Ten Stories
February 8th, 1878
South of Trout Creek, west of Cedar Lake
On a winding mountain trail of the North Pacific Union Rail
The snow arrived on time, the circus train was running late
Rip spot’s past and all the knuckles worn,
Firebox bursting to the running boards
A pounding in his chest, crushing like a cider press
The hogger rode the throttle ‘round the bender like a flank-strapped horse
[ELEPHANT (addressing the frightened animal car):]
"Let’s return now to the dust as the dust we are;
tonight, our bridal fate, the hour’s come to consummate!"
And drove her massive body like a truck into the iron bars
Limestone thrown from out the hopper’s back
Ash Cat tossed against the diamond stack
from cradle to caboose, the frozen bolts broke loose,
sent that cage spinning like a dreidel off the icy tracks
Run on, Rabbit, run!
Before the East sky wakes the sun!
Sails set to the dreadful cold,
Until your anchor-heart takes hold
Run on, Fox & Bear,
From this dismal dream’s despair!
Cast thoughts to in the open ocean of air
Until your thread catch somewhere
[ANIMALS:] "Mother, please come along!"
[ELEPHANT (from inside her cage):]
"My tusks are dull, my eyes, half-blind,
too old to run, too big to hide,
and have neither friend nor enemy,
nor that phantom, ‘self’-identity
nor concern for what ‘they’ll’ do to ‘me’
now, my children, run free!"
But Tiger, why sit still,
As the officers climb the hill?
What stars cast down their spears,
cooled your fire with their tears?
[TIGER:] "Gone that siren’s sound,
it’s a silence now pours down
Gone, my next of kin,
and all once without now lives within"
[FOX & RABBIT:] "Topiary Tiger, once burned bright
save your tales of gnostic sight
and take heed on this (most) auspicious night!
Topiary Tiger, once burned bright"
mewithoutYou - February, 1878
Rabbit fled, best guess, toward home
Fox & Bear toward Yellowstone
Walrus, north to the border towns
Peacock swayed like a reed on the fence a while
(with a stalwart sense of style!)
as the policemen’s nets came down
Word of the crash had spread fast and spread far
From Clark’s Fork to Blackfoot Reservoir
more grist for the malady mill
Shepherd the Southwest wind,
"railspikes ripped like the seam of a wineskin"
Shepherd the Northwest rain,
"Brass Hat slept at the helm of that woeful train…
Ain’t it an awful shame!
And don’t it just break your heart to hear of so much pain?"
Casey Jones walked slow to the prison cell
His face held hard as a scallop shell
[CONDUCTOR:] "Well, I wish I wished you well,
but your last friend on Earth now calls
from the silent side of the cemetery walls
your great cause to the moths and the rust!"
[ELEPHANT (Fanning her ears with a calm in her eyes):]
"It’s the laws of cause and effect that you criticize
But sir, criticize them you must"
Three miles more ‘til Flagstaff
Follow behind signs toward Badger Pass
Wound like clocks around fretboards
Carved out hands in our basswood body guitars -
borrowed guitars (borrowed hands!)
I’m clearly not as handsome or caring as what you seem to want,
but I’d gladly walk you home,
‘cause those streets can be dangerous
Shepherd the Southwest wind,
"railspikes ripped like the seam of a wineskin"
Shepherd the Northwest rain,
"frog switch slipped and that reckless beast is to blame
Ain’t it an awful shame!
And don’t it just break your heart to hear of so much pain?"
