; I tear meat from my fingers and chunks of muscle from my arms and am not even given a drop!

The walls are smoothed rock. Were they once jagged? Did the pressure of my searching fingertips alone wear them to this state, or am I only the most recent prisoner here?

I dream that my enclosure has black ceilings but the darkness of waking gives me doubt. The walls taste unlike any stone that my tongue had touched in my life before the cavern. If only this cell were made of obsidian! I would utter several secret words and press my palms against the holy rock, feel the veins of the earth coursing through my forehead and the walls will crumble and I will call forth fire and ash from the mountains on all those who worship the false and demonic god-who-was-tortured…Oh. I was lost for a moment, believing I was still a High Priest. Such daydreams become more difficult to evade as my stay lengthens. For a time I held to hopes of rescue or escape; now I settle for fantasies of killing men that are already dead.

Who has placed me here? It cannot be the god: I know his punishments and rewards, and not once since my imprisonment began have I smelled his hot breath or heard his claws upon this nameless floor.

There have been many visions, but I can only recall seeing the fate of my son repeated endlessly. It may be that many or all of the lost memories are repetitious as well, but I suspect that each unremembered moment is a new loss. Waking after a lost vision gives my mind the sensation I encountered when my twin girls were stillborn- not at all like the images of my son and his mother that make my ears pound like avalanches, that flush my cheeks with blood. Inaccessible, useless blood!

A vision comes.

The stream ripples around a black-robed man. He is quite young. A circle on the dome of his head is shaved to the skin. He nods. At this gesture a ragged line of women and children pushes itself forward to avoid a prodding spear; the borders of the line are enforced by men riding atop immense beasts. Taking the captives one at a time, the robed man leads them thigh deep in the water, quotes an incantation in a bored manner, and immerses them for a moment. He takes the sacrifice from the water and moves his hand from head to navel, then from one shoulder to the other.

At this signal, two men in shimmering armor each grip a wetted arm and march the woman or child to a large pile of tree trunks. One man takes a knife from his belt; the blade shimmers like their apparel and is sharper than the hallowed daggers held during the mysteries of the god. He cuts both legs very low, severing the tendon that runs between calf and heel. The men lift their load and throw the offering onto the logs. They return to the riverbank and wait to be called again.

Last to enter the river is my son: his left elbow is severely bruised, his eye is darkened from recent blows, his back is naked and shows the marks of a whip. Brave from his seven springs, he claws at his captors. He curses their god and his priests. He calls upon the god and my boy’s eyes change from brown to amber. A vertical slit begins in the center of his pupil and extends to each eyelid.

The aspect of the divine jaguar speaks.

“May your people be fertile as the hare!

May you conquer the land, sky, and water!

I tell you now, cowards that hold my arms,

Never marry nor lay with a woman.

The god is patient, he waits at windows,

You will find no rest if you sire children.

Hear me! The god will corrupt your cruel priests;

Many will seek to prey on boys and girls.

The injuries these holy men create

Will make your acts today seem a kindness.”

The warrior holding my son’s right arm cuffs him viciously on the temple. His eyes flit like hummingbird wings for a moment, then shut. The priest takes him and pulls him across the water. With anger and confusion plain on his face, he yells “Get thee hence, foul demon!” He pushes the unconscious body beneath the water. He pulls the boy away from drowning and signals the soldiers. It is as before. His legs are cut and he is thrown. His neck falls on a trunk and snaps.

The priest walks to the writhing pile of wood and flesh and says, “Better that they burn today than burn forever.” He takes a torch from one of his men and drops it. Grey smoke rises high, carried higher by screams.

The vision ends in the manner I remember. Suddenly the sounds cease, though flames still climb and cast flickering shadows. A man with a bloody belt knife reflects sunlight from his chest, coughs for a moment, and quirks the left corner of his mouth. He walks close to one of his companions and whispers into his ear, “Soon, perhaps tomorrow morning, I will kill that pious toad. When we return home I’ll bring the bad news to his family, and fuck his sisters.”

The sounds of fire and death resume, but quickly become impossible to hear over the pair’s coarse laughter as it echoes through this endless hall.

