To Maria (1942-2019)

I

Red calls me, lulling, like a siren to the rocks.

Red, how I need you! Red sun, red dawn, red day of revelations!

Strange, now, to think of you, sans laughter, sans oxygen tank,

sans childhood fear of the monster under the stairs.

Tell me, what was it, in the red red vines of that house you grew up in?

What did Isabella find that made her come back to this place, to the rain and the accented cursing and the streets where poets’ gun-shots echo in red?

Tell me, what made you into this?

Strange, to think of you, and see a girl my own age, terrified, alone, and dead

long before her children were borne, splinted and painted red onto the altar,

Lips red, cheeks red, alien flag red-yellow-black enveloping you.

Coffee on the shirts, scalding, a birthmark on our reputation, red, too.

You were dead long before Maman was born and yet

here you are, alive and here I am,

alive too and more than you ever were.

the scars from your youth left rot in our foundations,

left imprints in the sand in Knokke and on your bedside table-

I don’t know you.

You of the photographs, a smiling girl who was always old and who looks like me.

I have your eyes, your hair, your wrinkles on my teenage skin and your spirit

and my reflection disgusts me, because I am just like you.

And the immensity of my red, red heart terrifies me.

Red, colour of the cards, the Delaware sun at dawn, a home I never owned.

Red, the siren that calls and lulls to rage!

Red, the rampant lion!

Red, how I need you!

Nothing I have is my own, Red, it’s all you. It’s all you. It’s all you and I am left

here to tell myself that I am my own person, though I see your eyes

when I look at myself, and I cannot look away.

I have to believe that I am different.

Through Bogotá, through the streets and olive-coloured voices and the clamour of the colours, past the teaching-school, the dreams of medicine left to ferment in the dark:

Asklepios thunderstruck, dead!

Through the war and past the memories of a father

who forgot to pay the return fee, left to fend for yourself in a cold white country.

Maria! Maria, Your name is red!

Maria became Marie

and suddenly the story fades away.

II

Your hand on my shoulder, telling me never to trust.

Your marriage, your meds, your mother, your daughter.

She, too, had a changeling child. This I can finally tell you.

There are comets to mark the madman’s genius, but

what words do we save for the dolls who grow up

Struck down, silenced, dressed up and painted to life again?

For those who grow without light, grasping

desperately for the sun in any direction?

For you!

You, whom I watched falter, and fade, and hack up through jokes;

you of the paragliding, adventuring jungle spirit, the Scout in the Amazon,

of the hour-long trips for ice cream and five (-no, four-) children,

all tempered like you.

You, of tantrums and beatings and accusations, of Communism, screaming out

your grief for a lost future in Colombia,

for the fourteen-year-old girl who died and kept walking,

for the sixty-seven-year-old with three months to live,

treading on six years later, too tired to go, still seeing red.

O Maria! Daughter of the sunken ships!

Maria! Crownless Queen of Hearts!

Maria! Heartless: lost her crown!

Maria the Red, Maria, Maria!

Maria, the colour of middle-C, singing, shrieking in cigarette tones:

Maria!

Forgive me! Forgive me!

Forgive my tongue thick with curses and my eyes dry as sand

I speak ill of the dead and cannot speak to the living.

Maria, I cannot save your daughter, or your son, a poet, too.

Them, in their photographs, eighties colours and eighties sound,

Bibles and blocky sweaters and John Travolta.

Them, with white-passing grins and their grandmother’s good name,

dressed up for Communion in cobweb white and gold,

draped to the bones in mailbox ash.

With car crashes and Knokke beach,

Kerouac and the killing squads,

With clamour,

the crying of the seagulls at the Revelations,

Gabriel’s trumpet on a red red red horizon.

With Communist party posters and Che’s face on Jesus,

With fire in the garden and fire in the stove, promised to save us,

Promised in red!

III

Red, how I hate you now.

Red, middle-C, I know that your meaning is not your fault.

Memory, you will watch over me, and I will betray you again and again

Because I was not born to war like you.

I was not born in a castle, in the callour of a silver spoon, in the shadow of grief.

I was not born in red,

I was loved, and taught to use my voice, taught that red is the refuge of the weak,

because I was born to a mother with scars in red, like yours.

Red, you teach me that I am made of liquid iron.

Red, you are unwholesome, unbroken, the colour of the rising sun.

Red, you are Maria, bitter tears and wandering.

There is unfinished business that you have on Earth;

there is a quarrel that you hold with the world.

The fight that you carry with you is your own,

and I will remember it,

but I cannot carry it with me.