mewithoutYou - Grist for the Malady Mill
We met by chance by the row river sign
Our soft fire danced as our tea leaves dried
She hatched our plans in the atmospheric tides
Said, "Let's give up sacrifice this Lent
Well, that joke's long, it's been spent"
So as the fool on the bagpipes played
We kept cool in the parasol shade
Your thumb on my page at my tender age
East enders wives
And hidden in the fox thorn blind
We grew old as the foxtail pine
Sheep in the cold shielding our gold
Sipping on milk and water like
She packed our bags some arbitrary time
Then waved like a flag from the white star line
Unmoored, unwell, though I seldom elegize
We both been untrue but I'm still counting on you
Like an invisible rosary
And as the past and all plans are undone
Slowly sank like a shipwrecked sun
Bridges and ropes, burning them both
Burned up the sky
Choir sang as the black birds fell
Sorrow rang like the church-yard bells
An axe to the trees, smoke for the bees
And all our dads died
mewithoutYou - East Enders Wives
[Peacock:]
Ragged robbins for the curtain call
Wrapped in ribbons on the trailer door
Carved initials in a concrete footstall
On the imitation marble floor
We’re the boxtop admissions and their throwaways,
Strewn across tobacco roads
With their wormwood shots and their snake oil plots
Drunk sheepshank con men and their sycophants
And I often wonder if I've already died
[Tiger:]
Out at elbows by the encore
But there’s a citadel inside
Where I’ll go and shape my heart like yours,
As you shape yours like mine
Where we’re the spiraling arms of all galaxies
And we’re the microscopic sand
Suffering from delusions of ungrandeur on middling display
Beside the Cardiff giant with the alabaster eyes
I often wonder if I've already died,
Or if the 'I' is an unintelligible lie
Off we flew like swarms of hornets
'Woken up' from winter’s rest
To colonize with plastic pulp
Our neighbor’s perfect paper nest
While all year round potter wasp
Has buzzed her unhinged song
You can hear its creaking in our floorboards
Megalomania’s only mania if you’re wrong
mewithoutYou - Cardiff Giant
Pillary stocks at the gallows tree dock
the crowd grew impatient the clouds threatened rain
Elephant arrived at the Constable's side,
with her trunk locked in shackles, and her ankles in chains
[Bailiff:]
"All rise, all rise, his Honor presides,"
the Judge took the bench to the village brass cavalcade,
Elephant refused to swear the oath,
[Elephant:]
"I don't know anything about truth,
but I know falsehood when I see it,
and it looks like this whole world you've made"
Good of our chaplain to sail Kalispell Bay
And now down on his marrow for this old fool to pray,
"Lord, for sixty-so years I've surrendered my love,
to emblems of kindness, and not the kindness they were emblems of,
Trammels and rings, with the strength of old strings,
and some hobble skirt spring, by the old problem caught,
Children, sometimes I think all our thoughts are just things,
and then sometimes think things are just thoughts,"
and the rabble rang
[Crowd:]
"Hang! the Elephant must hang! the Elephant must hang!
Hang! the Elephant must hang! the Elephant must hang!"
[Elephant:]
"A thirteen coil knot for the samovar pot! Scottish Oatcakes in haversacks each to its grave
This mock trial can no more determine my lot,
than can driftwood determine the ocean's waves,
Brandish your ropes and your boards, and your basket-hilt swords,
but what is there can punish like a conscience ignored?
Yes, my body did just as you implied,
while some ghost we'll call 'I' idly watched through its eyes,"
and the jury sang,
"Hang! the Elephant must hang! the Elephant must hang!
Hang! the Elephant must hang! the Elephant must hang!
Hang! the Elephant must hang! the Elephant must hang!
Hang! the Elephant must hang! the Elephant must hang!"
[Elephant:]
I feel it stealing now
All adrift fathoms down
mewithoutYou - Elephant in the Dock
Sugar down the syrup in the Queen Anne's lace
Shining in the light of nightshade
Cultivating unsophistication in my face
Trying to think of nothing to say
Grapes gone sour and the spinach went to seed
(it was spindly and sick from the outset)
Waiting for the hour with a wherewithal to leave
Patient as a dog for its master
Aubergine
The Labrador was locked through the promontory rock
She called down, said time is an illusion
An inconsequential shift as the continents drift
But my confidence was crushed and I miss you regardless
Aubergine
Aubergine
[Aubergine:]
You can be your body but please don't mind
if I don't fancy myself mine - you at 32 still tied to your poor mother's apron strings!
Sorrel in the gravel and the saffron robe
Sleeping like a shark in the cord grass
until I saw how far I traveled down the solipsistic road
I climbed out to ask for directions
There was not a pond in sight and here I'm gasping like a fish
In the desert with a basket full of eggplants
who asked about the passage of the Bible on my wrists
But I couldn't catch my breath enough to answer
mewithoutYou - Aubergine
Provisionally 'I' practically alive
Mistook signs for signified
And so since I’ve often tried
To run them off a cliff like Gadarene swine
and tied my thought-ropes in anchor bends
wondering whether we were someone better then,
or maybe just better able to pretend
(and what better means to our inevitable end!)
[Bear:]
No, I don't know if I know
though some, with certainty insist
'no certainty exists'
well I'm certain enough of this:
in the past 14 years, there's only one girl I've kissed
In the blistering heat of the Asbury pier
we sat quiet as monks on the Ferris wheel
Until looking down at the waltzer
and out at the sea
I asked her, "did it ever have that recurring fantasy
where you push little kids
from the tops of the ride?"
she shook her head no
I said "oh, neither do I"
and with my grandmother's ring
I went down on one knee
and the subsequent catastrophe
has since haunted me
like a fiberglass ghost in the attic
my inconveniently selective memory
as provisionally 'You' mercifully withdrew
all the bearing points we thought we knew
Day's run, days set plot
our compass shot
we sailed waywardly on
singing out midnight archer songs
until well past dawn
it's still dark in the deck of our boat
haphazardly blown broken bows
our aimless arrow-words
don't mean a thing
so by now I think
it's pretty obvious that there's no God
and there's definitely a God!
