Sestina: Miranda at Dawn

Miranda walks a ragged, splintered edge,
A path through the dim lit morning shadows.
With broken heel and half a bent cigarette
She hobbles home beneath the amber sky.
The men don't notice as she makes her way,
Ten years revealed by limping in her walk.

She takes her time, no hurry now to walk
As night recedes to morning's golden edge.
She knows, eyes closed, that she could find her way,
Familiar with each doorstep and the shadows,
The road her only friend but for the sky
Which watches as she lights another cigarette

And pulls so slowly, savoring that cigarette
As if its smoke fuels that which lets her walk,
As if its fire brings her near the sky,
And watches as its burning, glowing edge
Recedes and leaves another inch in shadows,
Bit by bit, as she knows is its way.

If only I could find another way,
She whispers as she drops her second cigarette.
My life no longer would consist of shadows,
This endless street I cannot help but walk,
Beyond whose looming, terrifying edge
Seems nothing lies but void of empty sky.

If once she could open to the sky
And lose herself, forget to make her way,
Tear her clothes and leap across the edge,
Forget the past and drop her cold, stale cigarette,
Then she, perhaps, no longer forced to walk
Could step for once and all from out the shadows.

But time hides passion, and her face in shadows
Looks to the earth, not once toward the sky
As every step continues on her walk.
She never deviates her chosen way
And slowly lights a third beguiling cigarette,
Balanced straight and sure upon the edge.

She calls it fate, this silent way of shadows.
The cigarette and fearsome, widening sky
Edge close and grin with each step of her walk.

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Element

If the land holds me and the air surrounds, invisible,
then surely the distinctions are correct
and the land is my mother, the air, my father.

If water replenishes, sustains,
and fire desiccates, destroys,
then they have been right all along who say
the water is the female, the fire, the male.

Supported by woman
      -- fueled by man.

Hold me, Mother.
It has been so long since I felt your arms.
Let your fingers fold up around my feet.
Your arms shield me from the sun.
Your hair falls on me at night
to blanket me from the wind.

He is harsh,
barren,
unforgiving.

His willful arrogance,
his brisk abuse, his force blinds me,
rushing my face, wearing me away,
tearing the tears from my eyes.

I am dry without you, Mother.
Hollow and sere, ready to burn.

Take me back someday.
Absorb me back into that mystic womb
—the absence and eternal awakening of consciousness—

until then, give me rest and shelter from
his omniscient pounding,
his everopened critical eye.

Supported by woman
      -- fueled by man

Supported by woman
      -- fueled by man.

The sea sweeps carrying me,
rising and falling like regenerating breath.

Feed me:
      swell my cells
      with nourishing
      moisture.

Cleanse me:
      my hands and mind
      are filthy.  I cannot
      see through these
      clouded lids.

Open my veins and bleed me out.
I will be empty then and free to be filled
with your pure crystal liquid,
your chaste hope,
your naïveté.

What burns in me cannot be quaffed by false innocence.

Desire, passion, these are words
which describe that which burns.

The fire rests in the gut,
cannot be doused by coquettish vapidity,
cannot be soothed by the rushing of your waves.

And when you are gone, no trace of you but foam remains.

Supported by woman
      -- fueled by man

Supported by woman
      -- fueled by man

Supported by woman
      -- fueled by man.

How is it then,
that all of my friends hate their fathers
and cling to their mothers as all foundation –
the origin of all things?

Mustn't support invariably be stable?
Must fuel not combust?

But I have seen the earth crack and separate
in volatile ruptures, in great groans.

I have watched the sea spit her feminine fury –
cold, dark, wet, yin rage, thrashing and unsympathetic.

I have felt still air, stale and stifling, and seen fire
surrounded by oxygen dull to embers and ash.

Where is your compassion, world?
Where is your strength?

I only want something to hold,
some reliable foundation, some dependable drive.

Something.  Give me something.

I see only your clenched teeth at night,
and dull, vacant eyes glowing dimly in the darkness
followed soon by your turned back, the hair on your head
swirling as you step away, disengaged.

