XXVII. TO ARTEMIS (22 lines)

(ll. 1-20) I sing of Artemis, whose shafts are of gold, who
cheers on the hounds, the pure maiden, shooter of stags, who
delights in archery, own sister to Apollo with the golden sword.
Over the shadowy hills and windy peaks she draws her golden bow,
rejoicing in the chase, and sends out grievous shafts.  The tops
of the high mountains tremble and the tangled wood echoes
awesomely with the outcry of beasts: earthquakes and the sea also
where fishes shoal.  But the goddess with a bold heart turns
every way destroying the race of wild beasts: and when she is
satisfied and has cheered her heart, this huntress who delights
in arrows slackens her supple bow and goes to the great house of
her dear brother Phoebus Apollo, to the rich land of Delphi,
there to order the lovely dance of the Muses and Graces.  There
she hangs up her curved bow and her arrows, and heads and leads
the dances, gracefully arrayed, while all they utter their
heavenly voice, singing how neat-ankled Leto bare children
supreme among the immortals both in thought and in deed.

(ll. 21-22) Hail to you, children of Zeus and rich-haired Leto!
And now I will remember you and another song also.

Today, for the first time, I looked at my mother. Really looked at her. I've been watching her for years. I know her habits, the way her face slackens when she's mad. I watch the way she is in the world and I know who she is, what she feels like, how she smells; but until today, I couldn't have told you what she looks like. She is beautiful. Breathtaking. It's Christmas and the house is warm, glowing, smells like food. We had company and she was flitting about, kitchen to couch, apron wrapped around her fancy dress. No stockings or shoes. She was waving her arms, twiddling her fingers around her wineglass, rubbing her feet together, always in motion. Her face slid so easily into a smile, creases outlining her happiness. Strong features: a big nose, defined chin, high cheekbones, easily visible because of her short hair. My mother is not a small woman, nor is she big, but she stands tall with broad shoulders, mine now the same, and her presence is colossal. I could see the 20 some year old that my father fell madly in love with. Gorgeous. Strong. But at the same time, so soft. Every part of her nurtures. I sat in awe, stunned that I had not noticed that she was once so much more than Mom. Still is.

By day the skyscraper looms in the smoke and sun and
     has a soul.
Prairie and valley, streets of the city, pour people into
     it and they mingle among its twenty floors and are
     poured out again back to the streets, prairies and
     valleys.
It is the men and women, boys and girls so poured in and
     out all day that give the building a soul of dreams
     and thoughts and memories.
(Dumped in the sea or fixed in a desert, who would care
     for the building or speak its name or ask a policeman
     the way to it?)

Elevators slide on their cables and tubes catch letters and
     parcels and iron pipes carry gas and water in and
     sewage out.
Wires climb with secrets, carry light and carry words,
     and tell terrors and profits and loves--curses of men
     grappling plans of business and questions of women
     in plots of love.

Hour by hour the caissons reach down to the rock of the
     earth and hold the building to a turning planet.
Hour by hour the girders play as ribs and reach out and
     hold together the stone walls and floors.

Hour by hour the hand of the mason and the stuff of the
     mortar clinch the pieces and parts to the shape an
     architect voted.
Hour by hour the sun and the rain, the air and the rust,
     and the press of time running into centuries, play
     on the building inside and out and use it.

Men who sunk the pilings and mixed the mortar are laid
     in graves where the wind whistles a wild song
     without words
And so are men who strung the wires and fixed the pipes
     and tubes and those who saw it rise floor by floor.
Souls of them all are here, even the hod carrier begging
     at back doors hundreds of miles away and the brick-
     layer who went to state's prison for shooting another
     man while drunk.
(One man fell from a girder and broke his neck at the
     end of a straight plunge--he is here--his soul has
     gone into the stones of the building.)

On the office doors from tier to tier--hundreds of names
     and each name standing for a face written across
     with a dead child, a passionate lover, a driving
     ambition for a million dollar business or a lobster's
     ease of life.

Behind the signs on the doors they work and the walls
     tell nothing from room to room.
Ten-dollar-a-week stenographers take letters from
     corporation officers, lawyers, efficiency engineers,
     and tons of letters go bundled from the building to all
     ends of the earth.
Smiles and tears of each office girl go into the soul of
     the building just the same as the master-men who
     rule the building.

