Beheaded, Again

establishing an image
of the skull who speaks truth
that disembodied head
who might tell me what might be mine
the fantastic and the secret
the ways to fortune
or health or sexual conquest

1. the slestak (slee stack) talk
to the illuminated
skulls of their ancestors
who are thought to know more
of the workings of reality
than the current population

2. the knights templar, tortured by the king of france
and the pope, in the name of the inquisition, claimed
their instructions came from disembodied heads
in metal caskets in secret rooms at their monasteries

admittedly they also talked about their anuses,
such is the nature of torture
but still the magic of the maltese falcon
begins to seep through these words

3. there was a mexican horror movie
featuring the severed head of a 16th
century magician, part of cortez group
who stole the golden mayan face
a rancher's son dug him up and the head
spoke to him saying
I will make you happy
but you must be mine

4. and in an ash tree in my dream
the head sat upon the limb
and spoke in aphorisms
and she called to me from the celts
and told me I knew a woman
loved a woman who had the power

and under her pillow the blood appeared
never an explanation
never a narrative voice
but I didn't care
I chose the magic
because the supernatural implies
hope

5. so the talking skull in knoepfle's poem
is the father and the son but it is also
the ghost of my self
and cannot walk away
it only creates specious solutions

the priestess married her disappearance
I do not sleep well
I do not trust my solutions
I am an anagram of the nation this way

we have become disembodied
we have lost our genitals and our assholes
we have no breath nor blood nor bile
nor anything that connects us to the earth
our thoughts flicker on the cave wall

A return trip, prompted by the coming hollywood flic based on the Sid and Marty Kroft show, Land of the Lost, which was a favorite of mine in the 70s/80s, whenever it was on. I loved the insect peoples reliance on the skulls of their ancestors. These skulls glowed and talked to them. Later on I read about the Knights Templars confessions in Holy Blood Holy Grail, the source book for the DaVinci Code.

And John Knoepfle had a disembodied heads riff that ran right through his poetry. I once thought I'd write a monograph on the subject, but that got away from me, and now all that is a mild memory. The specific poem referred to is entitled "An Affair of Culture". I see in the latest Illinois Times that Knoepf has yet another book coming out. Well, he's what 85? Still tossing the lines off. I'm sure there is plenty worthwhile there, including lots of stuff he stole from me and from other students.

I note that I always thought the rock band, the Talking Heads were really kind of overrated. David Byrne was like so many professors I knew, happy with his own intellectual coolness, whether it added up to anything or not. Still, Fear of Music was a great album. This is a re-post with numerous changes of a poem I put in the blog three years ago. Beginning to repeat myself and getting a little murky. Just call me Marge N. O'Error.

mis-carriage

we talk of what might be real
how brave we are
we can remember, foretell
ourselves, our other selves,
the selves from before
we are children climbing trees
planted in the corpse of that old man's ghost
we are playing on tamsen
donner's broadcloth skirts
on washington street
it's 1979

the sweet rage & the bitter choir
why don't we know each other?
just one story, told over and over
broken, the foetus in the wind

you have carried off
what I imagined as real you
have informed on me
to the authorities the firing
squad is being organized
everything was a disturbing
memory in my mind there
is an unfinished house
falling apart the decorator
called it an abortion
but it was really more
of a miscarriage

the limb broke
under our weight
the kiss interrupted
savage love

becoming white dwarf

through the mirror
past the reflected self
broken fragments of a life
in a painting silver nitrate
flickering images spun
from the screen now
the plastic flowers into
brown and black gardens

through the glass
casting off the burden
winnowing the information
on the highway of a single
life time chunks of being
rescued from the landfill
deep beneath the A horizon
seeing beyond the single
player deep into the vast
population of stars & planets
organisms and ideas

and on that canvas on the floor
using glue sticks and scissors
the shards of mirror the burnt
celluloid the fragments of a
lifetime's correspondence
dance and decide
what's real and what's not
who they were who I am
what is the song we have sung

the bear's mind becomes white dwarf
ursa minor
not quite pointing to the next
revelation

Recently someone said to me words to the effect that they are tired of my pieces concerning my lovelife. Fair enough. It does question the point of this work in a specific fashion. While not entirely about the romantic forays of this life, most of these pieces arise from what the relationship in question (whichever one) seems to tell me about myself. Perhaps that is the point of it all. I do believe my work offers value, but perhaps only to myself. In any case this piece arises from the images I associate with my journey through my paper. Confronting the self in the mirror, glimpsing other people's lives, running the movies of memory again until they burn on the projector, and finally, searching the web and the work for clues to the ultimate story that we all live: our life. Is it worth it? I have to do it, so for myself it is worth it. There are myriads of stars and other worlds' and only the Lady truly knows how many other consciousnesses share this universe with our species. Probably many. So, I am another grain of sand on the great wonderful beach of being. This does not upset me. We do what we can in this lifetime. Hopefully it is about learning the truth of something or someone. I still seek truth, for what it is worth.