[Fox:]
I dreamt of the rocks at the Asbury dunes,
and that you jumped from the top
of the Log Flume,
and they gather like wolves
on the boardwalk below
and they're howling for answers
no wolf can know
I charged at the waves
With a glass in my hand
I was tossed like a ball
at the bottle stand
and I landed beside your
remains on the stones
where you cold fingers
wrapped around my ankle bone
while maybe ten feet away was a star
thousands of times the size of our sun
exploding like the tiny balloons
you'd throw darts at
[Bear:]
I slept until our chest was full
of yarn we spun from Shetland wool
in socks from where the Dorset grows
sheared and scoured hours before
the rooster crows
[Fox:]
the price of German silver fell
threw this disused thalers
down the superstition well
mewithoutYou - Fox's Dream of the Log Flume
Half mass, land grants, homesteading walk, passed dodge summit toward Athabasca Falls
Tracks in the tall toadflax where he crawled,
Past Dodge Summit toward Athabasca falls,
Practicing his Avocets and Gnatcatcher calls
Walrus trudged along
While low in a lodgepole branch nearby
Barnyard Owl watched with an amorous eye
OWL: “What unprecedented gift does this afternoon provide?”
“I’ve flown across the sea where the soldierfish swam,
I’ve slept inside the shoe of the world’s tallest man,
I saw Charlotte Corday with the knife in her hand;
It was nothing new
I’ve perched on Steele, Dakota’s sandhill crane
I flew among the Paiutes before the Mormon rain,
I was in Virginia City for the stringing up of Clubfoot Lane
But I’ve never seen anything like you.”
All untied, by and by!
But I’d pour the matrimony wine
All untied, by and by!
so if you’re ever so inclined…”
WALRUS: “What from the air now calls to water on the land?
What from my seclusion does this charlatan demand?
What to do now with my best-laid eremetic plans?
I’ve been to the Arfaks where the Sicklebills fly,
seen Tangier’s acrobatics nine stories high
I was there at Appomattox back in ’65 when the General arrived
But I’ve never been in this room before!
[aside] All untied, by and by!
that same old dream’s trapped in my mind
I’m bound in ropes and on the firing line
well, I wake up disappointed every time
[to OWL]: If the weather ever withers up your vine
Jacob knows a ladder you can climb
If that old thorn is still buried in your side,
Jacob knows a ladder you can climb…”
OWL: “Well, if your pacific rivers all run dry
their clouds will fill my loud, corrupted sky
And if the pleasures of your heavens ever end
That very ladder just as well descends!”
mewithoutYou - Nine Stories
Stitch up the nets but the patch won't stay
As the nail beds rest in the calico hay
The Fiji Mermaid dressed in macrame's
Wading road in the fork and a bend
In the spoon tern cut short as a shadow at noon
Melting like wax as that once full moon's
Now waning ersatz acts an insufferable bore
'Sharp Shots' dull as a harlequin's sword
When doing as you please doesn't please you anymore
Stick of the match as the paraffin show
Drop a nickel to watch the asparagus grow
'The stone in what shell?'
You sure like to know now don't you?
A loom in the heir as the medicine came
To the nest of the mare of the mystery claims
But you'll miss having someone to blame
For your sadness, now won't you?
Well maybe there'll be a bakery hiring
We'll knead a little dough to get by
(Groan!)
Did you come knocking on my door
Or did I come to yours?
Whose ship came washed up on whose shore?
And from what ocean floor?
There wasn't much to her dress
and I felt stuck in my body like a horse in quicksand...
Didn't you come knocking on my door?
mewithoutYou - Fiji Mermaid
Barren rocks and sand, Bear & Fox held hands,
held like a timber hitch, held candles to the sun
Both faint and fading fast, they walked on, windward
kept time with a pocketmouse, mouths kept mostly shut
Thought broke the silence like a bone
[FOX:]
[half-moaning] “you’ve worn me like an albatross,
I’ve only slowed you down.
You could’ve long traded in your braided crown by now
you could’ve found that Anabaptist girl you always used to go on about
As we rode in circles on our bicycles;
we walked on balance beams
the audience cheered for us
We burned like fevers under carriage hats
hid behind Venetian masks
In our human costumes
We stood like statues once in shepherd’s check
we’ll both be decked in herringbone,
wrapped border drab around already broken ironstone”
[BEAR:]
“But I’ve seen these cliffs before,
St. Agnes brought her palm branch to the hospital
looked upward lest the charm had fled
from my brother’s breathing bed
And when he died I shut his dogtooth violet eyes:
He looked just like me
climb on down and see
they laid him on the rocks below
there’ll be enough to fill your cup for days;
I’ll stay up here and rest.
