Corpse Music |
by Andrei Molotiu |
|
THE FIFTHS SCHERZO FOR A ROAD MOVIE (for two voices, his in roman characters, hers in italics) It's a matter, mostly, of mountains-- vermillion at dusk and boulder-pocked, as if unshaven, cleaving the sky's last-stand blueness, melting their haloes together like some child's swirled lollipop-- as you stand, adjusting your sunglasses, on the doorsill of the Lincoln-logged tourism booth. Don't take along your Stradivarius; don't, with your socks off, run down the pebbly slope to the air pump, where little is lost to the niggling urge for exactness-- tongue tense, stuck out one's mouth's corner, the pencil lead breaking on the page. No; it's a matter mostly of mountains, the invisible plumb line disappearing into the vertical heavens, paralleled by the tape whose end we're holding against the roadway's hot asphalt. For everything must have a measure. Don't let them catch you alive; or, at least, dangle the unmarked millions into the trout brook, in this waterproof case. Last night, you beat me at billiards; this morning, you washed your jeans in the sink, then puttered about the motel room in your black jogging bra. Could we drive off soon? I'll explain everything: the Santa Anas, my favorite among winds, will get me a six-pack of Coke, and the stale air over Topeka will pay for my fill-up. El Niño, winding its way past Venice Beach, will quiver to the sounds of my singing; the swaying black spruces in Boulder will buy me the $6.99 special. So won't you come along? We won't be starving, and there's plenty of Kleenexes to go around. Oh, all right: It all started... (but who's to know where's the beginning?) It all started over filet-mignons. It all started in the second violin's seventy-seventh street flat. It all started when I met you in that pool hall in Atlanta, Gee Ay. It all started with the pick-axe, with the frozen lemonade, with the time I forgot my umbrella at the St. Regis; it all started when you sighted your strike down your cue. It all started with the pigeons fluttering down Columbus. It all started in Key West; it all started over lobsters in Augusta. It all started. It all started. Can I have a sip of your bloody? It's nice here by the pool. The bartender barely understands English, but is quick to figure out the exchange rate and pay us back in local currency. Last night we saw the ruins illumined by rainbow-colored spotlights; this morning you went for a 5 a.m. swim. Days are slow here: we survive on grilled lamb and stuffed eggplants, on parsley and bubblegum ice cream. * It's a matter, rather, of silence: every night, the chained TV's blue waves of porn and Fox inflect the sepia wall of curtains, the polyester bedspreads, the paneling's molded wood; each cut modulates the muted buzz, and counterpoints the chimney crackles of my hair strands on the foam pillow, the hiss of your breath rollercoasting round my ear's grooves, your lips' warm progress toward my open crotch. Each morning I watch your sleeping silhouette pant through your nightmares, and drag my crimson fingernails across your ridged ribcage. We breakfast, in the alabaster light, on pancakes and mock maple syrup, at the marbled-concrete and plate-glass all-night diner down the state highway. * It's a matter, today, of sycamores. It's a matter of stressing each open, italianate vowel (A! E! I! O!) like a fire chief testing his engines. It's a matter--God, don't you look radiant in that dress! The sunset's violet streaks, twined with gold, tint the haze smothering the golf club (Lift the bouquet higher!), your candy- painted gaze, the wedding party sporting all peach and assorted pastels. The flashbulbs anoint us with an otherworldly glaze as we stand before the ivory railing, rosebushes and yellow gardenias above the fifteenth green. In the photo album, we'll seem pasted in. Look: I didn't choose to handle the money. I didn't choose to have to tail you that evening when you left the squad room. I didn't choose the velour suit or the furry dice, our raggedy excuses for a conversation. Last night, after your AA meeting, you wandered all the way to Palisades Park; this morning I met you, comatose with sleep, deep in the bowels of Penn Station. Not to worry: there's a job lined up for Thursday; then we'll make ourselves scarce. And why, now as you yawn and lean your unwashed hair on the vinyl tabletop at Roy Rogers' (fried chicken, and a cruller from Krispy Kreme), has time stopped, or rather each second's grown disconnected from the others, on its own in its beginner apartment (five-fifty a month, in a “mixed” part of town) bare but for a phone jack, a mattress, and chinese-food cartons on the floor? Why not? Like the first movement of the Sunrise: at the subconsul's, mothballed ladies sank in their disparate chaises as, with a nod, your sensible pumps tapping out the quarter notes, you'd send your bow chasing the cello's zigzag; in between