Jack chapter 6
Do you want the big music?
before the laughing
tears start
If the feast she’d promised was a small one — you couldn’t say
they were short on wine—with, for three people, the giant skin full,
still on the platform, propped up now by a heavy beam
because it was way too heavy to move until a dozen gallons
or more were drawn from it, which, Jack thought, even
if they had all three been drunks would take weeks.
Till then, he wondered—with the lift thus disabled—
what would they do—once the current tub was emptied—
for water? Rappel down to the river for each drink?
When they’d finished with black bread—and the wine that chased it—
a salad of flowers—wine chased it—cheese and field peas—
and the wine that chased them—
the hostess
put
a blue
wool blanket behind
the golden harp
giving a
background
to its vibrating pictures. “It’s easier to see
like this
in the open, here—don’t
you think?”
It was, they nodded. And wine
chased the nods.
Solomon told his wife—
“Apple Jack big-whispers, ‘hello.’
Jack looked up. He knew they meant
the small giant—no larger than an apple tree
in a chicken yard—who traveled with Tall Poignyance and
Grinning Littleman. They had to mean the little giant
Jack himself had wrestled, years ago now. So,
he was called Apple Jack, was he, the one
who had tricked Jack into “winning” his own stash
of this wine? Then Tall had laid the giant skin,
as deliberately as you’d fasten a doll’s button,
across Jack’s own old mule’s back. The long gone
soft loud liquid unfolding, filling the giant skin’s
new contours, sounded right there in this present night
beside him, right beside his ear. See,
the wine had him already.
The laughing tears would start shortly.
Jack marveled at finding normal sized people
who knew these beings well enough to receive
big-whispered casual greetings.
“To Tall Poignyance”—the woman
lifted an imaginary glass—just like
the real one full by her plate, Jack thought,
attributing to her hand
that skill of suggestion, though we might also
link it to the wine’s giving Jack the power, or the
weakness, of confounding the compound
of the imagined with the actual we take
for the real.
Sol said, “Speaking of Tall,
let me say, before
the laughing tears start,
“he thinks
we should not do the mission at all.”
It was the wine that made Jack have to fight
an impulse to grin, as Sol continued, “He thinks we have
a decent chance to succeed. He admits it is
a ‘good’ action, ‘relatively,’ as he says.
But he says that’s just the problem—by dealing
within good and evil we inevitably kick in
duality—
so we can only
“‘redistribute fortune.’ For every prisoner we free
somewhere another one is taken, perhaps in quite
a different manner. We’d only
“’stroke the churning,’ he says. And even
the beneficiaries of our actions would be ‘charged
with delay of destiny.’ Of course
“this was Grinning Little Man
actually doing the talking
after—thankfully—only one
“hillside-of-shale-shaking
sentence
from Poignyance himself.
“Little Man
knew the spiel well
and acted quite the authority
“holding forth upon it.”
The woman asked—“What does he mean,
‘relatively’
good action?” She asked.
Solomon sighed. He might
not have noticed he had lost
Jack’s attention.
“It could
be argued — Lord knows it is
argued
that the activity at the Highway Troll’s camp
is
“not so different from our introducing
an irritant into oysters to cultivate pearls.
Or — Little Man actually said this to me,
as if we a pair of giants in an argument
over a couple a tubs of beer — ‘not worse
than a non-vegetarian giant eating
people.’”
over
the flapping world to see their little house
Jack’s mind had skipped from that hilly country—back over farm lands
the wine rode his blood, and back over wheat fields, back
over pastures, flying powerfully as a thunder shower
his thoughts went homeward
because the harp
was playing
now
a simple old song, one
his mother had liked, and the presence of the giant wine skin
as much as the wine itself took him over the flapping world to see
their little house, where to this day what was left
of his own stash of the wine of tall poignyance was hid
in the hay loft. His second
cousin and
his second cousin’s wife — he rented the old place to them
for next to nothing — called it “that old stuff” and would
leave it alone — All these thoughts on the outer
circumference of remembrance — At the center —
his mother’s glowing pipe bowl. Was it her tears
or his own that blurred the red yellow burn?