Hands of clocks turn to noon hours and each floor
     empties its men and women who go away and eat
     and come back to work.
Toward the end of the afternoon all work slackens and
     all jobs go slower as the people feel day closing on
     them.
One by one the floors are emptied... The uniformed
     elevator men are gone. Pails clang... Scrubbers
     work, talking in foreign tongues. Broom and water
     and mop clean from the floors human dust and spit,
     and machine grime of the day.
Spelled in electric fire on the roof are words telling
     miles of houses and people where to buy a thing for
     money. The sign speaks till midnight.

Darkness on the hallways. Voices echo. Silence
     holds... Watchmen walk slow from floor to floor
     and try the doors. Revolvers bulge from their hip
     pockets... Steel safes stand in corners. Money
     is stacked in them.
A young watchman leans at a window and sees the lights
     of barges butting their way across a harbor, nets of
     red and white lanterns in a railroad yard, and a span
     of glooms splashed with lines of white and blurs of
     crosses and clusters over the sleeping city.
By night the skyscraper looms in the smoke and the stars
     and has a soul.

500

Within my Garden, rides a Bird
Upon a single Wheel—
Whose spokes a dizzy Music make
As ’twere a travelling Mill—

He never stops, but slackens
Above the Ripest Rose—
Partakes without alighting
And praises as he goes,

Till every spice is tasted—
And then his Fairy Gig
Reels in remoter atmospheres—
And I rejoin my Dog,

And He and I, perplex us
If positive, ’twere we—
Or bore the Garden in the Brain
This Curiosity—

But He, the best Logician,
Refers my clumsy eye—
To just vibrating Blossoms!
An Exquisite Reply!

Betrayal of a nation
By its own generations
Pageantry that slackens
Sliding into morbidity
Obesity of the spirit
Swells of needless waste
In the name of wealth
Sacriledge
Oozing farce
Finger puppets
Only to be played
Imagined wars, sciences
A lavishness blithely unaware
Of its inner decay
Decadence
Sweet taste of poison
Thus falls Babylon
By her own hand

Sleepless, lost and wandering
Wondering what it all means
Beg the heavens for an answer
But silence is the only response from an overcast sky
The chain slackens and the cage drops
Cerebral bars block the paths of elated reflection
Contentment occasionally slips through the clefts
But is instantly devoured by sharks of agony
Grief, heartache, passion and sorrow
The artists toolbox
Blood, sweat and tears (fears)
Causation of our desire to die
Is what gives our work life

We're sitting on this bed kind of thing in a train. You're propped up on some pillows, your hair's all messy, your ****** hair all grown out, you can barely keep yourself awake. You keep trying to play with my hair and you just end up rubbing my back, your eyelids drooping and your posture relaxing. You hold me leaning against your propped up legs, and you finally fall asleep.
I'm facing a wall and I have some chalk, you've been talking in your sleep and I've been drawing what you've said. You start speaking in iambic pentameter and I laugh to myself. The train rocks and you wake up, only to ask me what time it is and fall back asleep. My watch is in a language I don't understand, so I shrug and go back to the wall with what are now paints and a brush. You trail off into mumbles and I begin to hum. I've finished the picture on the wall with your words and you smile, the sun dancing on your face as the train tears through the countryside.
We go through a tunnel, a tunnel with windows. I flinch and feel dizzy, the tunnel and the train spinning. You're awake and you reach up to touch my lip, you pull your hand away, your fingers covered in blood. The train lurches and I give in to the gravity, head hitting the wall and blood splatters ruining your picture.
You whisper something to yourself, and get up, all exhaustion gone. Someone opens the door and fires a crossbow at everyone in the room. He gets to me and I look at him, the crossbow is empty, and something tells me it always was. A man comes up behind the assassin and asks, "All clear? What about that one?" Referring to me. The man replies, "She's already gone." For the first time, I didn't know what he meant. As they close the door the second man puts a hand to his ear, "All clear on level X." The door closes behind him, and I turn back to you. You had your hand on my shoulder and I had mine on your shin, but as I turn your grip slackens and you reach up to wipe away some of the blood from my face. You flinch at the cut in your chest, a cut that wasn't there before. I sit up and look around the room. All the white jumpsuits around me are stained red, covering people who aren't breathing anymore.
Now we're wearing white jumpsuits and yours is slowly changing to scarlet, coming from the **** in your chest. I start to feel lightheaded from smelling all this blood. I look back at you and your eyelids begin to flutter, you force them open and look into mine. Your thumb strokes my cheek and you say, "Save them," with all the pain of endless suffering in your voice. You finally give in to exhaustion, and from your injuries I'm sure you're dead. But your chest rises and falls slowly and you still shift in my direction, seeking comfort like a cold child cuddles his mother in her bed at night. I try and wake you, you don't budge. I hear yelling and rushed steps down the hall helping my panic set in. I shove your shoulder, call out, I don't want to hurt you but I won't face whatever the hell this is alone. You simply won't wake up. The door slams open and before I can turn around I feel a sharp pain and as I look down I notice something shiny and red is protruding from my chest. The pain returns as the tool disappears, only to be replaced with blood slowly turning my jumpsuit red. A voice behind me scolds, "I told you X was clear." Running footsteps grow faint in but a moment. My own eyelids flutter and I fall into your embrace, you shift, adjusting the comfort of your position. I hear sirens approaching the train, from where I'll never know. I awake in my bed, surrounded by blankets and a sharp pain in my back. And I can't find you anywhere.

