Week Eleven: Audio

Track for Week Eleven is available for listening.

The First Taking

head down --> : eyes up
a quick incision : a lightning cut
head up : eyes down
wizened he : he scowls
focused he : he growls

and I am seeing double : double I am
I have been all along! : all along the line
a mirror at my brow : cut into my brow
a mirror: all this trouble! : all this trouble

she is mine! she was mine!

I yearn
I burn
I pine

But for the owl
I would not be here
you see?
But for the owl,
Say I. I say,
What then is it?
This thing that flies
and guides my hand and mind
To those like you
Who see into me
And cast a wide, wide
net so fine
who cast into and through
my very soul as it careens
on this, a journey

Centered in Nowhere : Centered upon the Buffalo
& Founded on lies

Now, all hope set I upon the
Stony Maid
Who was taken from me
She was taken from our
home! Our lovelorn cave!
I remember. I remember! I remember I!
And remembering
I grow brave.
And remembering
I feel a perfect woe.
I own it. This woe.
I hold it. This woe.
It is my own.
It is my own and only mine.
There is no letting go.
No, I say it
and make it so.

The owl
He is your totem
The owl
He is your power
Take him into your
Heart and make there a perfect bower
Make your chest an open
board

The taking is an Art : The taking is an Art!

Take him into your
Eyes, widen them to two perfect towers
Make your face an open
tome

The taking is a Sigh : The taking is a Sigh!

And a third place
And a fourth too
And on And on And on
Take him
into you
And make the start
Take him
and start anew

Words said, I am moved
and so take I the owl
into my heart
and mine eyes
and the other places
all with a sigh
till rising through
on a latticed line
it claims my soul right through
its heart now beats with mine

Hejana hejana nethai

He is a woodsman : A woodsman am I!

Hejana hejana nethai

He is a woodsman : A woodsman am I!

And he, this hoary hunter,
this grizzled jink,
cuts spiral signs into my arm
And words into my mind
splayed out like crimson flames
are they
spread out like fiery leaves
they are
Cascading they fall
falling they cascade
for great long hours!
for eternal, languid days!

They fall
And fall
And stay

Eyes up! Eyes up!
Eyes upon the flame!
See it: it is your soul
Eternal, living
Plain

Now send it
From the blue down here
Up into the green
Up beyond the floor
The sky

Hejana nethai!
Nethana hejai!
The widow,
The warrior,
The Diamond Maid cries!

Just over the next horizon,
Beneath the Sorceror’s dawn
Hejana nethai! I will strike him down!
I shall win the Stone.
And gnaw the bone.
And gnawing
I will know the Poem.

Once spoken.
First made.
Gives life.
Grants names.

Before time.
First born.
A name
is a sword.

I’m not a surgeon,
No surgeon am I,
but I know of one
You might try
says he
Eastward
In the east he
Lives
In the East
his trade he
Plies

And you shall go
There into the sun
Rising as it does
And thinking,
In your new, wise blindness,
That you descend
Into the west
Thinking,
In your ignorance,
That your life’s still this,
your strangest test
Eastward you shall go
But westward
In your mind
Westward ho. Westward ho!
Westward. Go.

The mirror
The shard
Between your eyes
divides you from you
one side from side
And while you see
Your sight may lie…

And with a hand of stealth
A shadow brush and leafy
touch
he heals my wound
with thorns and briars
with Quercetum fumes
and wood-wise timing
He heals me from my fall
He tears me from my pining
So that I might go on
To find the surgeon’s hand
In the westward east
Who’ll heal me
Who’ll heal me and give me sight!
Who’ll heal me
Who’ll heal me and set me right!
For the long road home
To return from where it began
that place of the drear-dead buffalo
to make form against the Sorcerer
and reclaim my due: the Stone

I shall go now soon, say I
I shall go tonight

With me then speak, he says.
With me you must chant.

Hejana hejana hejana nethæ : Hejana hejana hejana nethæ
He is a woodsman : He is a woodsman
A woodsman is he : A woodsman is he

Hejana hejana hejana nethæ: Hejana hejana hejana nethæ
We are both woodsman : We are both woodsman
Two woodsman are we : Two woodsman are we

Thus spoke I ascend
on wings of fine new craft
through briar bush and thorny boughs
ascending
I cry
and laugh
and laugh
and laugh

Read the Lyric from the Beginning

weekeleven

Week Ten: Audio

Track for Week Ten is available for listening.

