mary june brown

2012. Like her girlhood self, in the 80s, the 90s, centurion, she makes promises to do things. Only this year, they are simple and humble oaths. They are:

1. Forget

2. Move forward

3. Give love

4. Accept love

5. Be honest

6. Be accountable

(The past’s roll call: Understand? Absent. Fix? Absent.)

There is one year, this year, and she will grab it in both hands, bangles sliding up and down her wrists, clinking and making merry music. She will shake the year until its teeth rattle, until it gives up its secrets and the fissures crack wholly open, and all heart-staggering joy and promise are right there for the taking. She will gather all the pieces of what is possible, stretching in the largest sun salutation to thank God for the chances of 2012, the experiences vast and valiant, the fulfillment more vibrant than she had ever imagined, right there.

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As bad as it is – the hurt, the intermediate, and then, the sophisticated, the hurt, the burnished pain, where fire has burnt holes in the soul and filament, filament, filament, all notions of romanticism scorched, and all the hairs of her head have been lifted in abject pain…as bad as it is –

It is worse knowing that he set the match aflame. And will not be bothered to purse his lips to extinguish it.

Please send burn units, please provide cold packs, please have mercy and bring out the hoses. Please lay down cold towels, please sing arias when all the world goes black, charred by this fire.
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We don’t do this even to mongrels. Even to the most lowly dogs, we do not do this.

We do not leave them standing in the rain, soaked to the skin.

We do not watch them shivering and scared, and turn away.

We do not tell mangy animals we love them and then kick them, dispassionately, while saying “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

We do not put plates of food to starving dogs and then snatch them away when they open their mouths to eat.

We do not listen to an injured animal scratching at our front door, only to turn out the lights and go to bed.

We don’t do this even to mongrels.

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she is floating in deviation, in a boat downriver amongst and betwixt the blades

there is no sound here, only shadow and sun. observing wide pockets of shade

and slivered carrels of bright light. in the glare, she follows the cloud maps

per contra in the dark she cannot find her compass skidding about the floorboards

climbing awkwardly from the craft to scrunch the luxury of grass beneath bare feet

peering quizzically into a forest, now being so far outside it. it is not more beautiful

than the glades and the fields and the dirt paths and the pebbles and the ants

pro forma she walks forward and wherever her foot lands she sees she makes a print

(she survives this journey via deus ex machina)

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One eye open. One eye closed.

Klimt's "Judith" - click to enlarge

she had sung aloud, when’st alone quite unabashed she was

only the doors have opened to him and the room turns amber

where’st the sun has peaked its head around the corner

alas there is the stopping of the hands

alack there is the stopping of time

alas there is the stopping of forward’d fate

alack there is the how’st and the why’st of stopping

alas there is the flooded eyes and softened lips

alack there is the recollections of blissful tapestry

alas there is the memory of fall’d robes and Turkish towels

alack there is the opening up and there is trust

(And so this is Christmas, and What Have We Done?)

and there are their quietudes and their poetry and their wonder

there is this year, fate, deed, word, thought, destiny

“Every time you say it (or read it) you make another copy

In your brain” (they do not deny minds, nor bodies, legs braided)

touch her like this, hold her like that

she is loved, and now awakened, there is no sleep

Gustave Klimt knows and he knows and she knows

Ajai! Asia. Tantra. Blessed symphony

the one thing she is, is this: Brave. They must be brave.

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An aria is an elaborate composition, replete. It is stone fireplaces and flirtatious glances, champagne and living in a place where all the rest of the world has pushed pause. O! Oratorio! The most gorgeous song, rendered beautifully. An aria, she thinks, must be sung so that it reverberates off the tiled art where one bathes.

She is performing in the most bittersweet opera, wondering if it will end in a duet or a solo. All the best opera are based in hope. The tragedies have no quarter when compared to the lifting of the soprano and alto, the tenor and bass of the spirit soaring above earthly cares.

Operetti, singing the songs of love. These singers, they deserve happiness. She knows little Turkish, but she knows this: BEN şarkı şarkı sevgi. She sings the songs of love.

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In December. Time moves fitfully and yes, there is still poetry. For those who find they cannot write because Creativity has other places it visits at Christmas time, there is still, thankfully, all the millions of verses that bring pleasure to the senses. Were it writ, or were it read, the poems and their beloved lines comfort. Time to revisit the poems that for years and years have sounded their beautiful swells.

e.e. cummings, one of her perennial favorites, gives us this gorgeous offering:

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

The Christmas of her life had come and so she believed her love had come to her. But love is a prism of fire, and from it, there are reflectors and reflections that cannot be known or seen at all angles. In the space of twenty-four hours, what had seemed like a courageous phoenix succumbed back to fire, to lay ruined and charred in the ashes.

Her heart, thrown into the garbage. This is what has happened.

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