Flame of the Archer on Sunday

there is smoke, or is it steam?
ground hot charred in places
bells sound in time with blood
my book, the gift, the simple thing.

what was I doing when this began?
rhythm of my ax keeping the time
one thing cut, and one remained
in the quick, the thick, and the mad.

some journey has brought me here
no chart of reference, nor a name
she knew, yet wouldn't claim the smolder
pouring light on me, making it clear

my feet dug in, and my head regained
heat in the wake behind me
how many hours have I slain this day?
curious now to know the refrain.

seed

seed i returned
scratch the ground
pierce my thumb
mixed with blood

roots that extend
leaving them untied
touch these hearts
secret home parts

fruit sway heavy
hit with mercy
feed the belly
return to me

the offensive

watching you take that skin
with the skill you mentioned before, lover.
crude and now removed

gods with the sunburns that you knew,
those gods that i endured,
making peace with each of them


licking the stamps when you sent them off
return our saliva to our mouths
they carried, in their caves, the mysteries


you whisper into the hall
like some holy wall in Jerusalem
the name that grew in the belly of that fool

I'm begging when I'm banging
on the bucket remaining
sensing wonder when I should be praying

I've decided to take my white,
pass through the arch
and sing you my song no longer

but you ponder, or maybe i think you do
is that cold closed casket of another
where the night becomes darker that you foster

never knowing in that shadow that lingered
never hearing in that moment of doubt
instead i leaned against the frame of the door
and fell out

silence

truth lies here.
don't fill this space.
don't fill this silence.
with words.
with thoughts.
with doubts.

don't fill this space
with silence.
turn intentions
I'm losing my words...
lost my words...
misplaced them?

where my heart is

i prayed

what else could i do?

what else was left?

when a man enters you

and i don't know what to do

because god created me to be entered

but it is not your entrance

and we smoke

and talk of love

and hierarchy

and homes

and our love is there,

in that cafe

in that bed

unconsummated

and is it a consolation

that we do not consummate

yet still love

is it enough?

is it the pain I adore?

or is it truly your smell?

now with my cloak

not nearly passionate enough

i cover up once again

only to know that these covers will be torn away

and i will let them

your opening of my heart

is as good

and your stabbing of it.

his room.

One is never alone in Fable's room. That is to say the permanent occupant is that ephemeral companion, the sun. How he loves her. I've seen him dancing in her, holding hands, pressing his cheek out to be caressed by this mother. His enjoyment is to be reflected upon, not giving much back except the silent smile to himself, which are the terms that suit them. He needs only to be there. Like the tree, the cloud, the building so that she may reflect from them. That is there relationship, and that is what suits them.

As soon as I enter this room I feel her pushing me. I have to fight to sit down under her weight. I have to part my path and dig out my space from her intense stare, but she's constantly felt upon my side like a wall that I'm trying to keep from crushing me. It's not always like this, but in this minute she is.

In this minute I see Fable, but just his outline. This is what happens when you play tug of war with the sun, she blinds you to grasp her object which she can never ever really grasp anyway. Instead she creates a fury in your eyes, explosions on your skin in her frustration to grasp, to have her fingerprint felt. But in these instances she is quickly evaded, out of her element.

What's funny about reunions is that you don't fully see the person that you're reunited with for a good five minutes. Caught up in the bursting lava in your chest, the flickering lights in your brain, it is the sense of touch and smell that actualize your friend or lover. So, I'd have to say I didn't see Fable at first, I smelled him, and felt him. It was the only communication that dulled the lava and lights, the only senses capable of answering their desires, making him more real that seeing or hearing him could ever.

The initial hug has certain advantages. One of the first being the permission to linger. Followed by the reflection of both sadness and relief in the fact that you've been reunited which highlights the empty seat you've saved for them. It's also an introduction. If you're lucky you've had the good bye hug that makes your welcoming hug rich with the promise of new stories and the next level of getting on with things.

Soon we are back in our old routine, his room doubling as our tree house when we are together and decidedly the age of five involuntarily. Only when the sun is with us, though. Like a mother ever present we wouldn't dare try the stuff we do when she leaves the room. Because her exits and entrances are solaborious we both have time to accept the leaving of the bed as well as the anxiety of waiting to enter it.

