Lillith *
~LIZBETH RYMLAND~
Liz Blog *
About *
What's New *
Lost Expedition *
Primordial Parks *
Rhythmic Arts *
Demetrauma/Persephrenia *
Strange Conditions *
Alchemical Circus *
Nightqueen *
Lillith *
Monstrosity *
Illumines *
Temple of Yes *
Vanquished *
Phenomenology *
Poetry-Science *
Harm Reduction *
What's New with My Site?
THANK YOU PRAYER THROUGH TRAIN WINDOW AT DUSK
>
>Thank you dear lord
>For the luminous rain
>That comes down upon us
>Again and again.
>Thank you for the boys in the park
>Running in circles late into dark.
>Mesmerized by the flash on the hill
>The pendulous rock, the mobius motion
>Terrified by the slit on the wall
>The heads look radiant
>Revolving in circles.
>
>Thank you dear Lord for the wind round my head
>Transistor commotion, pink and gold lightning.
>Thank you dear lord for the veil on my knees
>The flutter of bird wings
>The lips at my neck.
>
>Veiled girls run along the edge of a cliff
>Telephone turnstiles, the lifting and lunging
>Messenger boys fly down to the rock
>The fire seeds spinning in my broken heart
>
>I open my head, I open my heart
>The light comes in sheathes
>The copper is breaking
>The side walls are flapping
>And I am awaking.
>
>Thank you dear Lord
>For the lines on my palms
>The gold in my teeth
>The yod on my back
>Girls came from Warwick
>Just to study her face
>The jackdaws are screaming
>My eyes are ablazing.
>
>Thank you dear Lord for the gold in my hair
>The luminous cavern at the top of the stair
>Kindly old women picking girls from the sand
>Passing light into light from hand into hand
>Rocks and storms don't touch us at all
>When the light of the holy casts her face on the wall
>The sea captain rescues the boys from the park
>Who crawl from the trees where they hang and they bark
>
>Firegirl walks down the iceberg and clay
>Her hat is frozen on a door in the hay
>Mercy comes through like a plate on a storm
>Mercy comes through like a horse from a wheel
>Mercy comes back like my teeth in the Sun
>It comes like a virgin, dressed like a Queen
>The Queen is undone
>Her torso is opened
>We can reach through her thorax and pull out a diamond
>
>Thank you dear Lord for the briny sea
>Thank you dear Lord for the yard full of deer
>Ball lightning eruptions sparking skids on the floor
>The phantom fingers that knock each night on my door
>Ramshackle road girls asleep in the grass
>Their dresses dotted with paint from a rattle
>
>My hands are grasping for the light in your hair
>Your crooked teeth gleaming like so many diamonds
>Delirious rickshaw takes our coffin to Mars
>The motion is crazy as I open my heart
>The heart is a riot of birdcries and bees
>
>Thank you dear Lord for the luminous rain
>That runs down my blouse and into the drain
>The one-legged roadman asleep on the grass
>The candy-striped dandy and his electric blue lass
>The marsh is ablaze with furies and flies
>That conjures the gases and opens our eyes
>
>Aspens are barren
>Black forests are bare
>White foam and flax join the trees to the stairs
>(Her hysterical grin, his swashbuckling pose
>The tap of a branch, the smell of a rose)
>
>Dear Lord I am grateful
>The gathering of wood
>
>The beehives are speckled
>The woodlands are bright
>Electric blue boys find their way through this night.
>
>lizbeth rymland c. 1998
>
>
>Thank you dear lord
>For the luminous rain
>That comes down upon us
>Again and again.
>Thank you for the boys in the park
>Running in circles late into dark.
>Mesmerized by the flash on the hill
>The pendulous rock, the mobius motion
>Terrified by the slit on the wall
>The heads look radiant
>Revolving in circles.
>
>Thank you dear Lord for the wind round my head
>Transistor commotion, pink and gold lightning.
>Thank you dear lord for the veil on my knees
>The flutter of bird wings
>The lips at my neck.
