Maerchen

What are these, then,

that we should hear

so long the greybeard's

grey grows greyer, & the boy becomes

his men? These lessons,

oldman syntactic, that address us

by the spirit, if not myths, then

märchen? Diminutive,

tales of enormous instruction,

for all the psychology of them

the facts are facts. The shadow

is a moral problem, the raven

is black & crucified & the nails

fall out of his

story, his thirst

was the truth & is

no more. What can that,

just that, mean

to a curious swineherd

except he will marry

a sister of his, he's

the part she's after, & ever after

means

just that. Listen

& not hear, the story

tells itself & of itself & of a land

upon a time when

sublimation is transformation

& "graybeard & boy belong together."

& boy & girt, they, too, to

figure out the need

of the father in mother,

hear all that spontaneity,

perhaps joy, perhaps just

not, this time,

how to feel such anger

& be done. The boy will

always marry the girl

as she would him

if the old man says so

then so. Amen, the prayer

for partial wholeness

partly answered, but still

is riding hood confused

not about the teeth

themselves

but the effect

they could have

in future stories

relating wolves

to animus. & all of us

hope for her

just to get out, alive

after all of it, not listen

but learn what to do

in the face of her own

contradiction,

these stories are not therapies

but ways

to become a child without

becoming. & as they are

becoming to us, let us

hear.

There are three languages

we know of: wild dog,

bird, bullfrog. That order

comes in, & religion begins

where the wizard

or greybeard loses his son

to ancestry, loss of first

tongue

of the deer

tells him when to rain.

A year stands for time

spent listening, or not

talking back, what the wolves

might say could have been

important so the son

takes it back to the father

he learned exactly that,

useful language is

if you don't speak it.

Not song, but usefulness.

Not magic, but music.

A year wasted says

his eyes.

& wasted another

with some birds

who could talk

like birds, or more accurately

doves, pigeons, a coo

imitable, articulate,

involving organs

of speech & below that,

generation. To woo or lull

the masses, would need such

language, one on each

shoulder, to teach him when

to say yes

& not

say no.

He was learning

he wasn't smart, would be

Pope before his father

ever would who talked

like men, & thought

of the time he'd wasted

thinking

of the time wasted

by his son, in two full

years understood

dogs & birds, & gave him

his last chance.

Before expulsion.

If you don't come back

knowing something

there is to know or we

can talk about, son, don't

come back at all.

Didn't. at the end

of year three couldn't talk

to his father, the animals

had had no Word

for beginning, Religion was

unfounded, or magic was not

understood. No ground

zero for the man

to man, heart to heart,

no place to talk.

& be men, it was about,

the first language was thunder

the wizard spoke.

(after Cocteau)

Then there is that father's

gold, or was

upon a time,

before & after me, ship's

riches who never came in,

in time

to see me in this

mirror, my

concern: Lost way

in lost light, to take

narrative from him,

& be the beast. & her & her

sisters, too, to wonder

who they'd be

in this, if not

mine. & mine

is in the movement, not

the rose itself,

the snap

the story. (as all

good tales begin again,

this forest where

the father finds himself

having to get lost,

loses sight of the light

that lost him here,

where the story begins,

the moment of

remembrance, to have a

daughter, & no son

ask only for the rose.

(& the story takes up with

ONLY, as if the least request,

to understand

the petals.)

& so she does, I do,

remove it, count it

ONLY as beauty

would want it.

& I am this beast

who would take her

from that, conflict, poor &

lost old man, not lust

but memory. To accept the act

of remembering, beauty,

daughter. What was it like

to have it, something,

long lost & found

in the yield?

(So the trade is made,

I give myself up for him,

knowing of nothing

to lose, save the

understanding, grief.

& at seven come

to me & see my readiness, I am not,

what is ugly in this world

is still ugly to me, is that so hard

to understand?

& then the mirror, wherein

Elsewhere is

Memory, grief

at the grief

of my father

who would never know

me, away from that

mirror, in whom

I would took to see

the self, saw ONLY

Psyche's sisters

redeemed by the hideous,

hope, & looked again:

a glass shattered

by the intensity of

its reflection of

the possibilities for

beauty. & in a mirror

no longer

my sisters

had nothing to say.

But hands held the light,

on his face

was grief, a promise

not so much broken as

kept, the key

no longer in the key

but the magnificent

horse every girt

my age dreams

to ride, love for

that animal's

magnificent & the glove

the other ikon.

So beauty came to beauty

on a big white horse,

not as always, but as

a father wants it

for her, gentle

nightmare, where

the scream that wakes us

is joy.

THERE IS A CLARITY TO MYTH

that is got at

by its

self & without

understanding. The repetition

makes it so, the

hearing it &

the saying it

make it

moreso, clear.

In a conversation with myself

it was I

who was talking to me,

& with no insistence

on clarity, a certain myth

appeared or rather

came, as puzzle, & I

told me how

I didn't get it,

even yet,

& it was how I didn't get it

that I was told or

didn't get, more than

why not. & so why not

I asked, don't you get it,

with all your

lifelong understandings

of complexities, confusions,

creations of the will

against the world?

