Manifold
MultiplicityAnd so begins her sad maddening dance,
The audience around her could already tell how it goes.
We come to this little out-of-the-way theater
Just to see you star as all the parts.
We sing the music in our heads all day at work and at play;
It's become trapped like a bottled insect's fury
Buzzing, needing release and outward retrieval.
She never recognizes the places she arrives at
But somehow always knows the way.
I am that beetle shining in the glass jar
But somehow I keep thinking of myself
(during moments locked up inside that prison)
As a naked birth-encrusted innocent,
So empty I could burst.
Just curled up here ripping my hair out
With worn-down claws of self-pity.
Knocking my head against the condensation
In the corner of some half-hearted sob.
And something outside of me jumps up and laughs at that.
I give a great sarcastic roar,
And hear the stillness respond with an audible cackle.
Somewhere I also run across the open mountain plateau,
Crying with joy at the biting wind and tearing rain,
Knowing I haven't got very long, so I'd better hurry.
But all this agonous ecstasy is cut into by a sequence of mental troubles,
The precision of logic, building blocks making a city wall;
The architect gets together with the banker
And they slaver out their wretched tabulated plan,
Passing oily documents beneath the tea-stained table.
And a nod and a wink... the march of conception ensues.
There is no flow to it, just a jerk-out fabrication.
So of course the naked half-formed fetal ball shows up next
To dissolve into the filthy carpet.
And the mad woman runs from herself shrieking,
It's terrible.
When all that is really necessary in this play is that she finds herself
Between the worn-out floorboards and the dance.
Which she can't do just yet.
Far, far away she enters his room and begs wildly in his direction,
Wishing for the impossible and ready to die trying.
He sits back in the audience grasping firmly a cigarette and coffee,
Turning in the soft folds of velvet rationality.
We cannot meet in the middle here on the floor
Our sad little bed I think we can make anywhere —
We don't even need to be there.
The lie makes him run away but he soon finds her
Lurking in another part of their house;
Maybe he can see her behind the manifold multiplicity
That is ever-changing-one within never-changing-dance.
She thinks she's unreachable behind the airtight traps
And snakey psychological maneuvers.
But she knows beyond the thinking that his hands
Melting and bleeding, have reached deep inside.
But he forgets his hands and his eyes now drift
Way far back into daily transactions, train connections,
And cement block contradictions
Look past her at the delusion and try to explain.
So his well-read articulate manner falls into place, fills up the empty space,
And he calls it as he can, locking her up safely.
The misty vapors miss the dark and drift off forgotten.
No opportunities are these, but unveilings of Self-Other disclosure agreements.
The timing is never right; the deal is never sound.
Moment, spirit disappearing into flux, can't be caught up and pinned down,
And so the story often goes...
I never find myself if I'm looking at me.
Nor ever does he.