What harm for the old lady to sip the giant draught and watch
thru laughing tears the smoke of her pipe taken
into the admixture of twilight? singing to herself —
not all that well — this same song the harp played now —
Wrap me around
In your arms so strong
Stand over me
I feel I belong
Wrap me around
So sweet I could bleed
I see your power
But I feel your need
She would sing it over and over, as far back as Jack could remember,
the melody maybe changing, but never the words, and between the wine
and the harp’s wondrous accuracy of reproduction,
logic loosed the notion most likely his mother had sung
that song when she nursed him. Most certainly
she had, suddenly he knew.
He lifted his real glass to an imaginary clinking—offered
a delayed return of the woman’s toast, “To Tall Poignyance.”
it was the wine
Jack didn’t notice, as he hadn’t been listening to Solomon,
that he offered the toast at a point in the conversation
that made it seem Jack agreed with the giant’s advice
against undertaking Solomon’s mission. He did not notice
when Solomon looked at him sharply.
What Jack
was thinking,
still holding in his hand the glass he had bumped
against empty air, was ‘it rings like very good crystal.’
Maybe these glasses, like so many things here, came out
from the lower ‘door’ down around on the side of the rock.
When he thought of the rock he looked toward it, huge
in the bright moonlight. The moon moved west
and the rock’s shadow sneaked up the hill backwards.
It was the wine that made Jack want to go cut
a piece of that shadow, like cake,
and bring it back for them to smell for pleasure.
“The wine is good,” he said aloud.
“To Tall Poignyance,” the lady said,
raising her arm again.
Over a distant ridge just then dipped the giant lightening bugs
which, last night, had lit up the river water and the mule’s inebriate climb.
A moving black cloud passed under the moon and in the new
darkness the far fireflies gold illumination seemed to bring the stark trees
on the hills below them into being all over again every time they signaled.
Tonight was Solomon’s turn to be
impatient to
get something said.
“Though it is
permissible certainly,
a good thing even, to do
“what is
a ‘good thing’
inside
whatever ones world is at the time,
you’ll be disappointed if you expect
any improvement, however real,
to cause a continued perception of
increased well being.”
“We knew that,” she said. She may have noticed
Jack’s inattention
for she did not hide in her voice siftings of
an ash of anger.
“Why go to all this effort
down here
that does only temporary good in just
one place at a time?”
“Because, my dear, down
here
is the only place I can love you.”
Just then the cloud moved off the moon and the rock
and its shadow leapt into prominence again. Its startling appearance
seemed a consequence of his words. It was the wine.
The shadow of the rock backed up the hill toward them like orchestral punctuation.
She smiled;
then she sighed; then
she smiled then
looked thoughtful. Then
she said, the anger much softened, “I don’t think
we should do the mission.” She
started to laugh. . . .
“And I don’t want you . . .”
her laughter increased at such a rate
by the time she finished her sentence . . “going . .”
it
seemed like the punch line to a joke .
. . “to
spoiled by the storyteller’s own laughter.
Jack watched the fireflies.
They were coming closer.
this music fanned her laughter
The harp
abruptly switched music. It played again
its Handel-like double concerto for harmonica
and whoop-holler. This music fanned her laughter
for it flared up to the point
it became voiceless
almost alarming
and Jack looked up
at the woman—who had fed him, had given
or loaned him clothing—who had
into his story telling bluntly dropped argument
slight as bean seed—who’d heard,
that afternoon, the most intimate details
of his marriage and who, more than that, for two
days now, had known his name.
The wine
said to him
she was his
beautiful friend now—how come he
seemed to know her from forever? the wine asked—
she sure had pretty little ole titties the wine said—
but, the wine went on, other
than as Solomon’s wife,
you don’t know
what to call her.
So Jack said, “What
is
your name?”
A solid little smile formed
among her liquid laughter.
She regained her voice
and answered,
“Ikon Knott Seayminaim.”
“Well, I kant SayYourName, either,”
Jack said.
She—“Kant you, Immuael Jack? So
what would you call me?