Word? I said, a question

mark. & so I said it is not always

DIAlectic, there is so much we

(& that I didn't understand)

don't understand. & so this myth,

I think, that

that centers around

the Cupid & the Psyche & the fact

that that was the myth.

I pulled it in as a

ghost, or gift, to me, I said,

"look at that & looked at it,"

those being

my exact words, these,

"there it is" &

"what don't you get?"

what don't I get I said

is a good question,

ambiguous, so I took that

as having

another or two

meaning, meanings.

So I took that

as at least HAVING

in the sense that we own our lives

MEANING, meaning that

we own our lives

by living

right thru them,

the way

the sun can live

thru anything

that's clear.

There is this myth, then,

of those lovers,

& it is not the light

that is not understood

or loved, but only

its presence

within the room

I said

turn out that light

I said

turn out that light

& perhaps didn't have to

so I didn't

understand.

for Amy

Snow white is

Rose red, for this

night, fire lit & smoke

pulled out by

wind, the bear

that would talk &

do no harm, hammers at

the winter's door,

not to scare but warm

him by the girls.

The one, her sister,

would feet the fur

& wonder

who would need a fire

to be between.

& it is the mother

tells these two

no father in the story,

wants this comfort,

bear by the fire. Her

winter long gone,

a year every year

rosetrees, daughters,

this a bear. Not a man, but

talks kindly & plays

with the girls.

& they play back,

rough as he wants them

to remember that.

when spring comes

to the story, & he leaves

because the earth is

soft again or wet

& the dwarfs can get his

treasure from him,

he must protect

what he does

Which is be

a King's son

& his brother,

will be enough

for them, the complexity

of ingratitude

too much. Three times

save the dwarf, envy

the tiny balls & cock

& cut them off, his own good

is in doing nothing

to them, gives them

nothing

they haven't earned

by kindness.

But the bear,

gentle bear

who speaks & has gold on

under his fur,

his killing to become

the act itself,

hear his manly voice

& go with him,

snows white & a

roses red.

Afraid to tell it:

tall tree & how it comes

to be, the mother she

could see a son

in snow, where no

one else's blood

could be so red

to mean

Child, she understood her body

broken by that prick,

the menstrual flew

away from her, she understands

herself as ground,

& takes the months

she needs

the tree

stands

offers the purple

unto, until the boy

feels her move, labor

is her death, so freude

dat se stürw. Ehr mann

buries her

beneath his mind, under

his need, for her, Woman, this other,

mother brings her daughter

with her, to him, & the story

is what happens

to her: her

rivalry with the poet

in the boy, the redness

of his real mother's suffering

is his face & the white

is the snow. De Böse,

bogey, Evil One arrives

at the mind of Step

mother & they deprive him

of his head

& do no harm. The appel

still in the hand

& the head held

(loosely) to the body

by the handkerchief

or at least the wound hid.

From her, hears nothing

from her brother

she wants

to, she does,

knocks his block off, the apple

& his skull roll away

together, the body topples,

there is no blood

but Marleenken

screams anyway.

Her small voice

a consecration, she hardly knows

her father

to eat that fast,

where is my boy

momma

as if I didn't know

what you put in this,

wat smeckt my dat Äten schöön,

my son, he says,

is mine, & leaves

the bones. Marleenken takes them up

again, pretends a

motherhood, she hears the

hööge Boom in de Oren,

as loud as her mother

hears de Böses laugh

& takes her brother's bones

to his mothers

to heal. The tree

engenders him, as bird,

& from the fire

to sing his self

& his story, two languages

to anyone who hears:

"My mother, who killed me

(was she the one

who heard me sing before

I was this

bird? & where is she,

that she became a tree

& what can I say

of such becoming?

That I became

my father (he) ate me

all up that I felt

wanted

to be this bird, my sister

Marlinchen

was the clever one

who gathered all the bones

in the family

of me, she tied them

in a silken handkerchief,

the texture alone

was hers, bone & silk,

silk covers bone

bone breaks scissors

cut silk, she had me by the

bones, laid them beneath

the juniper tree

& waited

to become. There was an

anger in my beauty,

my song

was so simple I made them pay to hear again:

Ky-whit, ky-whit,

I in my voice

am the possibility

from treachery

& love, the recipe

for me

is all you've heard

& a piece

is all you get,

if gold fits my father's neck

& red for Marlinchen,

& I'll keep my mother

quiet.

for Cindy

"Take these, or this:

three red drops, white of the

handkerchief, let them

be the story

of how

they fall into the river,

& trouble begins—

begins with

the trouble with

the story

the father's long ago death

has nothing to do with it,

long ago promise

the horse will talk

if you cut off his head, the trouble is

to get around

to being sent on such a journey

& wanting to."