phrases, discreetly, you'd close your eyes and breathe in, deeply. By 3 a.m. you'd flipped those pumps off; by 3 a.m. I'd eased your black skirt down your thighs; that too, perhaps, is how it all began. And in the meantime? In the meantime there's always Burger King, and McDonald's. There's always the psychics; there's always the tango; there's always the hope of crossing the border. Otherwise, nothing changes: last night, supposedly, the aurora borealis shimmered outside our windshield (we were sleeping); this morning I watched you, ten feet away, crouch on the toes of your leather-strapped sandals, hike up your cotton dress, and pee among the sunburnt corn stalks. * Just now it's a matter of white noise. Every night, your fingers' three-four beat on the steering wheel's torn leatherette mingles with a clanking loose hubcap's staccato, the ground bass of still-lit shopsigns, the AM only radio's impatient voices fading out in unruly syncopation: until the city's done, and the road's grey band, flickering beneath us, severs the dark hills' headless shoulders. Each morning I shiver in my stained silk blouse, stretch, clap to warm my palms, push in the lighter, raise to my lips the coffee cup's rim, by now chewed to a pulp; the pale, thin dawn slides across the truck stops where we stop for cigarettes and Snowballs, for tampons and for three-dollar showers. * Or else it's a matter of syntax-- a matter of grammar, precarious like the cold import of your gestures, precarious, as are the marina's aluminum pontoons. Allow me some time to dawdle at the races; allow me to finish your Long Island iced tea (it's your third one); allow me to gawk at the straw-hatted crowd, the waved programs, the scarfs snaking in the breeze. Last night you sat on the edge of the swim-deck and dangled your feet through the seaweeds; this morning, hung over, you wrapped yourself in the sheets, and refused any breakfast. Thank God we've made it so far. I couldn't take any more brambles, my freezing Doc Martens or the needle-strewn dirt beneath the surplus blanket: hungry, dreaming of veal in mushroom velouté or Entenmann's, my fingers cupping, inside your undershirt, your breast-- the only warm, or lukewarm, thing for miles around. The only one, that is, until you spotted past the hillocks the casino, its one-armed bandits blinking and chattering and sinking their metal toes in the pearl-speckled carpeting. Which evening ended with Manhattans in the Rudolph Valentino suite, all satin canopies, the lit steam cloud as you stepped out the bathroom door (“Ta-da!”) into the humming bedroom, 4 a.m. Back to civilization. 4 a.m. Would you do that again sometime? Would you stop playing with the umbrella atop your daiquiri, its toothpick shaft all coated with sea foam? Would you put on a lei and join the hula girls, or else, at least stop wiggling your sand-caked toes? Last night, bare-backed and evening-gowned, you spilled your highball all over my tuxedo; this morning, unsuspecting, we wandered the aisles of the bazaar. Now new fruits from the market cover the table's unstained pine; now, from the veranda, across the cactus valley, we watch the marbled sunset straddle the volcano, and exchange lovers' niceties. What can I say, but breathe a sigh of temporary satisfaction? I do mean temporary. This is, of course, only a recess. It is, of course, only a matter of time before the Crown Victorias screech to a halt before our driveway; before overweight men in soiled beige raincoats propel themselves onto the gravel, 9-millimeter Glocks in hand, before the cabin's French windows are blown in a shower of bullets. By then, of course, we'll be long gone. That is the plan, at least. TIEPOLO IN ONEONTA after the “Scherzi” I'm calling from the road. Bats dangle from the roofbeams' upturned crags. Half-man, half-goat, he's hiding in the trellises. He's left his tags all over your Suburban. Swathed in the hum of power lines, magicians in untidy turbans pore over your chrysanthemums. Owls watch lest you might wake. Bones burn atop the barbecue's half-sphere. Fog crawls along the garden rake; the light is queer-- it thrusts and pulsates in the air, then dips toward the half-drained pool and settles in the weeds. A gaping tear runs up the tool- shed's northern wall. Out on the tousled lawn zig-zagged chaise-longues teeter to fall. Squirrels play dead. Long-shadowed fauns trample the neighbors' tennis court, their rackets, damp, thudding against the gourds they use for balls. The kitchen lamp picks out their tops. Lethargic nymphs with nipple rings, tan lines and jellied flip-flops ignore their noontime flings and, jaded, yawn. Inebriated, Punch lies snoring in the tulip beds until a conch's asthmatic call blurts out. Well-fed bacchantes scurry offstage. Headlights draw near. An engine cuts. Canaries rustle in their cage. The hour’s come: nothing to fear. THE AFTERNOON OF A FAUN ECLOGUE After Stéphane