Jack—“I thought you were a Gail. I would
call you, Gail Gordini.”
She—“Oh, I’m Italian! Half
Italian. My brain is Italian, I bet.”
Solomon—“Where on earth
did you get ‘Gordini?’” as if
the Gail part were logical.
Jack — “I have no idea.”
it
was the wood that was precious
The golden frame of the
harp
has dark
streaks that
resemble wood grain. So skillful
the elfin smith had been, it looked
like a wooden harp Midas might have touched
accidentally and jerked his hand away quick enough
it retained the breathing as well as the streaking
of wood.
The harp’s
playing around
with bird song that had seemed
that morning disinterested paid off now.
It changed tunes and tonalities again and again
and issued melody assembled from
the sub-melodies of bird calls but with a linear sweep transformed
to fugue by an effort toward spatial spread topographic on purpose
and beautiful by accident as flawless as if it had never interrupted
practice of bird call
to tell naughty princess stories
and honk out donkey strong songs.
Arpeggios of pure harp tone
moving behind it—you could hear the wood
in the gold and it was the wood
that was precious.
what
this bird bold melody looked like
Together Jack and ‘Gail’ had looked at the strings
to see what this bird bold melody
looked like.
. It seemed abstract at first but
trying to figure out
what was funny about the picture’s evolution
they began intermittently to see flashes of objects in action
in the processed bird music. First,
since her husband sat across the table where only the top of his head
showed on the harp frame, Jack and Ikon Knott saw his dark hair’s reflection
make, as he moved forward and back, a growing
and shrinking hat like Abraham Lincoln’s. So, for
the moment, it was dignity
that was funny.
Then — “You are in there,”
Gail
said to Jack,
“maybe.”
With more surprise she said,
“I
am in there!”
Now it was Solomon’s time to laugh.
Neither one said
in the harp’s picture they were naked
and you couldn’t be sure they were the way
the pattern of colors splashed
like the mosaic on a blue jay’s back when it flips its wings to hop
making them no sooner naked on the screen then not there at all
but you could not deny that what might have been their brief appearing
coincided with peak moments in Solomon’s laughter.
Ikon Knott opened her
gown
and looked down at herself,
seemingly
unaware of
the presence of
Jack
or
her husband,
as if to study
to find
differences—a more
tangerine color of the nipple
than the pale one on the harp
maybe.
If they had talked about it
Jack would have agreed with
an assessment
of
very little
difference
between what
he saw
in the open world now and
what flitted on the screen;
tho Jack’s interest was only
very marginally in the accuracy of the harp, hers
from the concentration on her face,
seemed to be entirely
on whether that was really what
she looked like.
Solomon sent to Jack an “I don’t
know
what
she’s
doing!” shrug.
in from the diaspora of their separate
musings
The harp grew
quiet
suddenly
and then
dark.
Then
a female
voice
came from within it—
sharp—
speaking, half
shouting—over a single bass drum’s
simple pounding—
“Jack!
“Jack!
“Jack!”
Pulled in from the diaspora of their separate
musings they all looked at the harp
and
saw —
Jack himself saw —
Jack
himself — his bearded face
on the wavering screen
but
when
his face
disappeared
for a beat
straw
flashed there —
the focus abnormally
clear. “I
smell the straw,”
Ikon
Knott said. It had been there
so briefly the night space
in front of harp was confused.
“That is the prison camp straw,”
Jack said.
Solomon asked, “Jack, do you
understand this?”
He opened his mouth
to say no and had
already shook his head when
his mouth said,
“I know
one thing.
“When I told you
about
Sweet Talkin’ Man.
I left something out
because till now I didn’t think it pertinent.
There on the giant beanstalk, hiding with him in the crimp
in the giant leaf behind the shack that the guards
watched the prisoners from,
when I turned my head one time I noticed past
where that toothless fellow’s
image
would be
on the reflective frame of the harp,
“I could only
see a woman, one who did
and did not
look like him. (For one thing she had
all of her teeth.) He saw
me see this and pointed
thru the window.
An almost normal mirror—although the images had
too much blue shadow—hung on
a wall to reflect
a maximum
angle
on
the prisoner’s yard.