But goes, when she

reaches that age

the mother will give her

blood from her own

finger, points

to the white of her

cunt, then out the door. Into that

world you wanted so much

of, its husbands

to keep on with their dying

& leave you not even

a prick for your finger,

take your drops of blood

out there & never listen

to them. & take her with you,

this maid, to teach you

who you are.

So armed with less

than advice, they go,

the fairer on Falada

who can speak, even sing

the syllables of his name,

Roland's Valentin, the drops

drip from the rend

in the heart. The horse

sees all

& waits to be dead

to say it: she

allowed her experience

to happen, the

teacher teaching her

to learn from such invasion,

when it happens for real

the time will have come.

To say who she is,

this princess, powerless

without the lost blood

or at least the notice

of the loss, must give

horse & voice to the maid

who made her drink of the river

with her hands,

not touch

the cup. & for this

she is to tend the geese.

(who also have nothing to do

with it but give her

something to do, a way

thru the portal

where she bribed the knacker

to hang the horse's head.)

who talks.

in her rhyme,

Orpheus hearing

the time ahead of him

when his skull will sing,

fa la da

lets her in on it,

disappointment in her

& out, Conrad

wants a snatch

of that golden hair

(matches the cup), do something

says the horse

against him. What

you will. Her will

is what she does,

no goose from that

goose boy, only a prince

to touch this stuff,

real gold, but who

can I tell it?

The good king

allows himself to hear it,

her details of who she has become

& who she is

to, the words

thru the hearth

& to his ear &

to his son, the good

never done by her mother's

blood,

but no bad. What

was heard from the horse's

mouth misunderstood

as not her own voice

& the promise is filld.

The autonomy comes

from no marriage to a prince

but what happens

to the maid.

Alone of all her

he was a father this

fathermas,

send him

away, her

sex ex-

posed to her

ex he the (true)

father saw closure

as divorcement, stars

around her as the

god dominate some

Psyche in her,

to open THAT

to the world:

a hero with

problem, or

No problem to evidence

itself against her lack

of what He lacked.

To open that

his desire, ma domina

contracted in pure

Capricorn air, stiff

goat prick stuck in there

forever until

we come to air

or her

center: magma inter-

rupts the mass,

her name Mary

Barleycorn, from Capri,

on the father's tongue

as he divides her

with spirit

from soul, a new

worold, wer eld, word

evolves as animals

asleep

wake,

a strange

& hairless

beast born

of no name, no way

to become anything

but what he is:

the mass

from the matter,

iced fire moving through

THIS SIGN &

conquering space.

As the world

is moved into

by her parts, always giving

birth, placenta flowing

from round virgin onto

flat earth moved around

by sun until

her son becomes

a center. She wanted

that, for him:

a problem, to stick out

from his aramaic toga

when he was old enough

to know his father. His father

was long

gone when he was born

to this, but left

a branch of the tree

of the soul of man,

astronomy, to three men

to be counted on

to gossip

about the way of the world

they were headed & followed

their own proboscis

to this narrative

of simplicity. An answer

to the previous

answer was to give

the gods

no sex among themselves,

simplify. This god

would have gender by virtue

of name & nothing

else. His mother

would still be

the earth but the magma

would cool & become

thicket where no man

could want to wander

who was man.

But man wanders,

the god himself

coldens, the animals

sleep or walk away,

missa est, event ex-

perienced, the mass is

said.

Snow now covered them,

what she saw that road

to take her time to her, thyme

grew by the way it must have been

summer then

or spring or early

fall to notice, she left her house

alone to know a

way

to take her time

on. Red said green were

the things around her

that wolf saw her wanting

to notice, summer

savory, so it must have

been, a long day's

dawdle, there, no

hurry.

(that membrane old

Biddy passed thru

one way, who wants

to get there?

She didn't, pretended

it was summer, & if birds

sing, wolves talk.

Urge. Wolves hurry toward

consummation

no consecration save the

getting of

There first. Red saw it

in his eyes, not that he was certain,

death, but desire

was first thrust

at the old. No

discrimination.

No easiness

to him as a figure, speech

bearing dilemma walking on

hinders & polite as can be.

(not what he was

but could be

his problem hurry

up & take your time, she

drew no confusions from this.)

Time was well spent

that summer picking

pretty things

to die on her way to

the Body of

the old lady, lost sense

of the sexual, smell,

quincunxes

of youth's constellate

memory, my daughter

how vague you are

or is it me? (Have

brought something to eat,

to wake or put back

to steep I wear

this old nightgown

because it smells like

me & I know where I am.

Is that you I thought

would take her time

& ripen in the

is it summer

sun? It's me, said Wolf,

& if I can talk, I am

who you think.

It was really winter

& no one knew it

was a story about

seasons

& Red

finding her way

thru them, from mother

to something else, a change

in timbre from inside

as she knocked, winter

pansies in the other hand,

she heard only

vagueness, smelled

wolf & sausages

in some later

water, boiled for revenge,

& entered, came in,

to it, him, & knew where

she'd come.

Acknowledgements

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