>
>Veiled girls run along the edge of a cliff
>Telephone turnstiles, the lifting and lunging
>Messenger boys fly down to the rock
>The fire seeds spinning in my broken heart
>
>I open my head, I open my heart
>The light comes in sheathes
>The copper is breaking
>The side walls are flapping
>And I am awaking.
>
>Thank you dear Lord
>For the lines on my palms
>The gold in my teeth
>The yod on my back
>Girls came from Warwick
>Just to study her face
>The jackdaws are screaming
>My eyes are ablazing.
>
>Thank you dear Lord for the gold in my hair
>The luminous cavern at the top of the stair
>Kindly old women picking girls from the sand
>Passing light into light from hand into hand
>Rocks and storms don't touch us at all
>When the light of the holy casts her face on the wall
>The sea captain rescues the boys from the park
>Who crawl from the trees where they hang and they bark
>
>Firegirl walks down the iceberg and clay
>Her hat is frozen on a door in the hay
>Mercy comes through like a plate on a storm
>Mercy comes through like a horse from a wheel
>Mercy comes back like my teeth in the Sun
>It comes like a virgin, dressed like a Queen
>The Queen is undone
>Her torso is opened
>We can reach through her thorax and pull out a diamond
>
>Thank you dear Lord for the briny sea
>Thank you dear Lord for the yard full of deer
>Ball lightning eruptions sparking skids on the floor
>The phantom fingers that knock each night on my door
>Ramshackle road girls asleep in the grass
>Their dresses dotted with paint from a rattle
>
>My hands are grasping for the light in your hair
>Your crooked teeth gleaming like so many diamonds
>Delirious rickshaw takes our coffin to Mars
>The motion is crazy as I open my heart
>The heart is a riot of birdcries and bees
>
>Thank you dear Lord for the luminous rain
>That runs down my blouse and into the drain
>The one-legged roadman asleep on the grass
>The candy-striped dandy and his electric blue lass
>The marsh is ablaze with furies and flies
>That conjures the gases and opens our eyes
>
>Aspens are barren
>Black forests are bare
>White foam and flax join the trees to the stairs
>(Her hysterical grin, his swashbuckling pose
>The tap of a branch, the smell of a rose)
>
>Dear Lord I am grateful
>The gathering of wood
>
>The beehives are speckled
>The woodlands are bright
>Electric blue boys find their way through this night.
>
>lizbeth rymland c. 1998
>
What's New with My Subject?
>SONG OF LILLITH
>
>When you returned from the South to your mythical homeland
>The elfin queen, the tyrant, summoned you.
>An old friend,
>She needed your help
>After a massive stroke.
>A year before you had seen your own wicked step-grandmother sitting
blind
>and alone in the lobby of a Mies van der Rohe high-rise
>and the wicked one, without knowing your webbed identity, cried out to
you
>as if you were a stranger...
>"Can you help me? Can you help me?"
>Blossoming of irony
>You replied
>"Lady if it hadn't been for you, I would be better able to help
myself."
>
>What Doña Julietta had seen
>Ancestral wound passed down like a platter
>The elfin queen Lillith was sent
>As the twin of the wicked paternal step-grandmother, Blanche
>Whose wounds you’d sustained indirectly from the father
>and would now heal by loving her double.
>Both of them Jewish crones, once kings, powerful artists and
storytellers,
>who had married for money
>and had stridently refused to love anyone except for their only sons.
>But this mean elfin one you would love this one with your whole heart
>Ignoring her abuses and commands
>Thereby healing the old story of the ancestors beginning with Blanche,
>Running back to Atlantis, 15 million years.
>You moved into her grotto to care for her,
>Were slowed to ancient elfin speed
>Followed her every movement as she strolled with her walker,
>Your hands lightly ringing her tiny bone-spurred hips
>So she wouldn't fall down.
>You somehow could read each and every signal
>In the white noise
>And clatter from her scrambled language center,
>Could immediately converse with her, reading her mind.