“I slowly came to understand an
inversion
of male and female
had to be made
to follow all the players in
the underlying weave of action
from one sight to the other. It was hard
to match a prisoner with its other in the mirror because
not only was the sex different but frequently the ages too
so that an old woman could be a baby boy in the glass
and a twenty year old man might be, in there, an older
woman. Perhaps I studied for as long as half an hour
before I suspected the pattern.
“Sweet Talking Man could see
when I got it. He said, ‘sometimes
you need to remember this
‘to understand what’s goin’ on,’
pointing at himself
as the woman in the reflecting frame. She smiled
out at me and nodded her agreement.
‘But most of the time’ he said,
‘it don’t matter. Sometimes
I look
in the mirror, and sometimes
out the window—it
don’t make no difference
in
the
go
rounds,’ was how he put it, ‘which one
‘is
the man and
which the woman.
It’s just kinda like backwards or something.’
“I asked him, ‘But which is the truth?’.
“He said, ‘Son, They ain’t
no truth out here. Where you
been?’
“I kept after him, ‘But
when you are back home
are you a man or
a woman?’”
Prison camp straw flashed over the harp strings again—
On and off like a power failure—then
it stayed dark, the strings
as dumb as the frame itself
until
the woman’s voice came again—
Jill’s
voice, he knew it now to be —
“Jack!”
as if out of nothing.
Then Jack’s face, blurred over the strings,
said with the feminine voice, synchronized
this time,
”Jack!”
“It’s Jill,” Ikon Knott said.
Solomon asked—“Why do you say that?”
but his doubt had no courage.
“Jack!”
“It’s Jill,” she said again. When she said it
the second time it seemed twice true
Jill was there with them like the 4th man
in the fire with Shadrack, Meshack,
and Abendigo. Her voice’s Jack face on the strings
spilled elongated from the inside out
onto the gold-wood frame, toward meeting
Jack’s outside face from within the image
over the harp’s strings.
he not only had no plan he had no bean
seeds
Jack—“I have to go get her.”
Ikon Knott—“Of course we do.”
Solomon—“if you are right
that it is Jill,
she will be in the small
coop, the second one.
There are reports that they isolate
there those captured humans
whose vibe is especially valued, for
rarity and color, as accent color
in their weaving. Jill
would be one of these.”
Well, Jack wondered did Ikon Knott tell her husband
of his unusual marriage or were his ex’s tastes
so well known a traveler could well have heard of them?
“To get her out,” the host continued,
“we proceed
in what we are already doing. We
gather provisions.
Tomorrow
Jack and I will travel to
Jack knew he could not hurry
to Jill—even if he had a plan
it would revolve around bean seeds
and he not only had no plan he
had no bean seeds—so
dreading to see the face again
dreading
to see the face
again
he took the
harp to his tent
came back
to
find
the man and woman
kissing
the tears
off each
other’s faces.
He started to turn around quietly and leave them alone
but Ikon Knott saw him
and said “oh”
then she said “goodnight Jack” and
pulled her
husband
by the arm
and they walked off hanging on each other
up the trail toward
the big tent.
night’s aggregate singing
Jack
walking away toward the guest
tent
could see
thru
the open flap
where he had placed the harp
back in front
of the folded seagreen blanket. For a moment
he thought with relief
the harp had developed the taste
or at least the disinterest
not to picture them.
Then
he realized or
the wine made him believe the darkness
over the strings was that of
their tent instead of his.
So he stopped and
sat down beside the trail
to be
alone
in the sweetness of night breath—he wanted to enter with eyes and mind
into the moon and wine light on the trees and deep shadows spread far
across hills beyond rows of hills beyond rows of hills—the earth
could have been entirely moon lit rolling hills covered with trees naked,
except for tiny dangling catkins opening, for all he knew at the moment—
the earth could have been a rumpled giant’s blanket with that patterned picture
on it and Jack way less than an infant among its fibers,
alone in
nights aggregate singing.
