theysaid [little___green]

Love is too indulgent and death is too sad.

It’s time for a new mystery.



Rabbits! Blood!

Animals dabbed on the cave wall!



We can rely on the painted rabbit to teach us about the real rabbit.



And yet—

the real rabbit…



*



The moon shines on the gravel road.



Rabbit on the road, rabbit in the sagebrush: more than one rabbit?



Moon, never the same light from night to night: more than one moon?



More than one moon-experience?



Which is the correct one?



Moon, rabbit: You don’t seem to change each other but, then again…



In Japan they tell a story of the rabbit whose job it is to clean the moon. His reason for doing so is obscure.



There exists a netsuke carving of a moon that, upside-down, becomes a rabbit that, upside-down, becomes a moon…



The guardians understand even more than this.

theysaid [little___green]

In the fine print of her face
Her eyes are two loopholes.
No, let me start again.
Her eyes are flies in milk,
Her eyes are baby Draculas.

To hell with her eyes.
Let me tell you about her mouth.
Her mouth's the red cottage
Where the wolf ate Grandma.

Ah, forget about her mouth,
Let me talk about her breasts.
I get a peek at them now and then
And even that's more than enough
To make me lose my head,
So I better tell you about her legs.

When she crosses them on the sofa
It's like the jailer unwrapping a parcel
And in that parcel is a Christmas cake
And in that cake a sweet little file
That gasps her name as it files my chains.

theysaid [redcliches]

Leaving most of the world unturned this early morning,
       I found whispered volumes in my lungs and in my ears.

What I fear most: madness, non-existence.

A hissing magnitude comes and un-houses me, only in the hours 
                     when I am not who I am at all.

For what seems like fifteen minutes I stare at the word “nests.”
          It has too many S’s. It’s S heavy. It’s not a place for a bird.

          All the things I’ve gathered seem so unlikely now, these shoes
          and this packet of seeds with no soil to live in, no drops of good sky.

My mother’s psychic says, everyone essentially wants
the same thing as everyone else, a sense of belonging, a coming home.

I wanted to be a hummingbird. 
    It made sense to long for rapid wings and the ability to hover always—

                      to be Huitzilopochtli taming my snakes.

Sometimes though, the thought exhausts me and 
                  I want to be a slow horse, a tennis shoe.
 

2.
Two years ago I listened to the rain on the radiator
                                           sizzle and ping into obscurity.
 
And I sat up in the no-account streetlight light and said, 
 
                     No one has done anything to me.
 
And the drops kept coming like offerings in the obedient now.
 
                     That’s true. You have done all this to yourself.

(  ...  )

theysaid [ameliorate23]

On the white throat of the useless passion
That scorched my soul with its burning breath,
I clutched my fingers in murderous fashion,
And gathered them close in a grip of death;
For why should I fan, or feed with fuel,
A love that showed me but blank despair?
So my hold was firm, and my grasp was cruel --
I meant to strangle it then and there!

I thought it was dead. But with no warning,
It rose from its grave last night, and came
And stood by my bed till the early morning,
And over and over it spoke your name.
Its throat was red where my hands had held it,
It burned my brow with its scorching breath;
And I said, the moment my eyes beheld it,
A love like this can know no death.

For just one kiss that your lips have given
In the lost and beautiful past to me
I would gladly barter my hopes of Heaven
And all the bliss of Eternity.
For never a joy are the angels keeping
To lay at my feet in Paradise,
Like that of into your strong arms creeping,
And looking into your love-lit eyes.

I know, in the way that sins are reckoned,
This thought is a sin of the deepest dye;
But I know, too, if an angel beckoned,
Standing close by the Throne on High,
And you, adown by the gates infernal,
Should open your loving arms and smile,
I would turn my back on things supernal,
To lie on your breast a little while.

To know for an hour you were mine completely --
Mine in body and soul, my own --
I would bear unending tortures sweetly,
With not a murmur and not a moan.
A lighter sin or a lesser error
Might change through hope or fear divine;
But there is no fear, and hell has no terror,
To change or alter a love like mine.