I spend these hours
Casting about in my mind
Looking for a vein to mine
A stream to fish
A wheel to turn
A row to hoe
Tools at the ready
(pen, paper, desk)
Muscles primed to WORK
But in what particular
Thought to work
I know not.
Horatio
Tis Strange.
Certainly
When the past meets the present
Tis
Strange
When a moment from long ago
Seemingly unrepeatable
Replicates itself
In the now
It is
Strange
Folding time
Like an origami crane
It meets itself
In unexpected places.
So frowned he once when, in an angry parle, he smote the sledded poleaxe on the ice.
How in the blazes does Horatio know how Hamlet, the king,
FROWNED
In a battle years ago?
Was he there watching?
Did someone sketch the frown of the king as he did his smiting?
It’s also not clear what a sledded poleaxe might be
Poleaxe, Pollacks. . .and what makes it, or them, sledded?
And who took notes?
Why return to this battle after death, King Hamlet?
Why freeze yourself anew, ready to smite upon the ice?
Horatio recognizes this expression, though. . .
It brings it all back to mind. . .
That particular frown
That particular SMOTE.
Such was the very armor he had on when he the ambitious Norway combated.
When battling with ambition
It is a good idea to put some armor on.
When returning to the life you’ve left
It makes sense to put that same armor on.
Ambition is a serious opponent.
You must be subtle
You must be keen
Get inside its skin
As it gets inside yours.
Make your armor well
Forge it with love
With grace
With delicacy
The metal of the past will be no match against it.
As thou art to thyself.
I know this isn’t what he’s saying
But I put these words in a kaleidoscope
And I see me
And my art
Cells intertwined
As I am myself
As my art is itself
As we two are one mixed up thing
Little bits of art
Next to little bits of self
All starred
All circled
And diamonded together
Into a firework of being.
Before God, I might not this believe without the sensible and true avouch of mine own eyes.
If you heard it
You might not believe it.
If you felt it
You’d question it.
If you smelled it
You’d credit your imagination.
If you tasted it
Or sensed it in any other way,
It would not be enough.
It is the eyes
The judge and jury
The gavel banger of the senses.
We use all the others first.
We hear, nestled in the womb,
Feel the turn in the circle of fluid,
Smell the world as we raise our heads into it,
Seek out the breast with our feeling lips
And taste what will feed us.
Later, later, we begin to understand with these
Guiding balls of jelly
And as we do,
Sight takes over
Standing on all the other knowings
And shushing them.
I charge thee speak.
To charge
To charm
To conjure
To funnel all command and requirement
Into the jolt of an electrical impulse
This is what I will summon
To hear your voice.
Speak, speak.
Urging words
From a mouth that has yet to speak
Urging sound
And maybe something that will reassure us all
Of this thing’s humanity.
A dog could bark
A bird could sing
But if this thing could speak, can speak,
We will all breathe more easily.
Before it does
It conjures visions of a hell full of unintelligible sound
Of howling and gurgling and grunting.
If it can not conjure words
Our life after this life
Will send us so far from all we’ve learned –
That we will be nothing but the pain we knew
When we lived.
Sound strung to sound
Like beads of things so horrible they can’t be named
Strung together with the thread of the memory.
Stay.
One word
With roots
With pleading
With chains
With seduction
With hope
With anticipation
With command
With leash
With pointing
With soft caress
With collar
With head tilt
With its opposite
Wrapped up in it like a moth.
By heaven I charge thee, speak.
Invoking the powers of the skies
Calling on the authority of sun
Of moon
Of stars
Of blue
Of black
Of the patterns that curve, sparkling in circles
Of clouds
Of color that goes on and on and up
And across
Of cycle
And eternity
And whatever rests within it
If the will of what is above
Can not call down the rain
Or your voice from your body,
Who knows what will?
The Hamlet Project 