Whatever
smears green all over in summer, he thought,
must be also compelled
by moon light
in spring time
to spread,
every bit as widely, animal singing. He got the thought
maybe it was possible to feel the presence of that Whatever
and he tried that
but he did not keep his mind on it
because now he could hear the silence doubled
now he could hear the silence doubled
up the trail toward
their tent
for
real
and
from down
the trail
he could hear it
rendered by
his harp.
And
even closing his
eyes
did not hide
his knowing they
were washing each other with tear
and tongue as solid in the tumbling darkness
as the subtle sound of their kissing
furrowed the silence.
His had wept so continuously the wet from his eyes
drained down over his lips and
he could feel by the taste of his own crying face
how wet and salt heavy Solomon’s
beard had to be now, absorbing
their double flow of laughing tears.
in the castle in your eyes, in the secret tower there
And when he finally entered his tent
he was displeased to hear
the harp relaying a talk
between Ikonknot and Solomon.
She—“no that was
not
the first time
we entered a conversation
aloud, at exactly the point it had progressed to
in silence. Just like a man
to think that was it,
yet it was impressive of you, to tell
the truth, what did happen the first
time.
“Your hands were cold
but I wore gloves
and you said
‘I’ll read it
“if
you hold it’
So we were almost strangers yet you were
reading over my shoulder, your voice saying out loud
words my eyes read silently.”
Solomon took up the recollection—
“Gloves or not, soon I reached to hold the book for you.
I took it and you dropped your arms and my arms, held out straight
within an inch of each breast, carefully not touching, a not touching
which charged the unspoken space between us till it felt like
our senses spread to fill up the gap between us.”
“Our frustration
arced the distance,”
she corrected. "Then
you got to those lines—
‘My love who came inside me
whom I held firmly
whose hand was on the lock of my being
‘removed his arms
pulled his hand away —
I awoke and
‘I was drawn to him
a softness spread in me
I was open within’”
“That was not
a conversation.”
“It was too.”
They both laughed—laughed a full minute,
almost silently tho the effort at silence itself made
them snort audibly here and there. It was the wine
made Jack understand their laughter was joyful commentary
on the understatement that they may have communicated,
a celebration of years of the pleasures of giving pleasure
growing both subtler and stronger.
“I wrote you something today. Read it.”
She read silently but the harp showed
an imitation of Solomon’s rather formal handwriting
with his poem.
“To Ikon Knott On Going To
I have forgotten I am king.
That
I
am
The king
in
Deep in our
in your eyes, in the secret tower
there,
remember? where it is
amazing? While I
am gone, go there
Ikon brought up a new subject
Again there was the breathy silence of kissing for a while.
Then Ikon brought up a new subject.
She—“Have you thought my dear
that Jack’s remarkable harp could be
eaves dropping on us?”
The harp amplified the silence around her whisper as much as it amplified the whisper itself, so the softness of the two transparencies overlapped as they did in the original space.
When Solomon answered, little bits of his full voice
broke thru the whispering like bits of dusted gravel in flour:
“Worse than that, I have thought
the harp might be spying on us, and on Jack,
for the highway trolls that oversee the Dumpties
up the bean stalk, and for who knows what
giant enemy beyond them?”
“What are we forgetting?” she said.
“We are forgetting something.”
the kind of warm skin wants to touch
directly
The night was virgin warm, first of the year
kind of warm that skin wants to touch directly.
Clearly
over the river just over the ridge
just now the wine skin
on the platform
must cast its deep
black
shadow triangular
out from the bluff down onto the
slapping waters
where that afternoon he had showered
spreading a film of newness
so sweet over his skin it
had made a diminishing Braille map of its absence
to guide his hand where it had not been till he’d washed all over
and because now he could stand to smell himself again, and because his skin
told him it wanted spring air all over it in the same way, he threw
back the seagreen blanket
and took off the borrowed clothes. Now
the air was warm
new places. Now the night air
was warm
on
his legs. The night
was warm
on his belly now. The night was sweet
batting open the
timpani transparent trap doors
across his nostrils letting delicious night
pour down into him
doping his blood.
Oh
now
the night
was flirting.