My feet rest on nothing,
my lungs close in the vacuum,
my cells dry to dust,
my movement halts to perfect stillness.

Supported by woman
      -- fueled by man

Supported by woman
      -- fueled by man

Supported by woman
      -- fueled by man

Supported by woman
      -- fueled by man.
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Form


When Cain was twenty-one, he became a man.

He received an injection to deepen the voice and slim the hips,
an operation to remove mammalian woman-flesh,
and signed two documents, changing one letter, a name, and a pronoun.

He is a braver man than I.

I, who will curse my lot and my body till I have forgotten my form,
could never commit to such transformation,

though I know this was all a perfect mistake.
A joke orchestrated by my father and aligned planets –
      these arms,
      these hands,
      these breasts,
they are perfectly grotesque.

But I cannot change this body from woman to man
anymore than I may change this mind from human to woman,
and somewhere inside, we are smirking,
smilesmirking because we all know.

My beauty is my deformity,
on display in this sidewalk sideshow.
The normals gawk with froglike maws.

We will change them all with our minds and our bodies,
with our lives laid out like this
      on the street,
      on the page.
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Granada


Don't look the gypsies in the eye,
and never take their flowers.

They will steal the rest of your days
with a rattle of their gold jewelry
and a thousand years of practice.

If you feel the urge to follow them, stop.

They know you are not one of them –
and not only by your chantilly skin
and jewel-like eye.

As you travel they hear it,
the scrape of that uprooted anchor
dragging behind, searching for port.

In their midst they smell a sailor
waiting for a coastline which grows
and does not shrink away
with the rising of the sun.

They will throw you out, gnaw your bones,
steal your gold cross, and leave you
with the stray cats to make your home
in the abandoned palace of a Moorish king

where empty latticed halls and dried fountains
keep court, the patterned tile guiding you
to arid gardens and a harem of whistling wind
and dead, crooked trees.

So walk.  Keep your head straight,
and step on past the cathedral.
Ignore the words that weave around you,
rhythmic knots of intoxicating smoke.

Don't look them in the eye,
and never take their flowers.
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Sailor Song


Jackie the sailor sold his watch and his tailor-
made suit for the voyage back home.
He said his farewells to friend Ahab, the whaler
and left for the ocean alone,

saying each man, be he of sea or of land
must greet passion virtuously.
While Ahab's dark lust will drive him to dust,
I say, give me back to the sea.

Give me back, give me back
to the sea, sea, sea.
Oh Lust, give me back to the sea.

Jack sailed as the moon rose like a balloon
and the sky melted into the blackness.
The ocean around was the color of death,
so he watched it for hours as practice,

saying Death, she will come, in time, for each son
and daughter and even for me,
but my last request as I'm clutched to her breast
will be, give me back to the sea.

To the sea, to the sea,
      to the sea, sea, sea.
Oh Death, give me back to the sea.

He sailed for twenty-two nights, a fever
tearing the seams of his patience.
He kept a girl's photograph next to his bed
with a pink, perfumed letter adjacent.

Remembering summertime, drinking, and dawn
in the arms of pale Anna Leigh,
he sees her dark eyes in his dream, but he rises
and cries, give me back to the sea.

Give me back to the sea,
      to the sea, sea, sea.
Oh Love, give me back to the sea.

Now he holds rosary, watching the west
and thinking with pain of the past.
His course is unknown, and land has not grown,
the sea still bisecting the mast.

He tosses his beads and his compass into
the ocean and drops to his knees,
and he weeps and he prays to the cold, hungry waves
to please, give him back to the sea.

To the sea, give me back
      to the sea, sea, sea.
Oh God, give me back to the sea.

But the winds are his guides and soon he collides
with the docks of his father's hometown,
and is greeted with showers of kisses and gold
from family and friends who surround.

Jack moves into a stone built house
and marries the pale Anna Leigh,
but beside her at night he's awake and upright,
singing, please, give me back to the sea.

To the sea, to the sea,
      to the sea, sea, sea.
Oh Life, give me back
      to the sea, sea, sea.
Oh me, give me back to the sea.