Author: erainbowd

He.

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Not me.
It is me, certainly
But I acknowledge my name in the third person singular
Because my name has ceased to stand for me
It now stands for the person with my name
He.
Standing for the person that once was me
Who he is, I couldn’t say – but I stand for him
I answer to his name.
I am me, he, him.

Barnardo?

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An Italian in Denmark
He found work as part of the watch
A good place for a foreigner.
In the dark of the night
He can stand on the battlements
And scan the horizon for lights
Or movement.
There are many foreigners here among the ranks
Sometimes, when things are quiet and the wind whistles by them as they change posts
They nod at one another and can smell the cooking of their mothers
Miles and miles away.
Mostly they stand. Stoic and firm.
All eyes, all ears
Hands clasped around a weapon
Holding it steady
Waiting and watching
Just receiving.
Barnardo? How will you know him?
By the tomato skin under his fingernails?
By the click of his accent?
By the smell of his musty doublet?
By the shift of the air around him in the darkness?
He is here to relieve you.
You rarely speak
His footsteps sound different
You listen – taking each sound apart
Is that his gait?
It couldn’t be –
Barnardo?
He.

Long Live the King

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Long Live the King
This is a platitude, really
An auto-response.
Who am I?
I’m fine, thank you.
Oh, it’s you.
Yes, of course. And how are you?
Chilly for this time of year, isn’t it?
So we miss each other
But somehow in missing each other
We recognize the figure caught out of the corner of our eye
Through the mirror.
*
What concern to me is the lifespan of a king? He lives, he dies – so?
Except,
A king dies and his nation shudders
“What will come next?”
It is an earthquake shift, this death.
Maybe it will end happier
Maybe it will end with houses spilled into ravines, ponies on roofs, poles
Through guts, broken limbs.
Maybe we will all be healed
But it will, none the less, shake us.
So we pray for his life. Because it is our own.
Long Live the King.

Stand and unfold yourself.

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Stand and unfold yourself.

Arm over arm, leg under leg
Like a bit of human origami.
The cold of the world
Has creased the edges.
I am triangle fold
Square fold
Bend bend bend
until I am another shape entirely
unrecognizable to those that knew me long ago.
Even if I do unfold myself
even if I reveal
what is tucked between the flaps of paper
what has been bent into diamonds
curved into arches
If I stand, tall – each corner to corner
The lines of my bending will remain.
I am scarred with my adaptations
Fold me into something new
And you will see the ghost of the version,
Each evolution exposing the shapes before.

Nay, answer me.

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I wrote this already.
Then I forgot about it.
It was terrible, really truly.
My second day in to the project and
Bump bump bump down the road of textual investigation,
I discovered it wasn’t going to be good every time.
Or even every other time.
Or ever.
But
I realized I’d forgotten to type up this line, in the flurry of typing and copying and transferring.
I searched for it in all the old journals –
Finding the right month
Then the words, hiding between other thoughts.
The second line of the play is a power struggle.
The second line has also become a struggle of art.
Can I let that old bit sit there?
Can I send these paltry words out into the world
With no blanket
No context
No skeleton?
Just little slugs of words
Not even snails with a house to hide in.
*
Nay, nay, no. I deny you. I refuse you.
No. The answer to who I may be is nay.
Who are you to demand who I am?
I won’t be questioned.
Nay An – a sound to be answered
Ser Me – To be – me.
Nay, answer me. Me. Answer. Me.

Who’s there?

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Who’s There?

Who’s there? Who is there? Who is There?
It’s a three-pronged question.
It starts small.
Who comes in?
Are we alone?
Is someone coming?
But it balloons, like an ever widening gyre –
Who is there?
Are we alone in the universe?
Who is there?
Who’s there?
And who am I?
Who is here?
Is it  – well, it calls all of it into question, doesn’t it? Who’s there?
When the night is dark
And you can barely understand where
Your own hand is
It blends seamlessly into the darkness
The boundaries blurring
Me, Hand, Darkness
We’re all one out here
I only know that I’m here
Because I can feel me
This foot on the ground
This knee against that rough fabric
Whenever I bend it.
I can feel my neck when the wind
Blows against it.
I place my hand on metal
And it is my hand
Metal, cold. Hand, warm.
But if I leave it there long enough
The one will start to blend into the other
And what was warm will get colder
And what was cold will get warmer.
What is hand now and what is metal?
The eyes search for edges in the blackness.
This is how we will know a thing
By its boundaries.
I know my heart when I place my hand on my chest and feel it pulse.
I recognize my mind when it runs into something unknown and steps
Around its edges.