My days were dreary, monotonous;
The world painted in shades of black.
I was living a facade,
Pretending to be blithe
My fragile armour
Was cracking fast.
But in the
Darkness
Hope
Is found;
Pain slackens.
You are my light;
Just as the sun's rays,
Your smile shines through the night
Flooding me with intense heat.
I staggered through the grim twilight
And found you in the most absurd place.

Rain, I adore
Pour in measure
Thrills of the
Umbrella strolls
Without one
Down comes
Pulsating, a drop.

The first showers
Always dear
Give fever
Escalating mercury
In the thermometer
Kindles body fire
When fever chills
At the pores
Friendship scorches
Unabated unable
To subside.

All the guests gone
A teardrop knocks
At the window pane
On the bed of blisters
The half-conscious
In delirium blabbers
'Rain rain'.

Splits open, the sky
Trembles the Earth
The silver ornament
At the waist slackens
In an ecstatic
Electric confluence.

The chest-close hugging
Mercy of the sky
The wind which
Carried you afar
The sunshine colours
And pretty curves
Of the rainbow
Not with you now
But give me
The earthly odour
Of your coming
Give me the greenery
Of the fresh spring
On the paths, you
Created new
Give me those
Fallen flowers
Of the muddy track.

Forget the sky, the pride
Penetrate my soil, the soul
My fever will be with you
Which carries my breath
The warmth of my body
From that will sprout
Panikkoorkka, the herb.

I don't notice when my grip slackens.
The thoughts that held me have long since faded
into the hummmm that rattles through silence.

Untethered, I lose myself. Seemingly
broken into a pack of wild dogs
whose howls and moans echo distantly

Mingling with words uttered aloud
For no one's benefit: "Please, just stop it,"
tumbled down into particulate sound.
(As fine as sand.)

Those fragments that find their way back to me
snap capricious jaws, and left uncertain,
I flinch away from unfamiliar teeth.

The net is finer than the spider or silkworm's.
Curling, it catches and flares here and there,
grazing down the ribcage of this world
and occupying all spaces, tenderly.

It has come from the farthest places
where a star has passed into senescence
and no light remains.

In August the silver maples
flip and wave backsides of their leaves,
chiming and tinkling under its protection.

So much air and light
has looped through the beaks of birds
and pulled them down from flight.

Departure is what the speaker inhabits.
A self turning photograph
pulling away during the taking.
But slightly over-saturated,
full of the green turned gold.

The earth will become bald white again,
faultless and raked by the winds.
For now, the net slackens out
over the borders of woods
and resting in treetops, safe to be viewed.

A hawk drifting,
turns over the topography of the day's catch
in his eye.

Shadows close like open waters.
But the low and unending dilation of cricket song
of this month plays well beyond dusk.

Hear it extending into you
like delicate limbs
to enter the ear.

Light unloosens itself. Space slackens.
A figure of a shadow I have conjured before
anonymous eyes. Lapping up the waiflike bleakness
of their elliptical faces.