Mallarmé THE FAUN: I would perpetuate those nymphs. So clear, Their light carnation flutters on the sheer Air dazed in leafy sleeps. Loved I a dream? Amassed off former night, my doubt's redeemed Across each sprig discrete which, once the grass Remains, now proves that quite alone, alas! I'd conquered the ideal fault of roses-- Reflect.. or if those women's startled pose is But figured in your fabled senses' wish! Faun, the illusion's flowing from the fish- Cold blue, like bawling springs, eyes of the chaster: Yet, full of sighs, the other, can you taste her Like warm day's breeze throughout your fur? No; rather, Unmoved, this tired swooning lately smothers With heat the once-fresh morning grown too ripe; No waters hum but poured forth from my pipe Onto chord-sprinkled bushes; sole the wind, So quick to wind its way beyond the twinned Oat reeds, then strew their sound in arid rain, Becomes, on the unmarred horizon's plane, My inspiration's artful breath, as seen Returning to the heavens and serene. Oh you, Sicilian morass's calm shores That, vain and jealous of the sun, I tore Apart, mute under daffodils, RETELL "That hereabouts the hollow reeds I felled To tame with art; when, on the glaucous gold Of distant greens that into founts unfold Their vine, a beastly paleness stirred aground: That once my prelude-sired flutes bore sound This cloud of swans, no! cloud of naiads fled Or dove.." Stilled in the ochre hour's dead All burns, and veils what art helped rush away The hymen hoped by him who'd sought the A: Then to the first day's fervor I'll awake, Standing alone in an archaic lake Of light, and lily-like for lack of guile. Beside that trifle sounded by their smile, The kiss, soft warrant of their prideful flight, My breast, virgin of proof, attests a bite, Mysterious scion of some noble tooth; Enough! such riddle to confide its truth The double reeds chose, played beneath the azure; Which, stealing for their own the cheek's displeasure, Dream how, in drawn-out solos, the intact And scattered beauty round us we'd distract, Confusing it for our too-trustful song; And pipe so purely love would weave along, Distill from common reveries of thighs Or spines, ideal, traced with lidded eyes, An idle, monotone, and vibrant line. Go, instrument of flights, syrinx unkind, Try to rebloom by ponds we met along; While, of my murmur proud, I'll lecture long On goddesses; idolatrous, I'll feign Unlacing girdles in their shadows' wane; Thus, when I'd sucked the grape's bright clearness out, To banish, through my feint, regretful pouts, I'd raise the bare bunch to the summer sun And blow on its translucent skins, then, drunk And laughing, gaze through them till evening fell. Nymphs, let's, with sundry MEMORIES, reswell. "My eyes, piercing the growth, spied every fringe Off deathless napes drown in the surge its singe With cries of rage aimed at the forest's skies; The floods of tresses dematerialize, Oh diamond glow! into the sparks and shudders; I chase; when, by my feet, I chance on (huddled In, langorous, the hurt of being twain) Sleepers enlaced in sole their arms' domain; Not disentwining them, I steal them, bound Into this bed, whereon wild shadows frown, Of roses, parching in the sun their scents, Where might our battle be like noontide spent." I love you, virgins' wrath, oh scared delight Of bare my sacred freight trying to slide Far from my fired lips that, solemn goal! Sipped flesh's secret fright, up from the soles Of the uncaring to the timid's breast, By innocence forsaken, yet caressed In seething tears or else less heartless spells. "My crime is, glad of vanquishing those fell False fears, to have apart, in kissing, wrangled The tussled tuft the gods kept so well tangled; For, barely had I hid a burning grin Beneath one's happy folds (reveling in How I held on, one-fingered, so the rush Her sister lit would make her candor blush, Onto the young, whose cheeks would not be hued:) That from my arms, by dim near-deaths subdued, My prey, ever ungrateful, struggle free And, careless of my drunken moanings, flee." So what! to bliss by others I'll be borne, Their strands of hair tied to my forehead's horns; You know, my lust, that, red and ripeness-cursed, Each pomegranate hums with bees and bursts; Just so our blood, by its enthraller warmed, Still gushes for desire's ageless swarm. Now as the forest's dyed in gold and ash Among the snuffed-out bushes swells a bash: Etna! on you, traveled by Venus, laying Her artless heels across your spewed-out clay, when Sad slumber roars or else the flame grows low. I have the queen! Sure punishment.. But no, The soul, word-barren, and this heavy frame Give in belatedly to noon’s hushed claim: No more; forget blaspheming, I must sleep, Lying athirst down on the sand and reap The dark, gape-mouthed, from wine's efficient star! Couple, farewell; I'll join the shade you are. |
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