A Stray

The dog crosses the gravel road and lays under the three sweet-gum trees that mark the corner of the yard where the weeds begin. The summer air pulls enough water out of the bayou to make anyone ill. I focus on the dog. From a distance it looks like a Rottweiler: muscled heavily in the shoulders, a little over two feet tall at the withers, coat probably black but currently the color of shale flakes and dust. Four legs, two eyes, no collar. I am fate: press the charge, wear the wig, swing the axe.

I sigh and walk up the cinderblock stairs to the front door, open it, and walk inside. My father is at work. My mother sits on our couch, comforting an infant that is wailing while simultaneously preventing a little blonde girl and a smaller brown-haired girl from coming to blows as they argue regarding a mostly-forgotten dispute. I say, “Pat’s not home, is he?”

She replies, “No. On a camping trip I think.”

“Oh. That’s right. Well there’s a stray, I’m going to take care of it.”

I open the coat closet, grab the .22, point the barrel down and slide the action to make sure it’s unloaded. I feel the gun in my hands and consider the size of the dog. “Mom, it’s a big dog. I think I’ll need a real rifle.” She does not respond. She probably did not hear.

 I walk down the hall to my room, then down the three stairs into the master bedroom. It had been converted from a porch a year earlier, and still had concrete floors that wept the humidity we breathed. I walk into their closet and turn left, pushing aside a series of grey and blue suit jackets. The false wall is never securely fastened and the panel is light as I move it aside. I have several options: I heft the Remington .308 that my brother favors, but decide on the .30-30 I use for hunting whitetail. It’s a Winchester, model 1894, lever action- if a dreamed cowboy has a rifle, this is the rifle he carries. I work the lever to make sure the gun isn’t hot and move around a stack of cartridge boxes until I find the label that matches the weapon. I pull three rounds from the box, put them in my pocket, and make my way to the living room.

“Be careful, now,” she says. Because this is not my normal chore, my mother often forgets that I have done this many times before.

After a few minutes indoors the air is a punch in the liver- it humbles the strong, it buries the foolish or unfortunate. The dog is still underneath our trees. It rests precisely atop a mound that once marked a yellow-jacket hive (three years ago I wrecked it with a lawnmower blade and earned twenty stings). I walk the thick gravel of our driveway, past the flowering yucca, to the road and the sassafras and every sunrise. I work the angles in my head.

I walk ten feet away from the road and hone my vision: the goats are all in the southeast portion of their pasture, but Buttercup is a little close to the line of fire for comfort. (Can’t kill her, can I? I milk her twice every day, don’t I?) The stray does me a favor and walks a few steps closer to the house.

I thumb the ammunition into the magazine and rack a round. Head? No, skull has got to be thick and it makes a mess anyway. I’ll take the shoulder shot and get a lung or two, maybe the heart. The safety turns from white to red and I eye the scope; I am teleported to where my quarry waits in ignorance. His coat (I can see now that it is male) bears fairly recent puncture wounds from fights lost or won, from barbed wire or blackberry thorns. The crosshairs blur and disappear. I take a breath for a moment, then squeeze the trigger.

It looks like it just got shot. The front right shoulder fails and it falls to the grass. It tries repeatedly to stand. I flick my hand forward and back on the lever, ejecting the spent casing and loading another round. I am not in a particular hurry, but soon enough I arrive at what I have done. The chest no longer moves. There is no need for mercy and I am not forced to hear pitiable sounds.

I clear the magazine and replace the rifle in my parent’s closet. I go to the backyard, get the wheelbarrow and a shovel, and bring the tools to the body. Damn dog must weigh as much as me. I try to drag it by the hind legs but I don’t have the strength to. I go inside again and interrupt my little brother as he plays. “Bob. Help me a minute.”

We try to lift it and don't get very far. Damn dog must weigh as much as both of us. We tip the mouth of the barrow to the ground in a salute and half-roll, half-lift the corpse into its hearse. "Thanks," I say, "now hose that blood off of you before you go inside or momma’s gonna scream at me."

I lift the handles and walk. I pass the rows of wild onions and the plum tree and now I dodge the hardwoods. During this time of year, they pretend to be immortal. When the old do not possess memory, the young are wise. I walk past trees with X’s rough-hewn through the bark and into the sapwood. There are few things worse than digging a grave and hitting a corpse, so years ago we began marking the trees.

