Song
In the cave of orphans
I sing to the walls
The taste in my mouth
Is like winter rain
If you know, you know
So go on—
Accuse me
Of what I’ve become
I’m busy…
**
I was a small child when I first glimpsed the madness in my family though I’d no name for it. My mother, enraged by fallen spoons, my father silent for days, then dancing across the living room singing snippets of vaudeville.
**
I took to running off. I was tiny in those days. I hid inside a neighbor’s gutted upright piano—the piano in a barn, the mice drawing dark pictures.
**
Haaviko: keep yourself warm when the pools are freezing…
**
My poor mother, abused as a child, addicted to pain killers by the time I was five. Pregnant with my sister and in withdrawal she threw a hairbrush just missing my head because I asked for a glass of water. The solution was to send me to live with my maternal grandmother who occupied a massive Victorian house with the ghost of her dead husband. Think of me as Little Boy Heidi.
**
Early in my life when I saw that falling notes are the optimistic ones.
**
Haaviko: and yet we must have a word with happiness/build a house to catch the sun’s light…
**
An invisible bell is lifting and ringing. That’s the magic of living in the metropolis. Those bells: audible mirages…
**
Now now. No blank spaces sallow cheer…
It may not be much but there’s never an end to play. Even as we fall, sailing back to the stars, there’s a Gobelin weave…
**
If I want to tell you how much I love you I must first—what? Oh shut up. I’m climbing from the river to tell you…
**
Song
I lie down under the apple trees
Because I’m also living up there
Where blossoms are designing
The fruit to come—
They won’t let you say this
In school; it’s no good
In the office—
Meanwhile,
In the apple roots…
**
He was central to he-ness which meant hiding from him…
He knew he was the product of alchemy
Didn’t much like it
Never could find the right wizards
He stood under the starry sky
Him was coming
**
Meanwhile in the apple roots
Digging with the mind
The ur-worm has a secret
I’m certain
Planet of the Blind 