>Talking about octopi and the number 8
>Talking about perception and deconstructivist philosophers
>And when that failed, and her words boomeranged
>Into plosive burbles and snorts
>How you treasured the ancient one's fits of laughter
>Which were gnarled and raucous
>As the song of a troll boy.
>Each morning
>Summoned by a school bell,
>Sitting on the floor by her bedside,
>Putting on her socks,
>Lacing her boots,
>Brushing the old one's dentures,
>Which were thrust before you at the sink
>She, defiant with humor and beatnik effrontery.
>Watching her watch herself for hours in the mirror
>Following her orders
>Giving her a scare once or twice when she was abusive
>Each day, the slow stroll through the grocery store
>Gathering the goods
>As she pointed this way and that
>Then you’d put her over your shoulder like a giant girl
>And walk to the streetside cafe
>Witnessing together
>Your telepathy perfect
>Like the face of an unctuous Jesus on a punk's tee shirt
>How you laughed all day at that singular image.
>That summer
>Sitting nightly on the candlelit porch
>Spying with ears extended like jackals
>Lying in wait for the rustle of harlequins in shadows of shrubbery
>The signal
>To leap high into the air
>To take flight through the woods
>Hoofs whistling like the springbok.
>
>When you returned from the South to your mythical homeland
>The elfin queen, the tyrant, summoned you.
>An old friend,
>She needed your help
>After a massive stroke.
>A year before you had seen your own wicked step-grandmother sitting
blind
>and alone in the lobby of a Mies van der Rohe high-rise
>and the wicked one, without knowing your webbed identity, cried out to
you
>as if you were a stranger...
>"Can you help me? Can you help me?"
>Blossoming of irony
>You replied
>"Lady if it hadn't been for you, I would be better able to help
myself."
>
>What Doña Julietta had seen
>Ancestral wound passed down like a platter
>The elfin queen Lillith was sent
>As the twin of the wicked paternal step-grandmother, Blanche
>Whose wounds you’d sustained indirectly from the father
>and would now heal by loving her double.
>Both of them Jewish crones, once kings, powerful artists and
storytellers,
>who had married for money
>and had stridently refused to love anyone except for their only sons.
>But this mean elfin one you would love this one with your whole heart
>Ignoring her abuses and commands
>Thereby healing the old story of the ancestors beginning with Blanche,
>Running back to Atlantis, 15 million years.
>You moved into her grotto to care for her,
>Were slowed to ancient elfin speed
>Followed her every movement as she strolled with her walker,
>Your hands lightly ringing her tiny bone-spurred hips
>So she wouldn't fall down.
>You somehow could read each and every signal
>In the white noise
>And clatter from her scrambled language center,
>Could immediately converse with her, reading her mind.
>Talking about octopi and the number 8
>Talking about perception and deconstructivist philosophers
>And when that failed, and her words boomeranged
>Into plosive burbles and snorts
>How you treasured the ancient one's fits of laughter
>Which were gnarled and raucous
>As the song of a troll boy.
>Each morning
>Summoned by a school bell,
>Sitting on the floor by her bedside,
>Putting on her socks,
>Lacing her boots,
>Brushing the old one's dentures,
>Which were thrust before you at the sink
>She, defiant with humor and beatnik effrontery.
>Watching her watch herself for hours in the mirror
>Following her orders
>Giving her a scare once or twice when she was abusive
>Each day, the slow stroll through the grocery store
>Gathering the goods
>As she pointed this way and that
>Then you’d put her over your shoulder like a giant girl
>And walk to the streetside cafe
>Witnessing together
>Your telepathy perfect
>Like the face of an unctuous Jesus on a punk's tee shirt
>How you laughed all day at that singular image.
>That summer
>Sitting nightly on the candlelit porch
>Spying with ears extended like jackals
>Lying in wait for the rustle of harlequins in shadows of shrubbery
>The signal
>To leap high into the air
>To take flight through the woods
>Hoofs whistling like the springbok.
