I.
I told her,
“I’ve seen the future,
when your mouth is bloody as Garm’s.”
And she said
“Oh, you be silent,
These are not slim chains on my arms.”
She set up a table
with two folding chairs around it,
and I lingered on her couch
while she lit three wicks
in one candle
then shut off so many lights.
Perhaps it was the scent of vanilla
or the prism of the water in my glass,
but I savored every bite I took
of that exquisite tomato/basil sauce
over chicken and rice with
vegetables that I didn't hate
and rocked my toes to Louie’s jazz.
You can’t know the future
(that thought is a vulture)
but it’s one that seems to last,
and even though the converse is attractive
to actors, murderers, and poets,
our memories are mangled by our past.
When she was not watching
I stole my napkin,
in truth a folded paper towel,
and made it into a square.
I put it my wallet
before I was caught.
II.
We never have choices even if we have the voices
of the Gods inside our heads. We hold on to the present
even when it’s evident that our time is short instead,
and that we should be furious, venting fire and flooding
at the way we spend our days. It is of no comfort,
or perhaps just a small one, that we can make such
uncomfortable things a haze to wave our fingers through
in the midst of crumbling through a maze.
I thought that I could love her, for one fleeting moment,
but I killed that fancy there. It was just as she said,
a total impossibility, one that inexorably leads to a coffin
or perhaps an electric chair.
She had me utterly frozen on a cushion
and I knew my time had come.
She would paint me so that no one else
could see I only had one eye.
Under those bright lights I joked and said
“Come on, I’ll tell you what you want to know”
She said “I am not curious, I’ve lived quite a while,
and know that Odin has no soul, so you don’t have to worry.
This shred of intimacy will end when the camera dies.”
She said “You seem startled that I could recognize you
without that absurd wide-brimmed hat. You may have fooled
every human frame but I am just a body hiding flame.”
She caught me unaware and I was feeling quite insane,
she laughed and said “The wise are rumored to have
some small bit of trouble with the memory of names.”
“You remember me, the immense serpent
chewing on my tail, the paper-pale guardian of hell.
You thought I was the other one, but in truth I am all three
and so you will spend your life like many others
in your endless dreams of me. You cannot evade
this charming little wraith. Even if I let you run
you would not want to escape this perfect cave.”
III.
Eventually she got the photograph
that she wanted and she was beautiful.
I had embarrassed myself earlier by opining thus
as she was leaning in her doorway and I was sitting quite still in awe.
And so there I was,
captured for a moment
as I truly am,
a demon who takes light
and with parlor tricks twists it to darkness
so that no one can see my face;
a mercurial Mongol
sleeping in the saddle,
never staying in one place
long enough to see what I have wrought,
or the chaos in my wake
that must have such a dreadful cost.
I tell them to be careful,
that I wreak destruction and I burn what’s in my way.
I do not give the trite cursory glance at my trail
to falsely remember the beginning of decay.
Oh, it started before me, don’t be made a fool,
we all come from somewhere else;
whether born on the bayou or melted out of a furnace,
you’ll have to tighten your belt
when food is the enemy, that horrid preserver
of all our torrid ways.
You can hate the sunlight,
yes we all hate the sunlight,
and the things it makes us do.
We can burn up within it or avoid all that static
and end up with wind-swept knees.
Then it was over, yes, it was All over,
and she took me back to my house.
Until next time I said- not knowing the future,
immune to the future. (the Norns had given back my eye)
“You weren’t using it at all!” came their deep and dusty call.
With rage I tell the roots that nothing changes if you try.
IV.
I scream out “I am a monster! I am a monster,
but I can break right through your chains!
Just because I know what the future does not mean,
it still has possibilities and these are things I will profane!!”
A woman’s voice says
“How long has he been this way?”
I give a slashing cry.
“Forever! Forever! A heart of iron
cannot have the freedom you assume
when moving into a dusty room;
it must carry out its horrid task
until it becomes time for its doom.”
“You’re plugging cords into themselves
and knocking groceries from the shelves.
You’re ripping tile from the floor
and you are calling it a door,
but when I put my head inside
I find a place where I awake
but not a land where I can hide.”
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