Now it moved
over his balls like
liquid, up
the wand that
began now to wave, now bobbed about
like a woozy boxer — blood blind thing
debating whether something’s going
to come on and clomp on it or not — and
the night air
in fact doing all it could
to move on the spongy red mass, well enuff in fact
one moment it flopped over the top, semi-straightened
back up like it heard
something coming a semi-
moment
then wised up and folded sadly into itself
like a time lapsed film of a tobacco plant’s growing
run backwards.
at least the size of the sky
“So, Jack, do you want the big music?”
He must be asleep. He is dreaming he and Solomon
are on the ledge
in black shadow on the back side of the great rock.
He had wanted to walk in that shadow
awake
but he didn’t
get to
till now.
In thru a black crack
inside the shadow
into
the rock they
step
onto
steps
goin
down.
How was it Jack could
tell in the darkness
it was deeper in there by far
than
could
ever
fit
inside even
the huge rock that had gradually
come to dominate the landscape outside, that
he’d had to lean back at the base of to see trees growing high up
on its sides? In space
so live and vast even
silence
reverberated,
why
did he know when that light
arrived overhead he would see
that
inside here
was at least the size of the sky?
Solomon said, “Take
my
arm.” They walked in darkness.
The smell of fresh earth intense
though there could’ve been no plowing anywhere near.
Haven’t the seasons been mixed up lately? Jack thought. Images
of sycamores leafed, unleafed and leaving — in all four stages always
a loud white presence — lately were they out of sequence?
How long has where I put my feet down
been air? Solomon opened a door. Light spilled out toward them. Jack’s glances
back over his shoulder couldn’t find a landing place for the light. The dark chewed it —
mouth open.
the wall before the music fell
They walked
into a hall.
Jack’s left foot and right foot
jolted down to gravity
on a strange soft floor
that clacked quietly when
they stepped. Muffled thru walls he heard
strange
large music from a band
featuring twin electric
guitars—Jack didn’t know it was electric guitar
music you
understand, but he did know
it was twin. In fact
it was not guitar music but the harp’s dream making imitation.
Apparently she knew
her history well
into the future. She got
the distance between 1954 and 1994 right to the very year
but muted
the bass and drum blare
and aggressive treble
so Jack could comprehend it. Solomon opened another
door and the wall
before the music fell
and they walked into its
air shaking loudness. Jack dreamed he saw men
dressed
in clothes like those Ikon Knott had
loaned him. He saw them make
the music with long lyres of the ordinary type
that have to be operated
by hand.
As was common in his dreams a singer’s
words invented the scene. When
Jack heard,
“As I was floating
thru the sky,
I saw you lying on the
ground,”
he saw or felt a great black bird
like a thunderstorm flying — he felt the wind it stirred — so large it blocked
the sun light in his dream — it is my dream he thought — but how do I see
what this great bird sees flying when what it sees is me — lying on the ground
thru the tent flaps dark triangle among miles of moonlit shadows?
“I flew into
blue
eyes ten
miles
high,”
At these words the black bird cloud scooted over to show
that blue with sky. The eye blue sky, the sky
blue eye,
defined by a pupil made of
a night sky hole of black nothing
moving on the blue sky.
was it coming toward him? or was
he being hurled toward it?
A million times a million times too big to be
the frightened iris
of Jill’s eye
watched him
lying on the ground. “Jack!
“Jack!
“do you
want the big music?”
the older Greek material gets the more
basic the future genres it combines
I think this part
of his dream here for a while now was not made
by the harp at all but
by his mind, whatever part
of the human mind previews the future
so you know, say, an uncle
will have a heart attack in the morning
or what the girl tomorrow at the car rental place
will look like though you’ve never seen her—
or that seven
starved cattle will eat up seven fat—that part
showed Jack
the musicians
taking
a break.