In the wake of our hug we sit facing the computer vibrating with all sorts of desires and not knowing which to do first. Who should begin the catching up? Should we just remain silent and enjoy our moment, or speak toeach other through prose and music? Never having to pick one, we pick like cherries from each bin and spend the rest of the morning into the after noon in the honey ourexistence . There are short bursts of laughter or tackling-bear hugs that escape one or the other of us in our joy to be sharing the same space again, but soon we settle.

If I told you right now what I thought of that moment I'd use the word perfect. I might even have used the french word, PARFAIT, being less demanding than it'sEnglish sister and implying the flaws that make PERFECT flawless. Being temporary as these moments are, it faded into the late after noon and evening when we found our hunger calling us again. the harsh ways that our bodies remind of ourexistence is as beautiful as it is annoying.

The rooms, houses, of others has always settled me much deeper than the rooms and houses of my own. The place of myself hold my materials, history, and names. As if they were sponges ever saturated and no amount of squeezing could release the liquids. Sleep comes to me faster and heavier, but only when the sun is with us.

As she being to descend the tightness of my chest both grips me and undulates to release it's contents. This happens under the awareness of Fable who is more adept at handling the functions of his own chest. His patients of this process of mine comfort me and allow me to relax into it. I tell him I love him and he smiles and hugs me. I know tomorrow will bring more of this.

sans finger

The idea, it seemed to him, was quite natural; to build a shack for the summer. Find solitude from the house even if by only 100 paces. The house that he came back to again and again, where he had been born, and where the life of before him still went on after him with the same silent mystery. It was his idea not do much of anything for Reason or Rhyme. These two women had led him astray, he thought. This Rhyme and this Reason, like sirens calling to him. He had listened, fell into their gaze and forgot the chaos. It was through the path of these two that he had be brought back chaos without forewarning. This is what he needed to parse out. So he thought to build the shack and build the shack he did.

The grass, at their highest parts, tickled his knees. His black work boots soaked up sun in competition with his shoulders, who were losing that battle. Had it been a week since he'd washed his hair, or even referenced a shiny surface? The mid-day sun produced salted water that he drew from his forehead with his forearm. He had forgotten the heat and the sun and it seemed he would forget them if they did not insist on making themselves known. With a hammer jumping in his right hand the bundle of corrugated sheet metal occupied the left as he walked out to the field.

Arriving in the middle of the field he found the house behind, the crops beyond, woods to the right and to the left the interstate far enough away to make cars look like beads being passed through an invisible thread.

The structure was simple yet contrived. He couldn't think of symmetry, couldn't see the object so much as a whole but more as a collection of beauty and function. He chose pieces for their rusted edges and watermarked etchings. Some had been twisted beneath the wheels of a tractor - those he pierced into the surrounding earth, their only purpose to serve as focal points for the coming weeks. Still, he wasn't finished. The room without a roof remained an enigma, and so he threw down the pieces to sift through and divide and began his task to enclose his edifice.

He needed to bring that hammer down again and again, to nail metal to wood. It was an action with purpose that allowed his body to articulate the fire inside his brain. Creating sound that did not come from his body but bellowed out of his grief and frustration and like a boomerang came back around again to him. These sharp bursts numbed his ears providing the validating pain that it had not been his hearing that had been a problem but that there had been less and less words that entered them. Her words had become fewer and fewer until there was no way for her to say what she did, and instead she had walked out. There were also no words to request of her, he knew, because her language had become garbled and disconnected. No longer could he hold the rhythm of her gestures in his sight and translate their meanings. She had become an stranger again, which is what bothered him the most. To recall her was almost to have deja vous, feeling he had been there before but this was actually the first time. His anger flared up and he struck the tin roof again with the hammer.

At first it didn't look real. It was when he blinked that he felt the reassurance of pain. His lack of reaction surprised him, so he searched for the next thing he ought to do. It made sense, then, for his next move to be to step down from the ladder and walk back to the house. The sky was clear and there was a tender wind that encircled him. The silence was as intense as the heat which made his breathing annoying. Because there was nothing to hear, he could now hear it all. the grass crunching, the rubbing of his jeans, and his heart.

