Commandment

Take, then, woman and be

mouth and heart and all the world between.

Be word and song and all silence between

and stand in the line of twilight across dawn

Bend like wind and stretch like the river

keep the faith like a kitchen lamp

keep the kitchen like a castle

And above all woman be

mouth and heart

and all the world between.

Hope

Chain me up

tie me down

Take all the ropes and words and

whatever else you have.

Make a wall, a window with a lock

a door with a bolt

a castle with a tower.

Keep me shut up, shut down,

shut in away from all that out there

the out there where I could wander

where I could be lost.

Lock me up

Chain me down.

I don't want to leave you.

When the hero falls

Who sent you

who taught you the words

to say to me?

You have the face of a stranger

with blue eyes the stranger

for being behind such a tongue.

You have the face of a stranger

but the voice of a shadow

the one behind me

always whispering the half lies

after all the man who tells a half lie

has sold the bastard child of truth

sold him into darkness with weeping and gnashing of teeth

and who are you to speak with such a voice

to use such weeping against me?

Who sent you with this message

to freeze the very heart of me?

Do not give me that with your knife tone

Do not hand me the handle of that dagger.

After all it is only said that

I cannot shoot the messenger.

Tristram

To take a footstool for a kingdom

To trade honor for a kiss

I have turned my body to shield

and my sword to pillow

there is no tenderness like the blade.

To drink the blessed poison

To toast most meddling Fate

I have taken wine with another

after swallowing- with myself.

Greater than my self, my higher I,

and not myself at all-bound to another's crown

To taste joy in liquid and despair in dregs

To drink to the bottom of desire

She is all red and white

The crimson flame and the other's bride.

To be both nephew and lover.

To be dishonoured and delighted.

To be Isolt's- and no one's.

Isolt

This then is to love:

to eat the wild greens and not know hunger,

to drink the mountain stream and not want wine.

This then is to love:

to spend the day in sun and not know thirst,

to spend the night awake and not know weariness.

This then is to love:

to speak the whole day and not waste a word,

to stay silent for hours and need no song.

This then is to love:

to sit alone by the willow tree and be always two,

to stand at the river gate together and be just one.

This then is to love:

you there and I here and not a gap between.

Mark

To stand in ice- and not know cold

To wait at noon- and not know heat

To hear the harper- and not know song

to see the cathedral- and not know faith

To be in day- and not know night

To be in night- and not know sleep

To be alive- and not know death

Is to be in love- and not know love.

Kent.

You have a thing for heroes

Achilles and Hercules,

flashy swords and light feet.

You're all about short speeches

quick quips and battle cries

For Narnia, or Rome.

You like the mystery

of the mask and cape

so Captain America.

You're into tragedy

the great sacrifice, the bait

the battle of Thermopylae.

So what about the

milk-skinned, mild-mannered man

the alter ego without the alter

(but also not the ego)

Because I'm dying here

with nothing quick to say,

no game to play

and no mask to save the day...

just me.

I have a thing for heroines.

Sam's sons.

The foxes are full of fear

dragging red fire behind them

And the fields parched receive them

The grass waving their long arms

Crying "mercy! mercy!

on us have mercy."

but there is only heat and fear

and what does a fox know of grace?

He knows fire

and fear

and fleeing.

O how the fields are burning.

The fire runs like fear through the grain

and the fox flees on.

Call it a coda

You roll up in your stretched out accent

want to take me riding in your syllabic chariot

driving on your round vowels

into your stiff diction landscape

(did you forget darling?)

You ring the bell into a cathedral call

intone invitation with swing and hook

singing a weather of sunshine and breeze

(dearest I hate to bring it up...)

Moving with your skip rope beat

all twitches and tenderness,

double beats of the heart

rhythm taking up flesh for a while

and you want to take me dancing

(sweet, my dear, don't you know?

I'm tone dead, all deaf, can't move

I've got no where to go

I've gotten over you. )

Queen

You've got your hair slicked back
into a smoothed up beehive
with a black silk dress
sticky as honey along your legs
with shoes all gold and glow
upon your winged feet
and when you sing you hum
and i feel the buzz between your lips
like a sting between my skin and bones
You've got your hair woven back
and my fingers get trapped in the wax
I cannot pierce you sharp and sweet
cannot feel your honey swell
to hear me sing me back to you
I am just a drone

Sailor saved

coming out of the water

and the sand feels like knives

on these fresh new feet

do I dare to walk again

to claim the grass as my realm

the road as my right?

how terrifying the world

with the clouds stripped away

how broad and bright it lays

across my dazzled eye

Is it true that I once ran

here and farther than the light stretches?

All I've done lately is drift

in the half cocoon of water's grip

unsure of if it's sinking

or swimming when your feet lose their grip.

Still here I am

washed up on this shore again

So tell me land, will you bear my weight?

All I ask is that you not betray me

and send me lost again, lost at sea.

lost in translation

I have written of the secret

I have written of the shadow

in this sacred cuneiform,

these holy hieroglyphics

and it seems arcane to demand

these troubled brows and whiskers

to learn such things as what a nun

may mean to me, or not.

Shall I strip the word of vowels

the image of it's story?

Should I send with ravished beams

a trembling masted ship

from shore to shore throughout the storm

and give it nothing but a casual kiss?

You sit waiting, all ablaze

to know what

what I mean, what I say

what? Do I mean what I say?

and I laugh and tell you of once a girl

in a story, you haven't read it?

Well then this is not for you,

it cannot be.

Off with you and your hungry eyes

I write the holy verse

use the old world's words

to spin my hurt, my grief,

oh help me help my unbelief.

I use this sacred cunieform

to tell the world how I was born

Now would you read it back to me?

Deidre

Oh Deidre of the night black hair

for what are your lips rose red?

well might the blood rise

in your porcelain cheeks

for this is the voice of the hills

calling out to you

O Deidre where are the flowers we gave you?

leave your lilies of the field...

they stood and sung and were our dearest bloom.

Deidre why did you draw them to their doom?

How slender your feet

so rarely did they touch the ground.

Fian carried you like the summer breeze

and now what have you done with he

he and his brothers three?

Deidre do not look behind thee

he is deep beneath the hazel tree.

O summer bloom, our dearest darling,

where is he now in this fateful hour?
You cut him down with a smile
drew him to his fate with your face
and now there's nothing left but to tuck
our warm arms around and take him for our own.

What scandal? You would follow him here?
Let him be, let him sleep.
A curse upon you Deidre.

midnight madness

let me take you as rope

old grass or linen

long hay knotted over and over again

till it looks something like wood

til it looks like something

I would want to keep

Let me try that, to turn my eyes

across the shape of you

with a squint or a monocle

anything to manacle

this creeping sensation that

you don't have the sense to

come in out of the rain

too simple to swallow

so lets add some levels

lets add some evils

let me take you as rope

it's hard to hang yourself on hope.