I will not be red.

angels

time

warmth

winter

sunday morning

saints, sometimes.

automation?

snow

rot, but not so much anymore, thankfully.

Love.

Piano.

Trains.

What I imagine London might be like.

And what it's like to be home.

She asks you to set the world on fire for her,

to burn and spark and die for her.

You throw the match, burn out the glow,

and breathe the cold, the beauty of a world admired,

two lungs filled fast with paper snow.

Refuse to write your love with fire.

__

#poetry #challenge

We poets

throw cartridges of ink away like cigarette butts;

today, I hold my eyes in hands too small to comprehend

the torn-up, full-of-glass-and-ink that marks them

as a child who lives from line on page to line on page,

from insomnia to nights awake;

from lamp to candle to burning flame-

You'll never find a poet here.

we overthink to think less evil;

we write to scream away our fears.

My mother says before my dreams, my mind was whole and evergreen.

Who was I before my dreams?

Ink cartridges pile up, pile up,

sublime and infinite visions of

A world with lucid dreams like mine

where days pile up in monomers of eternity,

become so infinitely heavy:

could they teach me how to love me?

I dance; I fall.

I hit my head against bricks in the middle of a pirouette

mid-air I strike the ceiling beams

Did you know, I cannot dance?

Did you know I'm not a poet?

I lose myself and fall, then rise

while laughing, smile at my side

There is no fury left in me,

no great poetic melancholy

with which to fuel the inkwell here.

I am no poet because I laugh in melancholy's face

as she breathes her smoke on me.

So I'll forget my amnesia and lovers.

I think that if I forget, I cannot be a poet.

I forget I sleep

Breathe:

All in all,

"poet" is to live free.

The moon sleeps in my childhood bed,

its emptiness dyed silver-blue:

an ink that stains

insomniac

and begs me

to remember

you.

I plant an apple seed one summer,

out back where you lived,

once,

the empty house with rusted gates,

that haunts the back of your mind today,

and say

When this seed is a full grown tree,

when the branches unfurl

and the leaves grow green,

when I’m older and strong enough

to break off a branch and fashion

it into a bow

to fight off those who’d hurt us,

when the shade protects you

from the blind sun’s glare -

then I'll break off branches

one by one,

harvest the fruit

in twisted theophagy,

rake the leaves into

the empty rooms inside,

cover the entire place

in torn books and torn branches -

and we’ll watch as the past

warms our cold threadbare fingers

and flies off in white ash

and the smell of cinderwood smoke.

See?

We’ll burn the paper towns

where we forget that we were born,

and the paper hearts

that tore when we trod

on their tried-and-true tradition,

we’ll watch, safe, from the mountains

as our bodies turn to stone,

looking over our shoulders

at the wreckage we’ve caused -

tell me,

Would you do all this for me?

I look over my shoulder,

and for a second

we’re the arsonist angels of old,

the oneiric and ineffable,

who burned cities like anthills

and sunk the Old World

until the sun was drowned -

We’re screwed-up, scared of becoming

the stories we grew up scared of, fearing:

but can we play another game,

and play the angels all the same?

for Isabella.

ALL LIVE TO DIE...

You told me once

that happiness was just another lie

my parents called a bedtime story.

looking at the sea,

Your hand against my

frail-boned shoulder,

You counted ships that passed our way

and breathed out pure melancholy,

the cigarette’s corrupting smoke,

that heaven’s hit of nicotine

Your bloodstream black as Styx already,

A malignant, jealous Hades,

reborn in the sting of the seafoam and salt,

in the autumn afternoon.

A Hades reborn in my child’s imagination,

You told me i was old enough

to learn the truth of Life.

Reader, please understand that i was eight.

You told me with a rasping breath

that happy endings

were for characters in fairy-tales

and that the world was cruel to you,

so changeling minds like mine

would never be allowed to bloom.

You told me stories filled with brimstone

so i’d grow up, the perfect lady; too bad for

You.

You knew i was barely eight years old.

and for once, fifteen now, full of rage,

it’s just my luck to be a fairy,

isn’t it, my dearest Hades imaginary?

i break a box of chocolates against the wreck

You called a house,

and find another twenty rosaries

- how much faith

and damn forgiveness did

You really want and need?

how many hymns and prayer books,

how many books of genesis bought until

You knew and realized

why your children fight and kill and bleed for

You?

i stole a piece of jewelry,

You know, from

Your bedside drawer:

the necklace from

Your wedding-

and i locked in a drawer out of guilt.

small gold chain, half of a heart

where’s the other half,

dear Hades imaginary?

in the growing pile of trash outside

among the clippings, psychic rags,

rotten divination books,

and magic healing crystal bags

we’ll burn tonight?