[aside] We’ll fly in straight lines as from carronades
we’ll crash like tidal waves, decimate the islands
As our hollowed lumber falls like water, ends where I start
In that tattered rag shop back in Asbury Park
Look how soon my hands won’t move
but if you’ll improve, we’ll all improve
Sixty feet and my feet won’t move
but if you’ll improve, we’ll all improve
Forty feet, my legs won’t move
but as you improve, we all improve
Fill our den with acorn mast,
I’ll wake before the salmon pass
Ten foot more and nothing moves”
mewithoutYou - Bear's Vision Of St. Agnes
All circles presuppose they'll end where they begin
But only in their leaving can they ever come back around
All circles presuppose they'll end where they begin
But only in their leaving can they ever come back around
All circles presuppose they'll end where they begin
All circles presuppose they'll end where they begin
But only in their leaving can they ever come back around
All circles presuppose they'll end where they begin
But only in their leaving can they ever come back around
All circles presuppose they'll end where they begin
All circles begin with an end
They come back around
They come back around again
All circles presuppose they'll end where they begin
But only in their leaving can they ever come back around
(All circles presuppose they'll end where they begin
But only in their leaving can they ever come back around)
mewithoutYou - All Circles
Logger Days, savannah, the menagerie packed its trains
left Bitter Root, Montana for those old Nebraska plains
Ticket sales were suffering now, with half the animals gone
but the circus kept its course somehow and the show continued on
Pitched their tents in Battle Creek on the makeshift flatbed stage
with a draytop shotgun rhino's peak and a black wrought iron cage
The Barker sprung to action as the band began to play
to introduce the new attraction who they'd picked up on the way
Julian the Onion who they'd picked up on the way
BARKER: "Cleanse your minds and palates, as I seldom mince my words,
This poor boy's a walking shallot; yes, it's shocking as you've heard!
From his lonesome, yellow childhood, so fantastically deformed,
He was battered by his classmates and sautéed like bantam corn
'Red Vidalias!' 'Valley Sweets!' for twelve long, rotten years
if he so much as skinned his knee, the entire schoolhouse moved to tears
We found him where he'd sprouted, plotting a garden coup d'etat
in a carrot stick and celery stalk manage-a-mirepoix
Now, feast your caramel eyes on the most savory sight in town!"
All his joking well-evoking peals of laughter from the crowd
But Julian the Onion was not laughing with the crowd
His jaundiced face was trembling, beads of sweat began to fall
Down his oblong goose back forehead to his snuffed-out lantern jaw
his cut-shoot sprig of hair disheveled, tiny fists impearled
JULIAN: "No I am not this misshaped body, and I'm not long for this world
Wooden dimes and quiet fears, come curl your lips at me
but all perceptions are as mirrors, it's your own reflections that you see
So hide behind your laughs a while, look handsome though you may,
oh, do enjoy that saccharine smile, as there comes for you a day"
mewithoutYou - Julian the Onion
Dear seven sisters, all is distance here
all look into never out of every face
I'll let you be my belief if I can be your doubt
signed from Persia:
Kind subversions of a kind I couldn't say
as our blessed lack of conversation
has kept me alive so far today
All my savings soon were spent, so in the vales of early Fall
Under tables, covered rent by packing bales of barley straw
With efforts held to circumvent the watchful eye of federal law
And mama, though I've been so alone,
my faith in love is still devout!
With solemn sounds the potter's ground beneath our bare wandering feet
our crooked hearts in Sacred Harp sang out the dark inside us deep
their shapes of sorrow fell like shadows on the farm-to-market roads
that led my stumbling steps back home
But mama why four fires burning? Why so quiet Father's room?
Has he not heard his son returning? or has he gone to gather food?
or is he off stomping in the forest? or has he wandered into town?
"Son, I think it's best that you sit down-
His faith in love was still devout..."
Mama, sing my favorite hymn,
as I sink deep into the grass,
and the night birds beat me with their wings,
with horrid laughter as they pass
the stage goes dim, its pageants finished
fleeting worlds to which I've clung with a now extinguished longing
Mama, sing my favorite hymn,
where we make ploughshares from our swords
and the mason's barber trims our Christmas tree
in the Oneness of our Lord
what grace surrounds! what strange perfection!
Mama, sing my favorite hymn,
remind me:
everyone is him.
mewithoutYou - Four Fires
