Fie is awfully fun to say
Especially if it’s felt as “Fuck”
Or meant.
O, fie. O, fuck.
Fuck, Demetrius, Fuck!
Fie, fie.
I may just start replacing the “fucks” in my vocabulary with “Fie.”
It could give me the satisfaction of cursing
Without the potential for getting me fired were I to accidentally
Say it in the classroom. I never really slip there –
But in a puppet workshop for 2nd graders, in an attempt to say two words at once,
It came out “Fuck its” instead of “puppets”
Luckily, because they were 2nd grade Catholic school kids, they didn’t notice.
I wonder what I do to filter language like this – what sieve is in place in my brain
That allows me to switch code from one situation to the next.
Fie, fie, I do not know.

I can see you with someone who’s into skiing.
She should probably be a high-powered exec or something: well-dressed
In sharp but conservative clothing.
I bet her hair is never out of place.
I’m not sure how to write the ad for you, Hell.
“Fiery inferno seeks chilly companion to try out that restaurant in Tribeca. Me: the home for renegades and evil-doers. You: a put together mistress of cool.”
I’m not sure if it’ll work or if I can responsibly set up someone to date Hell.
Maybe, as long as I warn her first.

Besides heaven
Besides earth
Besides love
Besides wondering and wonderment
Besides looking up and looking down
Besides the eyes evolving to lead us
Besides the heart evolving from frog
Besides the body leaning into what it likes and recoiling from what it does not
Besides words
Besides music
Besides dancing
Besides singing
Besides pretending to be other than you are
Besides standing in a group feeling it shift
Besides the breeze blowing through a window,
waving the curtain and lifting your hair
Besides food
Besides trees shooting towards the sky
Besides lavender fields
Besides clockwork turning into itself
Besides bodies falling into each other and opening into surprise.

At this workshop today we were asked to write a few lines
Like a poem
About where we’re from.
We wrote “I come from. . .” then continued.
I have written this sort of poem before
Been in other workshops
Other classrooms.
Have I always begun the poem the same way?
Perhaps.
I started, today, with the earth –
The quality of the dirt,
The color, the texture.
In my concrete, brick and steel day to day,
I do not think about the soil – I rarely see it.
But when asked
Where I’m from, I think of where I was planted,
Where I grew from seed to plant.
I think of the earth
I think of the garden I grew in,
Transplanted though I may be.

I haven’t seen the text notes on this
But I suspect that this punctuation
Is Editor’s Choice. Which would seem
To make it actor’s choice as well.
I feel sure I’ve seen it as “My uncle.”
Or if not seen, certainly performed, with that period instead of a question mark.
But a question mark has its merits.
The period seems to continue the thought of “my prophetic soul”
It says “I knew it” with a kind of finality.
The question mark could either bring a hint of uncertainty
To this prophetic question or a wave of disbelief.
Or perhaps some editor once
Punctuated it with an exclamation point
That would make assurance double sure
Or even a dash –
My uncle –
Unfinished could indicate the unfinished thought of
“My uncle murdered you.” Or “My uncle is the serpent.” Or
“My uncle is one slimy son of a bitch and I knew it all along.”
But most likely, editors have given this a period. Or a question mark.
But all punctuation is up for questioning I think and perhaps
Worth forgetting for a moment.

There is absolutely no better way to say “I knew it!”
Deep down
Beyond consciousness
The soul is telling all kinds of prophetic secrets.
Things that couldn’t really be true but of course are.
Of course, we can know all kinds of untrue things too.
I thought I knew exactly the right place to go for grad school.
I knew that if I tried hard enough, I would find a way to live in London.
Both these knowings of my prophetic soul
Were decidedly incorrect and it is the falliability of my knowing
That caused so much damage.
The mistakes were one thing but the sureness around them at the time
Disrupted my entire navigation system.
The lode star of my knowing things proved to be a false guide –
A glimmer out of place, a plane, not a star.
What then to navigate by?
What compass to use?
We can’t really move by the whole sky
Can’t drive the entire map.
We must have something.
Soul.
Star.
Hope.
True or not.

Why bring love and meditation into this?
We’re talking about murder and revenge here
Where did the loving meditationing references come from?
Also – what’s so swift about meditation?
It seems to me to be, at its core, a slow process
Nor are thoughts of love
Particularly speedy. One might be struck with them suddenly,
Particularly in a love at first sight situation
But one of the sweetest qualities of love
Is its lack of speed, the way one can sink
Into loving, losing all sense of time,
Where hours can pass in love
Without seeming to have been a minute.
The world slows down with love.
Love slows down the world.
I do not think thoughts of love
Would add speed or wind to an arrow,
It would rather slowly focus it
Til it reached its aim.

Did you say murder? We’re five scenes into the play
And Now we discover a murder?
It’s clearly not a murder mystery.
In a mystery, the murder happens quickly
And then we swiftly set about solving it.
We know this isn’t that by its placement in the play and of course, it isn’t.
Because this mystery will be solved in a matter
Of minutes from this first mention of murder.

Did you just say revenge?
I’m sorry, my ear hasn’t quite acclimated to Ghost Speak just yet
And it sounded like you said “revenge” –
Like, I was bound to revenge
But that couldn’t be right,
Could it?
It was stonehenge you said, right?
That’s where the ghosts go home to sleep?
Stonehenge – not revenge
Or Kenge (and Carboys) from the Dicken’s novel, right?
Or – pendge – like, what the cool kids are calling pendulums these days, right?
You didn’t say “revenge.”

I suppose he’s saying he is obligated to hear what his father’s spirit has to say
Because of his filial bonds.
Then, too, there’s the sense of being BOUND to hear something
Simply unable to be missed because it is audible
And happening where he is – the way I’m bound
To hear those guys in the jerseys talking about the game
No matter how much I’d wish to avoid it.
Or perhaps there is a kind of binding
That inevitably knits speaker and hearer
Into a listening connection
As springy as a rubber band
Or a knitted scarf.
I also picture a child bounding across a yard
Toward his father, like a puppy.
There is a bounding toward this story
And a bond
That is about to be sealed.