                               I must teach the trees to let go
of autumn, and relegate spryness to the hearth
of cold without merit, this slow, claiming mutiny
with its face-oval peering through windows multiplying
lovelessly, a crunch of a leaf, suchlike, flourishing
in peerless company. Before me, the sound of footfall
preparing to make sense, a rotunda of bell – that movement
of somebody done for, so ****** the scald welt of ******,
the belch of the world like a pore clearing its squalor.
Or the toppled verdigris of gull.

    Autumn’s greater extension, the abeyance, smilingly
a facsimile of crowds – its roads adorned with laburnum
singeing through the morning’s cauldron, a waft of bald terrain
inflamed, drawing with absence
      a crippled drip of rain back into the world’s dim address.

Finally I found the courage
I don't know how or where from
to return, to open up, to come clean
to reveal my deepest darkest secret
hoping I hadn't left it too late
hoping this wouldn't turn your love to hate

You dismiss your elf
hear what I say
none of it matters
you feel the same way
I'm your missing piece
I know that you're mine

I've known love many times before
but this, this is different
more intense, just, just more
I'm swept off my feet
you make me complete

Our love grows
gets more real every day
we text, we chat, we want to meet
and we'll find a way

You ask for intimate pics
of bits I'd prefer I never had
(and about which you express most unsapphic desires)
you promise to return the favour
just not right now
though I feel disappointment
at the time it doesn't
feel like violation

Do I need pictures anyway
when your description's so graphic
that I see every fold glisten
with the moisture that lubricates
your journey home
so we can connect again
and again we feel the thread
that connects us
draw ever tighter
we steal our moments riskily
we *** together on the phone

You give up some secrets
deep and dark and terrible
yet others less dangerous you withhold
your 'dodgy Irish' surname
and her name too
the 'other half'
namesake as it turns out
of my first celebrity crush
when I was nine
the Mills girl as was

Then for me, the small disaster
your text is seen
I become homeless suddenly
and worse than that
lose the love of my girls
though that will in time
return I hope

And I still have yours
so that's OK
we're sure that will last all time
and we get closer still
well at least until
Christmas, when I head to Wales
full of trepidation
to deliver the news
that will shake my family further

The journey's made easier by your promise
that you'll be there the very next time
(but you never will be
and it's so long before I go again
that for a time
I'll think you jinxed me
with that reneging)

Nothing changes overnight
or over Christmas
or over the next few months
while for me everything changes
except my love for you

It's still wonderful
when we're together
but it happens less and less
as the crumbs of your love
fall more thinly
the thread that connects us
slackens gradually, imperceptibly

The realisation grows
that your love is only borrowed
that your heart belongs to her
that return is overdue
and in time
I brace myself
ask the question
find it's true

You're happier these days, you say
more settled
I know that's been true for some time
understand you never really were mine
I'm hurt you didn't tell me before
but don't let that show too much

We agree to stay friends
I cry a lot
I cry buckets
I cry thunderstorms
I cry streams and rivers and seas

You still have my heart
but I never had yours
it was her's all along
and I think I understand why it is
that you love her
too much for honesty
but not enough
to set her free

Cynthia Pauline Jones, March 2013

We live in mist and cloud
searching for warmth and mirth.

The mist fades, the clouds falter.

We each stand on a peak.
I see her glimmering smile
it banishes doubt and worry.

Who knew a smile could
be
so mollifying
so
filling, yet distant?

I look below
to the treacherous
valley.
I shiver at thought
but
omens cannot purchase
my hope.
I march forward.

Across the chasm
of maybe so
and
perhaps not
I fight the tide of
blistering denial, of
mourning and loss
but as I near,
her smile loses its bearings
it slackens and crumbles
smeared in shadow
it dies slowly
so does
my
odyssey...

Without her sunlit smile
to light the way
through treacherous valley
and darkening day
I wait, in wonder
of my eager
stupidity,
and waste away
in ravenous dismay
for her smile does fade
in the nearing
when will I learn that I
can never get
close for comfort.

Beauty crowds me till I die.

Look there, across the street.
Do you see her? Do you see how they gaze at her?

My blood boils. My breath quickens.

One slice. One piece.
Her breath escapes. Her beauty gone.

Death claims me again this night.

Look there, next to the horror books.
Do you see her? Do you see how they gaze at her?

My blood boils. My breath quickens.

