DAy 7: See the Turtle

 Stanzas

The park disappeared. The world went dark. She was a black woman, still young and undoubtedly beautiful, sitting on a park bench beside a fountain and a metal turtle with a wet and gleaming shell. She might have been meditating on this warm late-spring afternoon in the year of 1999.

And, had she not stopped to listen to the man playing the guitar, who knows how much of what followed might have been different?

She falls forward into the darkness and the soft beeping of machinery and the last voice she hears is that of Walter Cronkite, telling her Diem and Nhu are dead, astronaut Alan Shephard is dead, Lyndon Johnson is dead, Rock Hudson is dead, Roland of Gilead is dead, Eddie of New York is dead, Jake of New York is dead, the world is dead, the worlds, the Tower is falling, a trillion universes are merging, and all is Discordia, all is ruin, all is ended.

Day 6: UnFound

Stanza 3:

gods, ghosts, visitations
                   but fuck
        Susannah Dean
              all at once the world seemed very thin to her

a turtle shell gleaming
                   tipping further and further
         her idea of how things worked had changed
               swinging sign said WALK again 

Day 5: Let's Go

Stanza 2: 3-5

this is delicate work
the door: greedy, stubborn, self involved
Does thee understand?
bone residue: powdery
spoke briefly: finish the circle
unguarded, old man mouths
magnets of narrow crystal
magic thick, spark to idle talk
or into darkness, any door ever passed
an end more desperate, a second look when
they did let go, I think, grow dark and dangerous
hands parted, clearing the path, twirled twice
once you were a wandering man
before the floor sloped god's name 

Day 4: Dark Glass

Stanza 2

Susannah mostly slept, still impossibly distant, raw
no word of apology could be enough
river's breath, an unkept promise, hard to believe
raised voices screaming, do you know why he does that
changing his tone, dead cornstalks, she reached out
and touched red, side by side, adjacent worlds
scrim of terror, I'm no sound perhaps
this edge split off, a funerary heap of snowy masks, a pale ambush
and speaking of wolves, had she been afraid
nothing like fire, winds came stale
and streaked with dust, her wheel out of true
dead, like diamonds, is forever
and what's going to happen when we get there
you're a fool and I'm another
open the box, no lock, easy to grave
silent the voices, finish the job

Day 3: A Beam?

Stanza 1: 1-3

Aye?
One of the Beams?
Is that what ye call it?
Ye ask of kaven?
The Sharing?
How many of the Beams are there?
Will the Manni still turn up tomorrow?
Your man?
Who could knows?
Can't sleep, Jake?
And how are your arches? 
How many Beams remain to hold the tower?
Eddie?
It was an Earthquake, wasn't it?
How can you know that?
Why not?
How long before everything ended?
Or knocked it down completely?
And this 'un?
Is that what I am to you?
On the other side of the tower?
Were we not?
You have no way of telling which one broke?
Do you have the sight then?
Do'ee call me wrong, Roland?
Would there be time to cry out?
Oil?
Don't you think?
Are you positive this is true?
And how would it end?
Is she even alive?

Day 2: Susannah

Stanza 1.2:

Dearheart,
           she herself, a possessed sigul/ her cottage: Old Magic (intuition), you felt her true, groping sanity/ also her there, sorrowing work/ old nigh' clearly, she said, stone soul/ mouth malevolent from bends o' the rainbow/ clearest path, thirteen hands dryly were my ruins/ for you over glammer, dark thirteen world, I'd die and could, said now stall/ forces startling/ tell the gathered/ mother-naked, rubbed oils, came together fucking/ fools for fate/ the sight undressed, stretched herself like any woman/ well met, she stroked/ calling secrets/ Susannah

Day 1: Cave of Voices

Stanza 1

Cave of Voices

a question, lightly penciled on the flyleaf if you believed a work of fiction magic/ dusty sleep. not long after dawn in the dark/ anyone.       unroll the book of water     once it's gone/ anyone I suppose can be haunted, even willing so I am, blindly, mouth loose, others forgetful/ gnarled world poured through fingers/        never fallen/       eyes from the back in that cave beyond me, persists/ we told very little then wrong side of the sky waited/   I set my price, the door purported to be the greater sorrow, hear me now       how long will/   how long will the magic stay