I look up

at another stack of bibles

and flip to pages I know well

- it’s always the same few -

why do we start tragedies?

Because each time

we start the song like it’ll end differently

We flip to pages hoping you didn’t really mean it that one time,

and find the same old dusty screaming ruins waiting where we thought for once we could just

breathe.

Half of a heart, broken in two-

Oh Hades Imaginary,

Forgiveness is a finite fucking thing.

...AND RISE TO FALL.

Later, when we start the bonfire in the garden,

rotten mildew, fake Edwardian chairs

sizzling at the frayed fabric,

Your makeshift memento pyre,

i untangle the chain from around my neck,

gently,

Gold that shyly glistens

to the flickerbeat flames:

the tentative rhythms

of the wooden changeling childrens’

shouts and games

that accompany the harmonies

of the crackling yellow pages

dying

for once and for all.

And i throw it in as well,

without any ceremony,

ni vu ni connu.

Your children continue to cheer

and throw wood onto the burning logs.

Dear Hades Imaginary,

Your heart

dissolves

and melts

and blazes

like it never did when you were living here.

half a heart,

like you, like me -

half a heart to care for ourselves,

only,

take what’s ours by given right;

Half a heart,

and half a mind to run

as far away as lungs permit,

out of here,

out of this crumbling

dusty memory,

out of reach of this

catastrophic

clusterfuck:

your claustrophobic legacy.

ARE YOU SURE THAT THEY’RE JUST GROWING PAINS?

remember:

you are just

sticks & stones.

and here I am,

refraction of perfection,

bones made of ash,

and heart made of glass.

Oh, mother, forgive me

if I know what you mean

when you say

we shouldn’t repeat the past.

Don’t walk too lightly, brother; you’ll wake the ghosts.

I was barely eight that day,

but I’m stronger than I ever was,

and you can’t hurt us ever again.

PERESTROIKA, ANGELS IN AMERICA.

Dear Hades Imaginary:

I built sandcastles

with my shaking fingers,

fashioned sandy walls

too high to see the clouds with

my own two snow-filled lungs,

walls that crumbled come sunset,

that the sea devoured with foamy jaws,

but that I built nonetheless.

Dear Hades Imaginary:

We have to try.

We have to try,

no matter how we know the story ends

when we stop reading.

We have to try,

and laugh,

and build stupid things,

machines

that have no purpose,

sandcastles

doomed to fail,

and say with

booming shaking lonely little voices

I Built This.

and

Dear Hades Imaginary,

YOU CAN NEVER TAKE IT AWAY!

And

I command my buzzing brain

with a tired child’s brittle, breaking,

unbalanced voice:

I must love this thing

I call myself

or at least... I’ll fucking die trying!

And the world starts turning.

Time starts now.

My life starts now.

A happy ending

now begins.

And

I breathe.

Dear Hades Imaginary,

I will love this thing

I call myself

If it costs me my

golden,

broken,

melted

heart.

“How many paths can you take in a labyrinth?”

The Professor’s lecture rooms are always packed:

Pushing her glasses up once more, she surveys the bustling room,

scanning the jade-eyed tired, the idealistic all alike, the jumble of concentrated faces in front of her awaiting the day’s first words.

A breath, then she restarts.

“How many paths in a labyrinth?”

Silence.

“Only the one.”

“We take one path in life,” she continues,

her words slow and methodical,

reaching for a coherent point.

“Whether we stand for hours in front of every forking road,

considering each decision, retracing our steps, or race on ahead of the others,

we will only ever take one path.

If each choice is a crossroads,

the Labyrinth begins in the original Garden.

Would you rather walk in innocence or learn to live in uncertainty?”

How can I know if I’ve made the right choice?

She pauses,

considers for a moment.

“We get one chance,” she answers, eyes unfocused,

staring into the void,

“so choose wisely.”

“Because, this,” she continues, her voice raised,

“this, my students, is the game:

let’s say a boy is given a choice one day.

One choice, one path ahead of him, one path behind.

If he keeps going, how many paths does he know he’ll take?

If he goes back, how many paths could he have taken?

The possibility simultaneously dwarfs and is dwarfed by empirical reality.

Less is more.

Thus, we freeze, and take neither path:

Both paths die, and we survive, standing still at a crossroads.

Robert Frost ponders the road not taken, and wastes through his verse

the very real event of the walked path.