The Song of the Woodsman

Hejana hejana hejana nethai
I am a woodsman, a woodcutter am I
I cut wood with my axe and my own wide eyes
I cut wood, and cutting, remain I

well aligned

with leaves and fire and woodsmoke
and willows and bones and cairns
remain I enshrined
in gray woodsmoke attired
my accoutrements ever new, ever fine

What say you there, you who stand upon the sky?
Seest thou not, you turned upside down,
that you are turned un-right?
that your smile is witnessed

a frown?

Oh and you seest not your crime, see I
Neither seest thou the payment
you shall make in time: repentance
and a burning fire set to ashen grime

You seek the Maid, I see
You seek the Diamond line
Would you take her from me,
were it she was mine?

Don’t answer.
No need.
She is not.
She is gone, she who once lived
Here in Quercetum. Who once stayed long
laughing round the flames that licked
her feet, pale glimpses
and sent shadows upon her azure hair
cyaneous hair, hair like like like
But I digress
And digressing
Readdress oh! To have the Maid
In Sight

All wishes sent to her
all dreams and desires too
and I: I am a Woodcutter: I know not
to woo

And you, Sirrah, do you?
You: speak not upon pain of mirth…
You do! I see you do!

I shall hang above thee and watch!
And watching yearn! And speaking learn!

Hejana hejana hejana nethai
I shall speak down to thee!
Nethana nethana nethana hejai
And I shall teach of stillness
and of silence
I shall opine

The irony I reserve
is the only child of mine
for I am otherwise childless
have no-one to share my wine
since the Diamond turned
down upward
and left my spiral line

And you want a moment, no doubt,
before my speech inclines
to think of Marms and Bankers
to pause and render merit to your brother’s
knife-wrought demise

To think back on your current past
And the vicious King of Lies
Oh yes, I know him
The Emperor has his ties

For the Sorcerer King
He is
Well he is what he is
A Northern Thing

And you, you are going
to repent before you reprise
repent and recoil

at your own hands and blade
ruddy red now all burnished like
blood on a taken bride’s downy thigh
gory slime, a gore like the long sift of time

Changing time! Lying time!
Relative time!

Here you should be laughing
Here there is sublimity,
and sublimity sublime
supernal, refined!

Changing time! Lying time!
Relative time!

And I climb this tree down toward you!
You there, Rebellious One!
Descending I shall climb
or fall, and falling climb!
My iron heels dug into the oak
And a rope tied to the stony earth
Above me and behind

And as I go
the leaves do fall
Look! They fall upon thy arched brow
acaved like a tomb and well
They fall upon those eyes of thine
agast like a ghoul new felled

All Lord-hewn fire are they, in their falling
All Lord-crafted bronze and amaranthine!
They fall, they fall,
as brothers go and lovers fly

as sweat drips

how she
drips

as blood cascades
pyrrhous

and you shall be born again
to live again in time!
to wander the Earth
to exist… to survive…

But now you hear me not
Your eyes occluded by leaves
And unseeing, you do not hear
And not hearing, you are blind

Well heya heya! New friend of mine,
that’s enough of that kind of speech.
Not here! Not I. I shall no longer sway and rhyme
except to tell you what you will truly hear:

In this garden everything is shy
and shy, we are wiser than the tide
that pecks away at the Oceanside
to form the gorgeous beaches –
the first that men do seize
and seizing, there they lie
with maids of honor
and dishonour maids

in pumpkin patches
and fields of hay

they lie and lie and lie

oh you want the answers
you want to win this game

but

I am no economy, no economy am I!
And this is no game
Life is no game
No game is life
Life is just that life is
Again I say!
Life is just that life is

Listen, Bone,
Here what you sew you reap
Here what I cut, I keep

Oh right garden, Quercetum
wherein one cannot lie
Oh sweet spot, Quercetum
wherein one cannot die
Holiness, grand sweeps of respite
In the Garden of the Emperor’s Bride
I would whisper
But I must sing must I!