They passed a smoke
among themselves, while one of the guitar players
was saying
“the older Greek material gets the
more basic
the future genres
it combines — Sophocles and his fellows
combined horror movie with
ballet, lyric splendor
with riddle, scriptural commentary with tall tale —
but
skip back over before Homer
“it was dirty joke
as primal scripture. For instance”
Here
he had
his
mind’s
dream of the
guitar player’s conversation
overlapping
the basic broad dream space made by
the harp’s imitation of their music
“For instance,
the Sky’s
castration,
“that prime Titan, first father king—
mate of Gaia, the Earth goddess herself—I’m talking about
the Sky he came with
a hard on every night to Gaia . . .”
The other guitar player
interrupted — “it would seem like
“Gaia
was stuck with the missionary position
what with her lover being the sky.”
The bass player said, “Did you see
how Jack’s hard on
dipped
at the word castration?”
“But this
first father,”
continued the other, “forced all their offspring back into the hollows
within Earth. What could she do pregnant,
more than a dozen Titans, all her children stuffed back inside her their living quarters
inside her more of them always being engendered — the discomfort!
Let Loretta Lynn sing about that!
She had to do something. She made
a sickle from iron that was within her their son Kronos used it to cut
Sky’s dick off one night when he stuck it in there and Kronos flung
the whopper flopper into sea green water.
The foam of the sea white frothing washed around it so lifely so lift
its churning lent life and the blood ejaculating the wrong way was so hot it
cauterized the throbbing severed thing It turned into back stroking
long love girl Aphrodite That’s her origin Where her titties
stand out strong’s where the head of Sky’s prick swelled out from the shaft.”
“I didn’t know that.” “Jack’s prick is stirring again.” “It can’t decide to
get hard again or not.”
His cock’s
rising
and sleeping
entered into their conversation even as
that conversation invented its part of his
dream.
“Really there were two
Titan generations
who kept a lid on
their own creation. Kronos
was worse even than his father. The Sky God had only
stuffed his babies back into darkness;
Kronos
ate his!
but again they lived inside him—Zeus among them.
Two generations of the generative force
withholding unfolding
creation within them—stuck,
once in the mother once in the father—
Two generations opposing
this layer out here of division and its
complications. You can’t
completely
blame them, can you? Think of the purity
of Jack’s yearning when he was a pilgrim in the wilderness alone with the harp,
then the simple physical presence of one woman and he’s captive again of pussy present
and pussy past.
“Not till Zeus’ victory did a father god allow two legged thinking creatures
to move out here into the light whereinsoever they sprang up be
turned loose to spread their own confusion out here
in the open. They had a point! See what it comes to?”
I
bet Night liked that
It seemed to Jack’s dick in the dream there was a friendly otherness
inside the temperature inside the breeze
and this was more interesting than anything in the story
since the part about the big back stroking girl.
“Why do you say ‘out here?’” The drummer
was saying. “I mean, right now
we are not ‘out here.’ We
are having this conversation
` in Jack’s dream. We don’t
really see Jack till tomorrow. When
Jack wakes up
he
will go
‘out there.’
We will just go
out
with the light.”
“Right,” said the guitar player, but he kept right on talking.
“In another
of their
stories
of creation
there was, to start with,
nothing but Night—a big
big black
bird, Night was then, with
wings ten thousand miles, maybe longer—
big
bird, called ‘Nyx’
in Greek. She flapped
so hugely—her own wings—they fanned
a wind so mighty it circled around all space and pressed up against her from behind
held her tail feathers spread out
penetrated
her and engendered
within her
a great silver egg . . .”
“I bet Night liked that,” the singer said. She did.
Again, Jack’s wand was waving — from dream talk
windgineering —
Maybe it had been hasty
to think the night could not cuddle
on the big blanket in wine light.
“ .. . .A great silver egg Nyx laid in the infinite lap of darkness.
Eros
hatched
first from this great egg and with
Eros out in the open it
showed
everything else
was already
in
the egg all along just awaiting the uncovering.
Did the Greeks argue, like protestants, which
of these was true, or did the stories just
coexist like two movies—the Stallone version
and the Swartzennegger version?
See, both stories, tho they
contradict each other, agree. Eros
or Aphrodite—sexual love—
has to be in the picture for there to be a picture
for there to be
a down here, an out there,
at all.”
bound
to dance
Wind still played within
the oil sheen
on his cock
His sensation in his dream
had crawled out clear into the drip of oil
about to drip off the urethra back over the whole of the head.