Is he right in doing so?

The unnamed woman in Genesis, instead of running to the future,

stands frozen, obsessed the past and what she cannot get back:

do you see yourself in her eyes?”

“Alright, I can see I’ve lost you.”

A few chuckles wade through the heavy air of the classroom.

It’s late in the afternoon, and the sun is beginning to set

behind the stained glass windows.

“Let’s say- let’s say we have a character, and our character has a name,”

she continues, “His name is Minos;

Now, you know from last trimester that

in Greek mythology, King Minos of Crete,

horrified

by the Minotaur’s appearance,

once asked the inventor Daedalus to build him a labyrinth in which to hide it.”

she pauses.

“It, the unspeakable.

Design a maze for your monsters, students.

Rifle through the dusty drawers in your head,

search for the plan you thought you’d found:

A finite room of endless corridors, twisting and turning,

each path forking a hundred ways,

in which it will never be bored of its decisions,

caught in a twisting cage of corridors.

If you are trapped, if you have no options,

you will end up making the same decisions time and time again,

lost in your own doorless labyrinth.

We get one chance, one path to trace:

where are you trapped?”

That’s the thing, she thinks later, sat in her office,

mulling over a lukewarm cup of coffee.

We turn the corridor;

we walk around the path, lost,

and find that we’re back where we started

because we never truly left.

Marlowe believed in predestination:

that you can’t change who you are,

that we are constantly tied by invisible strings,

pulled to the vortex of a singular fate:

that the Labyrinth has one exit.

Whichever path you take, you will exit through the same door.

Just ask Faustus.

You all know that Marlowe takes broken souls, tragedies, and writes his stories.

Yes, you.

I am talking to you: now listen.

Does the fact that there is only one path you take in a labyrinth

imply that this path is already set?

You turn the corner, sure, you walk in circles;

above, the writers watch and take notes, laughing at their subject:

do you know your fate as they do?

Could you tell if you were a story?

The boy in the labyrinth, he is no less real than you.

He is king of his own endless imagined Hell.

And in that twisting, turning garden,

he knows, and he rebels:

I am the Narrator! I am Me! We are the same person!

Climb, he'll climb.

Upwards, to see the labyrinth as it is, whole,

his life in its thousand string of stretched-out pathways,

under a stormy city sky.

We all seek knowledge, and who would not kill to see a map of their life?

Ask Faustus.

He finds the tallest tree he can and starts to climb.

His hands find branches that prick and scar his palms with their twisted brambles;

against the cold wind, he grits his teeth, bearing onwards.

Foot by foot, step by step, he scrambles upwards,

up the wall of the maze: I will find what I must, or fall.

I am Minos,

he says to himself, reaching out for another branch,

another foothold, higher up,

where the wind can’t hurt him.

My name is Minos,

I am real,

and I will not give you my story.

Yes, we see you, Minos.

Go on ahead, climb as much as you want:

the garden is endless and sees your ascent.

The sky grows darker with every step, and yet he keeps on going, blind:

bring it on.

He cannot see.

He cannot see.

And yet, he knows he will keep going, upwards into the blackening sky.

Will you guide him?

Does desperation make this surge of destruction our only rational solution?

He hurts; he climbs, still.

He falls, trips; a branch will catch him.

He maims the landscape, commands the storm to bend to his will.

If you write, you control.

So why are you still reading?

You are the compounding of every step you have ever taken;

every corridor that you have retraced,

every moment that you have hesitated,

and you do not get to choose this.

Your life is the sequence of steps,

of running and of uncertainty,

of dead ends and of twists and turns that you could never have predicted.

You look up; you climb, still, always upwards, don’t look back.

So you climb further, climb faster, so you dream

of where your frightened steps will lead you: someplace real.

One day, your father told you that you only get to be one person.

Your name is Minos, and you are the architect of your own neurosis.

That’s always when it happens, when you’ve nearly reached the top.

Crack.

Cadere: To fall!

to fall from grace, to fall to Earth.

To fall so fast, so far, you feel your fear sink quietly

back to where you thought you’d forgotten you existed,

to see your life flash in fragments before you: this is the labyrinth.

O Fearless, take flight!

Fragments:

To fall as a child in your mother’s backyard, knees scraped and yet still laughing,

your brother watching from the porch.

To fall into the river, screaming, little, your swim trunks the colour of the

bright yellow sun.

To hear your friend laughing, and know you love him.

To fall from grace.

How could you say this wasn’t real?

I have shown you the Garden, now do not blame me because you tried to control it.