Hejana hejana hejana nethai
One who cuts the willow wood, am I
One who marks the rood and sets the line;
One who measures and calms the sky;

Hejana hejana hejana nethai
I am a woodcutter, a woodcutter am I
Nethana nethana nethana hejai
I am a woodcutter, a woodsman am I

I climb I climb
I cut I climb
upon the fair Oaks: Quercetum
and also upon the Pines

Rising, I descend
To the peaks of the trees here
Rising, I release
and fall upon you:

who once did not see
the blind
I shall again
give sight

Hejana hejana hejana nethai
A woodcutter, a woodcutter
A woodsman am I

Read the Lyric from the Beginning

weekten

Week Nine: Audio

Track for Week Nine is available for listening.

The Garden of the Emperor

Pray permit me to set the scene
to remise my words and renew
again for thee, mysterious listeners
with soft worldly ears to this, my mystery
Trust I do speak true

And you, who art thou
that you should listen so well?
Well listen that you might glean
the base beneath a Rebel Bone
one so mean as me
and one so damned unclean
and simple, and sharp, and desirous
obscene oh! one so far from home
to come now, to fall, and falling
even more confused be

One as torn as me
from One born Two
and Two born Three
and from thence
the waking world
all listeners
the Kings and Queens
might yet arise to be

For I have not one memory
now of what came before he
my Twist Brother the “Drunken Fool,” nor before
the Factory’s Book-Armed Marms,
the Doughy Men Homonculi, the Sorcerer King
and all that has made this story turn and breathe
Believe me and make me real!
In me you must believe!

No memory before that strange sweet
crouching beside the flame
that call to aged sacrifice
that drumming down so plain
that smoke, and throbbing roar of sun bleached bones
and so then: what then is there left of me?
Who are we that have known no home?
Who are we with no memories
to call and name our own?

For are we not merely recollections
collected and amassed in skin
and losing them, what then
what then, I repeat: what remains?
Mere listening shells, and when we refuse
Even that intake, then we stand and bring

Rebellion! Adhaero! My will I shall defend!
And so in that I am something still
a majestic principal on fire, a brother-killer
rolling now in the sky, roiling magnificent and dire
in looking-glass flames I am attired
and so well dressed descend

I fall for long long hours, like one
well drugged by tiny caps
like one eating a calming slug,
yellow and smoky like a dragon’s
kiss, a measured paper’s hug and poem
I fall until I fly
and flying I rage and flap
and storm

All stars are in my eyes
And all the eyes now
belong to me and mine
We are now like the heralded angels
winged, beautiful, refined
Like songs so well sung
they blind
And wants so pure
they ring, resounding always!
they ring, they ring and sternward they climb!

Here, west and down beneath the
glass and gaudy edifice
I am the Thunderbird
called JoJo
Here, in the sky
all gloamed bring I storms and fits
beneath and above the factory
that casts its reddish hue
all glass and gaseous residue
I am that myth come true
I am the end of it

And storming
I war
And warring
I peck out my brother’s eye
no battle needed; no fight

stunned

He screams. He sighs. He fades. He dies.
The Prison Glass, having shattered,
becomes my blade and
my tongue a dial, telling the time:
the Final Hour, when one
is all, and all Sad Kings are hung
Queen Bees, once stinging, are stung
and Lovers are made sublime
diamonds
Kings and Queens all reborn
remembering they their ancient forms

How the sun gleams white below us:
my brother’s death has brought the day!
Cascades he, this subverse sun, over my long intent:
this my blade, my brother’s doom,
tastes blood, and on the blood it lays
In his throat it shall reside
Forever, until his subterranean sun
doth cease to shine
and his bones, to ash, recline

And tumbling away
from my cut and slay
I turn round again
I fall and falling, climb
ascend down into a canopy
of trees as green as limes
as old as time –

I fall up into the Emperor’s Garden
where the Woodsman dwells
cutting away all that is unnecessary
and holding back the world’s wide swell

He needs must know I am coming,
and so I deign to yell:

Opine again! Renuntio! Sing of this moment’s time!
Do you not hear the clucking violins of battle,
the sweet sage smell of promised conquest?
The drums of a dead dogs dying
and the black hearted cello of the Left Hand Path?

I seek the Maid
and as surely as I lay once
beside that firstborn fire
so surely she will be mine
as before she once was

My memory returned! As singular as the sky
One thing recalled, more surely will cascade:
a girl with a blaze of blue hair,
a vision aloft in the air before me
the Diamond Maid was mine
and so the Twin needs must have died
for I
could never share her
for I
am a jealous bird
for her
I will and dare
for her
I’ll kill all care
in her
I fear no Emperor

Hear, then, these silent notes
sucking themselves from the air
in drops of brother’s blood
in his death: I kill despair
and fear too kill I
and listen to the sucking sound
the weight of these noteless tones!