Some three hours later another sharp tone numbed his ears. At first he grabbed through his sound index in hurried frustration to place it. As he opened his eyes he was able to make the connection. He could see it was her mouth that was producing the sound, but it was her eyes that expressed the horror. He expressed question in his brow. Then that tickle on his chest, and it was as if his mother had screamed pain back into his body. He dared not move his hand but he made noises - guttural claps and barks mixed with long moans and breathy gasps to retain some sort of strength by exercising the pain.

The first words of the day came then from his father, "you're gonna lose that finger, son."

Tears cleared paths in the dirt on his face. Swan's face passed before him, but it was someone else's wisdom that he heard. The loss of the finger was not a loss, but an awakening. It was a sacrifice by blood, one which he could not make by heart or head alone. It was an end and as endings go, also a beginning.

His father was right. They amputated the left index finger two hours after arriving at the hospital. It was the three hours that damaged the nerves and gave time for the sun to boil the sausage that remained of his finger. Even then the bone had been crushed. Irreparable.

Gospel didn't mind the loss, in fact he was relieved to not have been given the choice or the following obligation lie for the rest of his life. He knew he couldn't tell people that he'd take the loss as a tangible to the intangible loss that had occurred months earlier. He was content to have proof; evidence.

It was three weeks before he returned to finish the shack, even against his mother's plea. She knew just as well as he did that he didn't have a choice. He needed to finish it and sit in it. And so that it what he did.

orangutan

have you seen my sister?
have you been my sister?
she said, "I don't know"
but she held her breath.

and i knew

I took it in through the ear.
she said, "you've had your fair share."

but her fingers crossed
and my banks bleed.
and I said " come in,"
not seeing her already
pas the threshold.

in my camp
while i turned
in my earth
while I listened
in my straight
while I gleaned

she grew deep tips
sharp ends sank down.

while i prepared the meat
while i sang the song

she fucked up the sediment
bust through the limestone.
to take my crown

I clapped my religious hands
she whispered, "glory, glory"
hands full of terracotta
and i sank into her

just as the mist became her
face wet as I reached for ground
there was none.

Coit

A performance/installation reflecting on love/sex/gender, war, and religion.

There will be 1 - 3 Performances and the installation will remain open to the public to walk through.


11 performers:

1 hermaphrodite divine being
1 female lead <The Waiting Girl>
4 female supporting performers
1 male lead <The Soldier>
4 male supporting performers

There are three tiers to the installation/stage:

Tier One: Le Jardin
Tier Two: Le Champ de Bataille
Tier Three: L'espace divin

Act One,Tier One: Le Jardin

This is an utopic space, an interpretation of a sort of Garden of Eden. The environment (par example: the ground and foliage, fabric wall hangings, and applied patterns to walls perhaps) will be a camouflage of layered floral patterns taken from many cultures and time periods. The costumes will mimic the background so that the environment and the inhabitants are one and the same.This is the representation of the combined universal energy of love, sexuality, and creation. Le Jardin is the space where we see the highest potential of connection to this energy realized.

The performance begins here and We see Les gens frolicking, arguing, expressing a full range of emotion. This is the space they live in and they are sort of going about their daily activities, all 10 men and women.

*note: the choreography of this scene will be worked out either with the performers or a choreographer.

Act Two, Tier Two: Le Champ de Bataille

We hear a bell toll. This is where the audience learns why they've been called here, and what the performers are doing. The performers preparing to, and then actually reenact the time before The Divine Revelation. (The Divine Revelation was when the hermaphrodite being came to them and freed them of their sexual stereotypes and constructs and they individually realized their creative/sexual potential and the insanity of war and genocide).

The performers push past the walls/fabric of Le Jardin and reveal Tier Two. There are three distinct vertical "rows/areas" (receding like rows into a short distance perhaps 18 feet mimicking a cathedral floor plan with the isle down the middle). On the left are "the women" and on the right are "the men" separated by the huge middle isle.

Le Gens ascend into their respective spaces and prepare to get ready by putting on combinations of historical costumes. The women wear a mix-match of all confining, cumbersome, or concealing costumes. The men have a culmination of mix matched militant garb which they trade and combine to make their own suits of armor. This should be played out in the ways indigenous people who were being colonized responded to the costumes of the militia: enthralled with the garb but who's context takes on different meaning once they themselves put it on.

