7. The Pattern of Ω

You don't see for looking. Your eyes are black saucers that have never known the day. Your handsome tail is all wild stripes. You jump from dresser to bed ten times ten. You clap your cymbals in your little harlequin suit. You become this in moonlight, der nächtig todeskranker Mond. Moonlight does not become you. You are observed, caught in diorama behind green glass passageway - your natural habitat. How many more until there are none of us?

Here is a prayer. I am a lovely woman with a lovely voice. I like tulips, jams and jellies, mornings to myself. My hands will form the minor chords without prior thought. Music has become like walking - like stepping out into the English hills, one two and three. There is silver in the air and thank God, I have been trained to extract it. I have been trained to recognize the colour of sound. I love the colours of the sounds in the hills. I love them as I love myself but that's only because I am not fully here. I love him as I love Schumann as I love a boiled egg for breakfast. Anything else? Oh yes, I like fabrics of a medium density and long skirts that brush my ankles. Amen

First you sit at the piano and then you look and frown. There are tulips on the piano It is May. The tulips remind you of Paula Modersohn Becker who reminds you of the little boats that they sail in ponds in the garden of the Louvre. There are blackberry stains on the page; these turn out to tone rows. One by one, you travel your fingers across as instructed by the blackberry stains. The composer had toast with jam that morning but it tasted like the moonsick night. I think of sailing paper boats, sending wishes across the pond to a waiting recipient or an invitation to breakfast.

Der Wein, der Man mit Augen trinkt. Revolutions are made in moonlight, in hotels. I have followed the men, graceless in my Pierrot suit, across cities and states while speaking many half learned languages. I have burned my babies in the fire repeatedly but that was only for entertainment purposes. The more feral I became, the bigger the applause. I have marched with guns across a dusty stage singing ta ra ta ra. And yet, nothing is like the terror of this:

The dance was just beginning; or, the dance had just begun, some people singing, others dancing, a man with what looked like a violin but was an accordion, a woman with what looked like an accordion but was a violin. The children, who were dressed for church, began to sob. Otto thought it a scene from his own childhood. Otto kept making mistakes. The sheets were clammy, they’d not been changed since the last guest or guests had checked out. Who cares though? It’s a dull night, there’s no weather – it’s not hot, not cold, I’ve a ½ bottle in a carrier bag. Someone isn’t standing in the shadows, the shadows are standing in them. There’s a dead bee on the bedside table except it’s a bedside lamp except it gives off a buzzing noise which reminds me of a dead bee when it wasn’t dead. I get terrors in pulses, something like having a glove stuffed in my mouth. It’s sexual arousal, I presuppose. I hate her like I hate myself says the television. OK, I get that. I doubt she thinks any differently.

I can’t spell your name however many times you say it. There’s a new clarity, there are 78000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 new stars in the bedside lake. I push a paper boat out surface on it upon. It comes back with a warrant for the man with close cropped hair’s arrest. He’s wearing an old army coat, a trench coat, he hasn’t got a wooden leg or two wooden legs, he’s not an amputee. They’ll catch him. He’s the man with cropped hair of my dreams. I’m wearing a silk blouse & high-heeled boots. The camera shuts off, I can stop being an appearance. People think I’m joking: duh – I’m not. I demand The Revolution. Now. & blood. Lots of it. On pavements. In the gutters. In lustrous flowers, exploding from balconies. Across railway lines, splashing railway platforms. I want heads on spikes, I want torsos hanging from lampposts.

I wanted to kiss the mouth, but I kissed the forehead. I sat in dark for hours, they didn’t seem like minutes or seconds. The lamp buzzes, the television isn’t there, the lamp buzzes though it’s off, the television is off though it’s on. The bed is near me, but I’ve lost the art of movement. I can sing, but only to the dancers. & they love the violin & accordion music. It’s like Bartók or the Velvet Underground’s Pale Blue Eyes. It’s like Nono’s A floresta é jovem e cheja de vida. It’s nothing like Dichterliebe, though it is Dichterliebe. And so on

and part two was no different. It faced North by North West in to the wind that never ceases

and so on. From above the pine trees made the pattern of Ω

when the tears came they came like sisters come to comfort

the men retired for billiards when the child was born.

Look out of the window now across this rude farmyard towards the barn
remember the sensation of straw
the heat of the sun and the dust dance between. I think you said then that darkness was an eye defect
that morning would be eternal in Venice. I used to believe the reviews. I learnt by rote the scrapbook
I adored the polar bear trench coat

When the train finally arrived, we had changed our minds.
It was pointless. we might as well stay another week.
The moon was in the wrong part of the sky to make reckless journeys

for the sake of a diamond
and one not yet discovered.

City of Cranes & Fish
I have learned to document you in shorthand
your every move is now mapped
I have all you whispers here as you meet
in doorways empty bars
between the notes of a long unplayed music that when

you closed your eyes in the street and frowned
said reminded you of mother