You Working Trees beside me, I call you too:
sing of sweat
sap, and toil,
sing of sugary beats
and dreams – of pine scent and wings,
of towering beams, thou wordless sing, and I know
passing you, a windy terror,
that you too have souls
you too have known the Emperor
you too have seen the Kings

So my yell complete
I tumble and I fall
A pain upon my trenched brow
I fall, and the sky does swell
till finally up above me
are the plenitude of trees, bearing down
upon the sky beneath them
no roots
rootless they reside

I stand upon the sky
and they
they look down
hazardous they frown
up there inside the smoking gloam

They, the Woodsman’s
ancient home

Quercetum it is called
The Trees
so make it known

At long last this is
Quercetum, the Place of Cutting,
you have finally found

and the Woodsman will hunt you down
Caveat! Caveat!
lay down your blade and plow
for the Woodsman is coming now
As you have come to reap
the Woodsman is come to sew

Read the Lyric from the Beginning

weeknine

Week Eight: Audio

Track for Week Eight, featuring contributions by betaEight, is available for listening.

The Song of the Golden Marm

Witness: I sing shameless
a song of a strange, source-less flame
less than a snake and more than a name
of light and falseness, of falseness and reptilian bites
with strong brightness raging, it rages!
Witness: a strange, light-less blaze
within its lack, a frame and staging
a theatre, and now
at new curtain’s rise
comes hard upon the moon and sun a halo
round your whole body here on Earth, enraptured
iridescent and blameless
grand, you mute scarecrow soul
burning round your bony whole

And the owl! The owl
is gone
now flies
and whence?
skyward
north and long

She leads the way as I
I sing
and I
I pray
That which I am
I do
and so shall show the same
to you

Lift up your hands
Bone, thou. Rebellious be not now, no!
Gainst me there is none possible
as you, listing, are a ship
upon the seas of my forthcoming
my outgoing
You see I have created nothing
Being that upon which the creation rests
Your unblinking eyes
all covered by your hands
don’t see,
nor will they while you hide
But look: take heart:
if I, as I am I, am true
within your sight
unseeing
then I, as I am I, am Resolution
am even your hands’ gable
there occluding your precious
eyes, all white now, say I
now black the left one
and the reverse! Your eyes piebald
as a buffalo’s!

Screaming – say I no.
And rattling. I rattle. My throat
sore now, so sore.
Screaming – say I again
and thrice o’er
no. I am no sacrifice.
Shall be no drummed up bull

Oh but you need not answer
nor must you speak
You need only decide
Lift you up your eyes
And dare
Willing
Pull back
Willing
Scalping yourself
as you know you mote
And reveal the inner air
down inside your throat
The blood rising up, imagine!
All generations’ forward climb
The blood ascending, imagine again!
Your ancestors’ clawing cry
and missive pining
too these are a prayer
too your body is
Kill then for them yourself,
and for me lay forth your bones
burning down thus your old abode

Yes, it is time to reveal your brother there
upon you, a grid and weight
behind glass but still right there beside you
his eyes all caged by hate
slitted
his gait shuttered by his kneeling
lie, for he rues his kneeling
and spits upon mine eye
And your side
he spears your side with foul words
Knowing not the irony of the spear’s bawdy urge

What do I mean?
I mean you must make yourself a new chair
For your residence is burning
a grain trapped inside its flesh
The house that your father built
it is
and also it is not; how strange;
you exist somewhere within the divide
as surely as the divide exists
the barest gap and sting
And singing you discover
That flowers go forth in spring
even as they before wilt
their brethrens all did die
withering they flew
living, you fly
and even liars
in dying do the same
shameless, it is you they shame
for your spirit,
entire,
resides in the house that your father built
resides there
behind your eyes

Now tear away your hair and head
and tear away your brow
tear away your teeth, your jowls
and look ye’,
for the Owl

Now scream away your hurt and hate
And hymn away your doubts
Sing away your truths, your tells
and slay thee
your brother now

I shall
Yea I shall

And so the glass doth shatter
And shattering reveals
A starry gleam inside my skull
Screamed forth it is released

The glass so broke a falling
and falling, we can not know peace

Read the Lyric from the Beginning

weekeight

Week Seven: Audio

Track for Week Seven is available for listening.