Old Mother Midnight
Summer, 1977
Leave it on a rayed day in old mother midnight: her passionate pen in the august 11th coldness in another strange menthol year in a decade on hold with nonsense sometimes a good enough reason & the busted loose mufflerless sound of some kid in his hot car in the cold mother night so like the grave—it races and rambles thru here darling & dearest friends I soon must leave our voices becoming hollow in the telephones because I don't know how to be natural in the midst of this massive morning of night—I don't know how to cool it, make you less than what you are but it's all a blind story anyway & my antique attitude of 'why' and 'now' must be forgiven-understood for what it is in reflection in this stagnant stinking dump of self too tired & forlorn to move but glimmered in the eye of some chieftainess of beauty—Oh I've told you how before come close before but never sang the singing needs a truth like water in a canyon on mars which I don't have and can't fill with my strohs bohemian & only wish I could have once filled for you—you who mean so much I must back off or never live. Your handless hands never coming in the midnight scraping silvered fingernails across tense and angry skin—no re-made music of the cilia fibers no nervous system reapportionments no blown bubles of silvered spit from thin lipped miniature mouth in a room lit by post broadcast day television like a dreamed but real remembrance of a history we once had my fingers not lost in your hair on the pillow head twisted in subtonal moans of kyries and novenas my legs not finding new made self made strength in straining in fantastic ocean movements in the murder of our own centuries my lips not pursed in long understood dialects of breath & gasps I did not ever stand you & me gripped wholly in the other's eyes the well so deep & never dry—no, none of this, one true & lost darling, none of this & never never now—no way but histories—my dreams & novels lead a life we did not have. Never sang. Can't sing now. The seasons evil like the dog's cruel shouting in the fifties air my hands are trembling like you never tembled for me I'd cut them off but the angel won't let me.
From a reading in a spiral bound notebook from the second half of the year 1977. There are a number of pieces from this notebook I will publish on this blog. The summer of 1977 was a seminal period for me. I attempted to free myself from a long-standing and stupid obsession. It didn't work and there are elements in this failure dominant in me even today. I understand, in retrospect, that I should have cut myself off from this person years before this particular series of events. That I didn't is part of the specific downward spiral of my artistic life. But it doesn't matter at this point in my life. The story is entirely past. Only the evil burden of another incarnation could create any kind of coda to it. Hopefully death will relieve me of that particular lapse of judgement.
Leave it on a rayed day in old mother midnight: her passionate pen in the august 11th coldness in another strange menthol year in a decade on hold with nonsense sometimes a good enough reason & the busted loose mufflerless sound of some kid in his hot car in the cold mother night so like the grave—it races and rambles thru here darling & dearest friends I soon must leave our voices becoming hollow in the telephones because I don't know how to be natural in the midst of this massive morning of night—I don't know how to cool it, make you less than what you are but it's all a blind story anyway & my antique attitude of 'why' and 'now' must be forgiven-understood for what it is in reflection in this stagnant stinking dump of self too tired & forlorn to move but glimmered in the eye of some chieftainess of beauty—Oh I've told you how before come close before but never sang the singing needs a truth like water in a canyon on mars which I don't have and can't fill with my strohs bohemian & only wish I could have once filled for you—you who mean so much I must back off or never live. Your handless hands never coming in the midnight scraping silvered fingernails across tense and angry skin—no re-made music of the cilia fibers no nervous system reapportionments no blown bubles of silvered spit from thin lipped miniature mouth in a room lit by post broadcast day television like a dreamed but real remembrance of a history we once had my fingers not lost in your hair on the pillow head twisted in subtonal moans of kyries and novenas my legs not finding new made self made strength in straining in fantastic ocean movements in the murder of our own centuries my lips not pursed in long understood dialects of breath & gasps I did not ever stand you & me gripped wholly in the other's eyes the well so deep & never dry—no, none of this, one true & lost darling, none of this & never never now—no way but histories—my dreams & novels lead a life we did not have. Never sang. Can't sing now. The seasons evil like the dog's cruel shouting in the fifties air my hands are trembling like you never tembled for me I'd cut them off but the angel won't let me.
From a reading in a spiral bound notebook from the second half of the year 1977. There are a number of pieces from this notebook I will publish on this blog. The summer of 1977 was a seminal period for me. I attempted to free myself from a long-standing and stupid obsession. It didn't work and there are elements in this failure dominant in me even today. I understand, in retrospect, that I should have cut myself off from this person years before this particular series of events. That I didn't is part of the specific downward spiral of my artistic life. But it doesn't matter at this point in my life. The story is entirely past. Only the evil burden of another incarnation could create any kind of coda to it. Hopefully death will relieve me of that particular lapse of judgement.
Labels: Alison Gaughan, Scarritt
posted by As Bjorn at 4:27 PM
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