digigoth: a spellbook for the new sorcerer (new work 7)
This book is winging through the ethers in search of an illustrator and a publisher. If you are interested, please drop me a line.
Read previous pieces here
How to read the pieces from this book:
1. Click on the embedded link to the [music] in the title of the poem.
2. Listen on repeat while reading.
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Fig. 24a: The Dangling Yarn. Playlist: [(Playlist: Glitch Mob, A Dream Within a Dream)]
tell the day we’re nowhere bound
by way of what was lost between
cross-threaded time like some machine
that eats its end to grow its tale;
with one last day to chase that sound
to gaze behind the weary night
to feel my wings like phantom sight
to fly to die to flash to sail;
tell the night we’re winding down
on one last shore a wreck to find;
tell the wind we’re lost behind
the warp the woof the weft the veil
and breathed it in and screamed it out
and burst apart and still you cling
and so you rise and now you sky
and sea and light
and turn and flap
and flick and fly
and cry and bite
and gasp
and twist and thrash with claws and beak
what prize is this, what drowning gift
I’ve hooked upon our sounding line
and rescued from the nick of death
or has it baited us to call us back
to arid dreams themselves a sea
this bird as birdlike as our sailless hulk
was once upon a breeze a ship
a young-old man with blazing hair
cradles the snarl of rope and flesh
fixes in his fog-smoke eye
the two dark answers blinking back
a nearly drowned and naked bird
with ragged holes where wings should be?
what sorry work was made of thee
what crude and grim interpretation
of subtler songs as shift and slip
just as gruff voice and grizzled beard
mismatch his freckled young man’s face
itself at odds with the scar that winds
a white territory-border that divides
a blinded eye from one that sees
and stares and glares
and squints and swears
and hears the poet’s
murdering gears! authoress!
he barks
t’was you who nearly killed the bird
that made the breeze to blow
who stripped our sails and stopped the wind
who chewed off wings and swallowed word
and snuffed the growing of the world
his words carry, bell-like bending
round the mast
and aether-dragging
downward through the knotholed decks
a cry dopplering to groan and all that’s massy
with his dropping pitch
yields up its phase
gone see-through while
the things of sound and air
exchange their ghostly lightness
for a standing wave
which slaps and rolls into the lungs and hearts
of all the dreamers within reach
and rattles guts and tuning forks their bones
and draws us up up to answer
by scruff, or snout, or belly
whether live or dead
dreamt or dreamer
both and neither
including me
dragged full-bodied
from the cubbyhole of never never mind
to feel the hot-nosed press against my legs
hooves and toes callus-padded claws
trampling my feet
awash in the crowded waft
of badger mean
and mousy meek and
mutty cringe and
mantis strange and all of equal brute and wit
until the woodwork sags beneath
a brindled crew of dark and light
all staring up into my face
all half-starved for
naught but an age of
phantom cat’s paws batting at
our stays while we drift unmoored
asleep
the deep end of dream
that’s where I am
she thinks
she thinks
wait wait
yes the point of view has changed
the lines no longer yours
to weave and splice .
no no I’ve seen the spiders
spinning meaning as they go
I just report
I just
read from left to right or up to down
cast spells borrow others’ works
steal the sun and claim to have invented light?
no no
follow the dream
follow the birds that showed me the gate
birds. birds? there were two
yes
one was blind and made of song
a black flame
the other
she followed the lure
no girl no
you
called thought and memory from their fog
then let them fly apart
we would not be speaking now
if you hadn’t stolen through the wall
told time a new dream
unanchored death from his wreck
stripped thought of flight
and put the flame of memory out
hang no albatross around my neck!
how can I kill immortal birds?
these are merely words and
I tell waking time by
looking where she points her hands
like any other mortal who keeps watch
but in dream
we are merely open sails
that catch and ride and so reveal
her movement
which neither starts nor ends
but is with storm with cloud
with force
of salve or speed in breeze or gale
in draft or squall lingers or appears
punishes by tempest or devastates
with endless calm
or mutters dry leaves in not-quite-words
then shrieks in the eaves
and you eavesdrop
thief
stories insist
as does sleep hell, I’m dreaming now!
your voice is just another tale demanding
listen! translate!
botched. garbled
only partly heard through shifting walls!
those muffled gifts
in astral language
so crystalline in the grasp of dream
common into mud in the grip of word
and what makes it back into the wake
must still survive a silent roar
electric thoughts connected
fingertip to fingertip mind to mind
voices pass
through tables walls my bones
a pseudonoise that circumscribes
a maelstrom of sameness
one shrieking pitch that equalizes
decapitation hunger sex lost babies
I cannot find my bearings
in a wind that blows all pitches at once
from all directions
my sail is ink
where I invent nothing and sail nowhere
when anyone can tap
a glowing word on a screen
and transport to another world
awake without a dream
dream is nothing
symbols in a book
at worst
a simple cipher for the little darknesses we fear
a puppet stage on which we practice dying
or at best
fly escape forget become unreal
so tell me
how can I steal anything of value
from a lie
girl, girl when will you learn
there is no practice only life
and dream is not escape or lie
have you ever tried to stay awake?
until delirium removes the sense
and dream invades it is true death is real
you will die
the only thing immortal is the tale
and tale is wind
you are the sail the bird
and word is all the wind is
cast the nets!
he shouts
stumbling aft toward the hatch
to the watching crew he says
find her!
and presses flat against the helm
as nose and tooth dive madly in a ball of fur
through scupperholes into the bilge
or labor sloth-by-sloth into the yards
while one dog, overwhelmed
goes dervishing around the deck
the ship goes quiet as all the rest
answer and depart to crawl and trawl
and home and scent and sense and search
all but a hawk that lights upon the starboard rail
and a soft gray toad emerging from the binnacle
will you also help?
he asks
but the hawk has already plunged
into the greening waves
and the toad climbs skyward into secret crevices
that vein the air in silver fire
cradling the weightless bird
he locks his damaged eye on mine
you, poet…
come below