One slice. Two piece.
Her face pales. Her beauty gone.

Death claims me again this night.

Look there, across from that old ***.
Do you see her? Do you see how they gaze at her?

My blood boils. My breath quickens.

One Slice. Three piece.
Her body slackens. Her beauty gone.

Death claims me once and forever more this night.
Beauty no longer suffocating.

On the red eye,
eyes red,
heavy with sleep that doesn't come.
Consciousness fades out, fades in,
bobs up and down
though I crave submersion,
surrender,
a letting go in a sense.

My wish is simple.

That,
if only sleep will find me,
cradle me gently in its sweet ether,
as my jaw slackens and my head rolls onto my shoulder,
I will only dream of you.

I woke bitterly
I'm bruised, evidently
poison stings elegantly
when I think of your face

Nothing can replace
the feeling of the chase
the constriction of desire
the elation of loosening lace
a life of loneliness burning on
the pyre
but when I wake now
all this is as the murky floor
the bed of dreams and irks, a distant
past crammed and burried in the fogotten
Footfalls stir the watery gloom of the
swamp whose surface breaks
only when I sleep and
thrash.

In the distance
a glow, an inviting
innocent thumping so
warm and benign,
I know It's you.

I grasp your heart
a thing whose fist
I thought I knew.
Words as sharp
as fissures of guilt.
A voice as hard
as jails of stone.
I thought I knew
your steadfast
heart, but now
in feeling its
warmth and
sound, I doubt
my anger.

Of course,
I can't be talked down
I won't be convinced of forgiveness
my pride still hangs in rags
my heart still beats like abuse
my throat is still taut from every word I hung on
and, yes, I hung on, while you shook
and shook and shook
until I let go!

I stab your heart
the skies erupt with lightning
my face caught in a mixture
of pain
and delight
and fear
and remorse
a confusion I cannot identify
but will haunt me in every silence

In my twisted glee,
I expect your heart to bleed
to wither
to perish,
but the waters of life flow forth
and I feel
you weeping

My body slackens
I feel disgust wrack my nerves
"How could I?"
but you lay there,
hoping to embrace me
your love still drawing me close
is all I had ever wanted
I kneel, I fold, crying my own nonsense away
you wrap your arms around me.

How is it that only humans,
will love each other more
after going to war?

"It was just a fight..." you whisper in my ear,
"Only I can **** my love for you."

Truths you can't live with
Blame me it's so easy to do
Cheating,slanderous lies
It's always you you you.
Slowly I'm untangling your  hold
Starting to see behind ones mask
so I'm looking forward to the future
To be a beer without a cask.
It's going to wreck my emotions
Play havoc with all my thoughts
As the noose slackens around my neck
My smiles gets bigger of sorts.
I'm going to dance the boulevard
Run naked through the corn
Releasing me from your iron grip
Means I can slowly be reborn
You broke my heart through away the key
But now I've made new locks
Sitting on the quays of life
Waiting for a sweet ship to dock.

"While I gaze upon it
I feel a certain distance:
The moon light
Makes its way to dwellings
Everywhere, I feel."

      by Ki no Tsurayuki


My Reply

Bright Issues the Moon
dusts the landscape with pale ash
illumination
slackens our taut customs
we're brought closer to our hearts

[Bonus Material. Earlier looser version :

When brighter the Moon
unknots our taught habits
spends our ideas
freely in its pale light
we act closer to our hearts]

I’ve been waiting for the fire flash
Of killing light, see as it grazes the horizon
Then the wrench of sudden whiplash
As Earth breaks away from the sun

Each rotation slackens the pull to the ground
Like an astronaut without a tether, I am skyward bound

Spiralling clouds climb towards a darkening sky
I am slipping away from this celestial home, too late to cry

For we are on a speeding alternative path
See us dropping away, the last dying spark
And in this final gasp of this worlds end aftermath
A neon moon breaks away, in a bright, fading arc

Have you ever floated in neutral? It’s like you’re a boat, floating in the harbor, attached to the docks by a rope. As you bob and sway, the rope tightens and loosens. One night, the tide is high, and the rope tightens, by mid day, the tide has washed out and the rope tightens again. But, somewhere in between, some time in between, the rope slackens off, and the vessel feels free from the dock. Sometimes, I get stuck in neutral.