And from there
on
out
into
the breeze that nuzzled it.
Being tethered breeze his sensation could move
around now out of his body, a few
inches above it but his dream got confused
Now it thought
the jabbing thing
was a fire fly yonder the size of an owl dancing to the music
dipping under the tree lines and up into the sky again
where ever the sound placed it now it was
the thrusting of
Gaia’s saturated clitoris
heaving at Sky as if Venus still swung from his loins. In dreams you
can do that, he thought but he was vexed how the goddess heaving
could direct the music that directed the giant lightning bug’s flying and them
be at the same time the same motion.
He just let it go. No one would test him,
at least not tonight, on the source of the sound that made
the space for the words to happen in.
“It’s certain either version is naughty.
On the other hand
in the Hebrew
Genesis . . . . .”
“What’s that?” the singer asked
“I think it’s a woman,” the bass player said,
“coming into the tent. She’s, yall look, she’s
taking
her dress off.”
“She is, isn’t she? In the Hebrew, gender division
is not needed for creation
just the
word — like Ra
creating himself by speaking his name out of chaos—
the feminine in this line is an afterthought. Even the animals
are made before woman.”
“ No, no—” the singer interrupted—
‘a great
darkness . . .”
“What’s she doing?” “It looks like she’s
going down on him!”
“and ain’t it
a meeting—
after all
the spoken
notion
against the
nothing?
the materials
for the material world,
somehow inside nothing,
shaken by the
saying, jump
when it says
‘be something.’”
“’Light,’” said the singer. “It said ‘light.’”
The other guitarist said,
“Look boys,
Gaia
finally got on top.”
“Jack!”
When the first wave of his coming
was over he shivered sky sized echoed trumpets
but he shivered too soon. A second
cargo powered
the joy thru—so much of it a widening of capacity
was forced causing a secondary pleasure perpendicular
to the pleasure of its passing.
“Jack!”
Jack hears the drummer in the band
directly address him, “Jack, if I were you
I’d go back out the other side. No disrespect
to John Keats intended but I think
you are better off out there with your breath in your face
while this is happening and
you won’t be able
to back up and do it over.”
Jack was waking up to the sweet reality
a woman was on him and had him in her mouth
and coaxed sleep out of him on the up sup
and dipped him back in dream
on the down
till he was indeed
looking the air he breathed full in the face by the time the third wave
left him twisting limp and tender on the hillside in the moon light.
It could not be Gail because the breasts spread too wide
and too high above his knee. There wasn’t time now
to deny he had had that thought about his hostess.
He would have to do that later.
“You taste different.”
The harp—which Jack thought could no
longer surprise him—surprised him
by coming to his rescue. It used the voice again
which readers of Chapter 2
would recognize as Carl Perkins but Jack
thought of as ‘that one.’ Jack guessed
this voice was meant by the harp to make the woman think
Jack was Solomon.
“Been eating strawberries,”
it singsang.
Like Carl Perkins.
“I didn’t know you could sound like that.”
Jack slipped and answered himself, “like what?”
“You know, like a peasant.”
“Oh, I can sound like a peasant,” Jack
heard the dig. The harp was teasing him doubly
moving dangerously close to dropping the disguise
from the voice altogether. What did the harp
have to lose? Come to think of it, what did he?
Why was he playing out his role in this apparent
deception? She was crawling up him kissing her way
toward his mouth, she paused at his nipple to nudge, then
the dark silhouette leaned up on its elbow
and touching with her pointing finger
his wet and wimpled cock, addressed it. “We’ll
get back to you later,” she said, then dived her mouth
at his, clearly nowhere near finished with him.
Surely the polite thing to do was to get thru this
and spare her embarrassment, and, anyway,
the activity was on course like a boat already shoved
and even if the water is shallow jumping out of the boat is—
he was puzzled why but it seemed powerfully so—not an option.
It was like they were characters in one of the harp’s illustrations
externalized, images bound to dance to the big music.