EVENSONG
By Alexis Orgera
For light doth seize my brain
With frantic pain.
William Blake
In the uncut gray
of pulled blinds youve become
something else
the bedrooms dirty secret
in a darkness bath, you and not you.
The galvanized metal dissolver of faith,
a half-life of afghan and dust mote.
No one peels away the pain
of two sickles in one eye, one blind eye.
Liar of air, migraine. Fakir of sound.
Twelve clicks of the metronome and youre done,
gone, flicked like a moth from the light of the sun.
No one here is having fun.
Not living but breathing
beneath garbled pantheons
of laundrydrying, grassgreening in the heat
that gives way to the dew
which gives way to the drink
that only the tiniest creature tongues.
Nowhere near finished, this blocked passage
of cerebellum. Thank you, no,
says the ache behind the rightest eye.
I, oh righteous eye. Riotous above the clouds.
Your doppelganger speaks only to lie:
I am not the woman who made you feel the pain of this.
Not I, said the pain. Not I, says your twin.
I am not she. Not she-goat. She storm. She brave
atop the waves of circumferential silence
that does not exist
except in the head of the thing alive in your head,
that rears its ugly head
from the Venetian blinds, the blinding day-
light just like every other day,
helicopters blazing the shoreline.
Just like every other day, punctuated by anvil.
You know that death doesnt taste
like tablespoons of raw salt nor sewer nor rat
bludgeoned in the ear in the back yard
of peopleliving. It undulates,
coagulated oil on hot stones.
You are the Queen of the fabulatory moan.
An empty set of sleeves, a coercer
of smallness, darkness, and of easychairs.
You are someone else, and she screams
out of you,
Give me space and breath!
Dont leave! Dont leave! Come back
to sour smelling sheets
as if theyre not your sheets
to counting viscous sheep
though youve been counting sheep all day
to my hollow-bleating, massive pleading bed
Your bed. Your unmade bed
Come back green or hoarse
or clownyour nonsensecome back with your woolen,
stolen frown. Come back! Tell me
Im no good
But its you shes talking to
Im faking! Im faking! Tell me that
But you cant, you know shes not
But dont leave, but do.
Leave me counting upside down.
Leave me a history of women burned.
Tell me then that Im a fake.
Leave me to the moths pale light
Go have your life. Go have your night
Youll come back!
And you will
By Alexis Orgera
For light doth seize my brain
With frantic pain.
William Blake
In the uncut gray
of pulled blinds youve become
something else
the bedrooms dirty secret
in a darkness bath, you and not you.
The galvanized metal dissolver of faith,
a half-life of afghan and dust mote.
No one peels away the pain
of two sickles in one eye, one blind eye.
Liar of air, migraine. Fakir of sound.
Twelve clicks of the metronome and youre done,
gone, flicked like a moth from the light of the sun.
No one here is having fun.
Not living but breathing
beneath garbled pantheons
of laundrydrying, grassgreening in the heat
that gives way to the dew
which gives way to the drink
that only the tiniest creature tongues.
Nowhere near finished, this blocked passage
of cerebellum. Thank you, no,
says the ache behind the rightest eye.
I, oh righteous eye. Riotous above the clouds.
Your doppelganger speaks only to lie:
I am not the woman who made you feel the pain of this.
Not I, said the pain. Not I, says your twin.
I am not she. Not she-goat. She storm. She brave
atop the waves of circumferential silence
that does not exist
except in the head of the thing alive in your head,
that rears its ugly head
from the Venetian blinds, the blinding day-
light just like every other day,
helicopters blazing the shoreline.
Just like every other day, punctuated by anvil.
You know that death doesnt taste
like tablespoons of raw salt nor sewer nor rat
bludgeoned in the ear in the back yard
of peopleliving. It undulates,
coagulated oil on hot stones.
You are the Queen of the fabulatory moan.
An empty set of sleeves, a coercer
of smallness, darkness, and of easychairs.
You are someone else, and she screams
out of you,
Give me space and breath!
Dont leave! Dont leave! Come back
to sour smelling sheets
as if theyre not your sheets
to counting viscous sheep
though youve been counting sheep all day
to my hollow-bleating, massive pleading bed
Your bed. Your unmade bed
Come back green or hoarse
or clownyour nonsensecome back with your woolen,
stolen frown. Come back! Tell me
Im no good
But its you shes talking to
Im faking! Im faking! Tell me that
But you cant, you know shes not
But dont leave, but do.
Leave me counting upside down.
Leave me a history of women burned.
Tell me then that Im a fake.
Leave me to the moths pale light
Go have your life. Go have your night
Youll come back!
And you will