My shovel bites the ground. It chews moss and roots and old footprints. Soon I am panting and wishing for a water bottle. I sit down and look up to see the face angled at mine. The eyes ask a complex riddle and I do not answer. I begin to laugh. “Well my friend,” I say, “At least we have the shade.” I dig for a few more minutes. Now the hole is deep enough to enter, so I hop down and continue my labor.

Time passes and I’ve gouged out four feet before I realize I have finished. I jump and use my elbows to crawl out of the pit, take the barrow’s handles in my hands, and lift. The body falls in with a dull sound, very much like hitting clay with a hammer. Half an inch of blood goes to the last place it can remember. It pools on black paint and rust. I glance down, and still the glassy stare is fixed upon me. I smile and narrow my gaze.

“Must have had a name. Probably loved the first people that fed you. Don’t blame me because you got dumped at the bayou. I didn’t choose to be here either. Why stare as if I owe you coins for your eyes? At least you are soulless and can find peace in death. Sleep. Never hunger again.”

All of my life I have lived on this land. I always imagined that one day I would grow into Ajax or Heracles but I should have read to the end of the stories.

Ophelia

He touches my face, brushes my hair back behind my ear

and I feel that I have seen this event before, in storybooks or films.

Even several years after the scissors, I am still surprised when I notice

that my dreadlocks are gone. I look into his face expecting to smile at him,

but a grimace crosses over his cheek and pulls at a tendon in his neck.

"I don't love you. I don't think I ever can.

Um, I think you're amazing and all, best girl I ever met, really,

but I don't think we have a future together. Trust me, it's not you."

I almost cry, but am calmed momentarily by counting the cliches.

We are standing near the water and just as I am about to speak

he runs for the shoreline and suddenly his ears are under the canopy;

I see his legs kicking frantically like a dolphin's fins, or maybe

this is an illusion-

the faint flashing may be the moon kissing the newest of her children.

I have seen truth only twice, once tonight as he ran

and once the day I met him and he described his life-

"Each time I dive it is silent. Sensations are slowed and beautiful

and impossible. Water surrounds you and even if someone swims beside,

when beneath the surface you are always alone; a letter sealed with wax."

After I heard this, I thought his sentiment was rather self-indulgent.

Here he was, shirtless, a tour guide for rich Americans from the mainland:

not much resembling a man who would drown in search of a pearl.

But then, why scavenge for treasures if solitude is beauty?

What was written long ago?

That Men fight because there is a thing they wish to steal or defend,

and that Men flee because there is a thing they are forced to fear?

I could not be the lover that the ocean is for him, though I tried.

Oh, his face when the water is warm and he thinks I am not watching...

How to make sense of all this?

He does not love me, so he flees as though he is pursued

by an enraged mob carrying sledgehammers?

Does he imagine, if he had stayed by my side, that I would scream hatreds

For the entire empty night to hear, embarrassing the gulls and jellyfish?

Or make the first violent action of my life because I have been scorned?

He is swimming quietly. The surf swallows sound and misery

and I know he is too far departed to hear anything except the constant waves.

He did not plan this; his eyes find the moon, his arms seek it.

What creature damaged him so terribly, that he would prefer

the cycles of eternally barren rock to the changing hope of a woman?

God damn, my chest feels heavy.

I walk toward a place where waves are lapping crescents into the beach.

I take a minute to glance nearly everywhere in the heavens,

then down at a mass of foundered seaweed held motionless by driftwood.

Overhead, a satellite pretends to be a series of novas as it orbits.

If he wished, he could circle the world before I see him again.

I had not been making demands upon his life.

I wanted him. I was not unreasonable...

This is all wrong, terribly wrong! Why would he say such things?

It may be that I am not looking at my situation in an appropriate manner,

but I simply cannot understand why he would lie about his love for me!

Suddenly I understand everything.

Far off at sea, toward the deep where superstitions flourish,

where the ocean is blank and false unless fish jump, for no apparent reason

the Earthshaker screams at the earth until it is forced to roar in return.

This rage of the god that drew the second lot is sometimes overlooked,

for it only destroys the works and homes of those living perilously close

to untamed chaos: as in all societies, the penalty for boldness is death.

After the wreckage of the tsunami is cleared, everything is the same as before.

The moon is a woman but her word can be trusted.

The waves are executioners but refuse to sit in judgment.

The ocean can never leave you.