An unrhymed Pindaric

“Either be wholly slaves or wholly free.”
-- John Dryden

I. Strophe**

Free verse, you are my original verse, my birth voice,
music of my inheritance, placenta full
of breath and heartbeats, my riotous word maps
shred of the rules of the patriarchy, the white
old world. Self reliance is All American, I say;
I say what I mean like daggers on blood stains, scientific
particularity, embellished with the subversive, diabolical
enjambment, a soothsayer and a liar, a sister assumed
in the interruption, a sister resolved
in the final line.

II. Antistrophe

But you can spin out in an open lot.
Who’s to say a sister can’t mark out her own
shape—skinny, fat, fit to be *******?
Who’s to say she can’t be obscure, obtuse, coquettish
with a song and dance or with raw, pickled reason?
There’s more to ****** than some two-faced
enjambs. There’s the rhetorics of ******* and assuming
you invented the knife. Can we just cut the game
of its gangrene?  Smelly history, politics,
and idolatry?

III. The Stand

I take back the music; I will sing badly in my parlor,
set a line with a waltz or a moon dance.
I refuse to relinquish my words to the tyranny of English.
I refuse to relinquish my words to the tyranny of me.
I take back all shapes (if they flatter me) and mathematics.
I take back the agenda nailed to the wall,
refusing to relinquish my self to the tired old generals
of either side. I take back the third waves of the entire sea
and shitbox and I take back the almighty decision
of which witch is which.

Home on a Wednesday composing a ballad,
Lonely for snark and simile,
Caught in a funk, not up to this challenge,
Wish I was 18 watching MTV.

Videos would come in a plethora of color,
Medicating me in the dark,
Big hair travelogues, a jungle of ruffles,
Frivolous pyrotechnic sparks.

A zombie, a nurse, a dance hall girl,
A star if you are what you watch,
A fishnet and lace princess in training
With no time for verbal hopscotch.

When he lays down
sushi on the pallet
it exhales a sigh

Paddle into rice
damp, caking sea
warm in the throat

Glistening with meditation
flesh of reds and white
dead beauty on wood

Using fingers
I am a bear and a wolf
stained with salt and soy

Every puzzle takes a first step
figurin’ and measurin’—
cutting the extemporaneous—
getting the lay of the land
on the crime scene, on the body—
detailing and matching lineups—
following every lead
and kicking it in
with bluffing intimidation—
drawing probabilities—
untangling the material
to fit, unstitching the profile
to back out mistakes—
the sweat of thought.
Putting it together
and tearing it apart.
The tyranny and the value
of the word on the street—
crimes of fashion
designs on ******—
what is revealed
if you’re not careful—
you can mesh anything together.
Self-composure
as your story stands
or falls.
Time always running out
before the job is done
and after the job is done—
the bitter faces around the gallows
as the execution hangs.

Childhood is a small town in Labyrinth County
with brothers and sisters and cousins, big-kid games
beyond the porch. Grandfolks sending you off into the fray.
Heather with her wavy hair, bellbottoms and confident wiles,
held the key to the perfect girl, unlocking boys
she could take and own. Me, little cousin
with doe eyes for such starlings who could perch
in the middle of cross streets, in the palm of the world.
With the eyes of heirs, she was witness to the secret
map of her life, the way in, the way out, the whole ranch.
Soon she was riding with the older kids
in cars I could not catch. Too fast and far ahead,
they would not be followed by me anymore.

In a few years I stepped off the porch myself
onto unfamiliar streets, out of this town and the next,
cobbled together my own grid of streets, stood at the outskirts
to find the plains are an open field without a road or sign.
And because the earth is round, all streets circle back
to this town decades later, past cemeteries
and emptied-out gas stations. Why are they thin
and pale and I am fat with the dew of the apple?
What do I know?

I have become tired of my speculating
on how we all arrived: Heather is wilted and dry
from years in a window. I try to tell the story
about Heather in the palm of it, all the roads
that followed Heather. Her schemes, her dreams,
the labyrinth of grass,
the labyrinth of cockamamie,
the labyrinth of unfortunate results.
And here nobody had the treasure.
Nobody found the buried key.
Nobody found the directions behind the directions.
If they had waited, looked me in the face and asked me,
could I have told them what I have found?

No, you can’t follow anymore around these streets,
the future is a myth and times a **** shame everywhere.

Do the dead who love us know?

Profile of the Romans, statuesque, we gave her the Italian
Bianca, but from that failed into Bianca Bee, Binky Bee,
****** Pitty for that war injury when she was stationed
in neglect out in someone else’s yard. She keeps her nails
long, is soft as a humus dip, Mediterranean classical,
once a conqueror now gregarious, glamorous
like a female lion or demur when cornered
like movie stars before the war. Plump and voluptuous
like a tank who wants to snuggle and snore
wearing you like a wrap. She made us sure
with her love, inexhaustible
like a Western religion,
unabashed.

As suitors go, I’m sturdy and fun, fresh faced, considerate and neat.
I’m socially literate and wear all the best shoes on my feet.

I’m looking for love and a little adventure,
a fun-loving confidante who wont over-censure.

But my dates with you have been obscenely pristine:
dancing and golfing and luncheons on Eggs Florentine,

argued law with your Father while drinking dark coffee,
and swapped coleslaw recipes with your maid in the lobby.

You’re smart and you're keen and your sleuthing is swell.
You keep only good company, sending delinquents to jail.

You’re modestly perfect in all that you do.
But I like a girl with more Hullabaloo.

And I regret to be the one who must give you this news,
but George, Bess and I are all dumping you.