The air is jovial and they have to remind themselves to be serious. They boys keep stealing glances of the girls, but their buddies nudge them into remembering they are supposed to pretend not to see them. The girls playfully remind the boys of this as well when they look over.

Once they are suited up the charade begins. They begin to engage in their respective stereotypical activities. The women look half-bored half-amused. They lounge, knit, "cook", sew, pace and wait. This isn't something they are accustomed to - the costumes itch, the wigs keep falling, they sit with their legs open.... They are joyful but trying to pretend to act the part of these stereotypes all the while watching the men like they are watching a play.

We see the men beginning to engage in war. They are not sure what the weapons do, and they are not sure why they are send here to do this. They try to act as macho as possible, try to be tough and angry. Sometimes one will break character and wink at one of the girls, but they are not supposed to acknowledge them.

As they get into their activities the tension increases and the audience starts to feel the real threat of war and death and the fear and longing of the women.

soon we see one female begin to meander toward the back of the space and disappear through some sort of door/screen. slowly the girls follow her one by one, each with "a chore". We then notice one man being singled out and moving through all the fighting as if he has something calling him and he disappears into a similar door/portal.

The left and right sides of Tier Two become dark and Tier Three is illuminated.

Act Three, Tier Three: L'espace divin

We see a HUGE burst where the Divine begin presides, upstage center. This Divine being is a hermaphrodite. No name, no distinction. Just bright and full. The source of energy. The light blinds the boy (downstage left) but the women are accustomed to it - they sit facing the audience downstage right, The waiting Girl,looking off into the distance, and her attendants surrounding her.

Soon The Soldier is released from the blinding light (he has received openness of heart, mind, spirit, body, and sexuality from the divine spirit.) After regaining composure he sees The Waiting Girl, and approaches her. They engage in a physical dialogue.

*choreography collaboration

His desire to "obtain" her and they push and pull each other. Soon he has disrobed her. In a reciprocal act mixed with curiosity, excitement and play she rips his clothes off. Their "floral" selves are revealed and they look at each other.

She doesn't look surprised, but "found out" - she's known about their "floral" selves. She's waiting his response. Will he show anger, fear, or sadness? Will he retreat? Will he rejoice? She waits.

He is overwhelmed by the beauty, the unity, and the cohesion. In an attempt to hold this moment he dresses in her garments. She mimics him in an attempt to offer acceptance of his action because he still seems weary.

They hold a moment of gaze and then we see the light of the divine being push him forward, down the isle into the floral environment. He descends first. The girl disrobes from his garments and follows a few paces behind him, followed by the "attending women" who have also disrobed from their garments. As the "attending women" descend the isle (like bridesmaids after a marriage) they are then joined by the men who come through the wall on the right where they have been waiting to disrobe, which they do as they exit and join the women. Everyone is in floral now and the commence back to the floral environment and recognize the audience.

They invited the audience down into the installation and there begins and open discussion.

Pentecost. Garden of Eden. Carnivale. The wars, the atrocity. The division of sexuality. the division of humanity. the dichotomy of the brain and the heart. didactic sexual organ. hermaphrodite god.

First we see love. we see unification. fecundity. women and men, men and men, women and women. All in camouflage of the terrain. loving one another, dancing. The peace with which they live and interact.

then the bells. It is the Pentecost. the time to give thanks to the hermaphrodite god who enlightened them and broke down their constructs. who freed them sexually.

The hurry to dress in their garb for the celebration. Women on one side, men on the other. Men wear intricate military gear. Women wear various constraining and cumbersome costumes. they are almost immobile.

through a series of "waring" and "waiting" they struggle to complete the various tasks to get to the finale.

In the finally the man solidier is brought before the god. He sees The Waiting Girl. he thinks she's waiting for him, but she is not. She is like a siren (good natured) tricks him into trading costumes and sends him out into the world as a woman. Once he leaves her "ladies in waiting" - which I will call "intentions" quickly turn her back into a woman. beat the drums sound the trumpets. we all dance. [reference Animal Collective "we tigers"]

A Thoughtful Dinner

Détourned Menu: Food in the Form of Activism
October 20th 2006
The Lab
2948 16th Street
San Francisco, CA