1. |
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I am lost in my arrowing maze, stumbling dazed
I am drowned in a vast forgetting
I am washed by the waves, I am rocked
I am beached on your infinite body
I’m on a forced march from my country
I’m in the middle of a bad fix
I am sunk by the roadside
I am drenched
I am dazzled
I am lashed
I am twined
I am begging
I am bound
I am blinded
And I am thrust back into the long ago
I am thrust into the new
I am struck by the sun, I am prism
I’m in the white night of a storm
I’m in a stone fetus, trying to be born
I am holding my hands up, bleeding
I am trembling, I am ravenous, I am receding
I am innocent
I am ignorant
I am unspoken
I am resistless
I am yielded
I am closer, I am closer
And I am everywhere but in my grave
Everywhere but in my grave
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2. |
Memory's Kaleidoscope
06:54
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The kaleidoscope, the twists and turns
The shapes and forms, reflected
The colors swirl, reveal, conceal
Memory’s mists are rising
What comes to the surface?
What remains, what never leaves?
What accidental wind blows the memory’s fragile seeds?
One blows to the rock, one blows into the sea
One finds deep and fertile earth, and grows into a tree
The breast less girl, forever young, under the Catalpa
The new ploughed fields, the black, stitched earth
I stretch my chest against it
The alleyways, the empty lots, the thunders in the night
The shirtwaists, and the clothes hanging dejected on the line
The moanings of the city dogs, the raven’s hacking caw
The smell of burning paper as we leave for Omaha
The Kansas coat, damp to the bone. Winter, 1930
Little one, the money’s gone. Hard times are coming
The nights I held them in my arms and gentled them to sleep
While songs of tangled searching twined through nerve and bone of me
The years move on, the ghosts awake, arise, and ask for life
The dusk is always falling and the evening always nigh
The dust is always restless and the wind is always high
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3. |
The Writers' Circle
01:50
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When they lived, and were young, and the long day done
They put down their chores, and they walked the table round
The hours would pass as the writers would talk
Of people and fancies, and elegant thoughts
Charlotte, Emily, in the house all asleep
Anne, Katherine, in the night’s quiet deep
Whispering, musing, sparking, exchanging
Oh my sisters in pen, my embodied loved ones
When you lived, and were young, and ambition was strong
What might you have spoke, in the hours before dawn?
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4. |
Winter
04:51
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The first sight of snow, that midnight
Opening the window for air
What I first wildly thought were insects
Like in the headlights, the burning nights of summer
No, snow bees
Snow comes back to me
Winter sun, the great white zero
Naked and burned, all against white, that contains all colors
The slow swirl, the howling wind
The moth snow, the fire of the year gone
Not even ember
Ice windows,ice lace
Ice threads, ice glass
Ice feathers, ice fleece
Ice tears, ice sheets
Sun striking ice prism
Violets, purples, and reds
The trace lines, permanent, transient
Fixed evanescence, visible and frozen
Ice cobwebs, ice coins
Ice leaf, ice wings
Ice coral, ice ferns
Ice ruffles, ice sheaves
Ice forms from formlessness
Ice ringing permanence
Electric calligraphy
Incandescent pagodas, Granadas
Ice pendants, ice pearls
Ice ghosts, ice grains
Ice crystals, ice curves
Ice harps, ice flames
Ice waterfall that does not fall
Translucent tears
The dream shapes and forms
Museum specimens, embedded
Angular Euclid, Steuben shapes
Motion in motionlessness
It was the heaviest winter in living memory
The snows heaped waist high, shoulder high
Two weeksd, I narrowed into my house, cloud cover topping my head
Mornings, the glistening walls dazzling
Blinded, I had to feel my way
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5. |
Fog
03:40
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Fog, white wind, milk night
Hood, wisps, trail, down drift
Breath spirals, breath coils
Blowing veils, ribbons
Marvelous, the way the fog stands on the horizon
Solid soft and ragged, glows as if from underwater
Fog, swelling, thinning
Shawl over Sutro
Erasing, blotting
Revealing, baring
Fog that crowns my city, gentling the skyline
Fog inside whose shadow all other shadows are lost
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6. |
Hymn to Life
02:50
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Anne, Anne, life is a miracle
You, you, you are a miracle
Breath, breath, to breathe is a miracle
Words, air, children, a miracle
I have a friend named Zdena
She’s like a little grandmother
I brought her some nasturtiums, and out flew a ladybug
She’s down on her hands and knees, looking for the little creature
To return it to the yellow flower, and put it in her scrap of yard
So that it may continue to live
She too could not take life
She could spill no blood
Anne, Anne, life is a miracle
You, you, you are a miracle
You strong song, rooted in miracle
Life is a miracle, words are a miracle, you are a miracle
Anne
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7. |
The Old Light
07:24
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Orion, hunter, heavy and tired
Low and sparkling Sirius
Vega, rising
Glittering Taurus
Arcturus, bringer of Spring
Betelgeuse, Aldebarn, the Gemini, the Sickle
Flaring Venus in the western sky
The thousand year old light, shining from the hundred million suns
A thousand years and still traveling, to reach my eyes and travel on
The braid and combs of light, shining in an evanescent weaves
Tranquil, pure, and luminous
Center of dark radiance
Distance, distance, reaching on
To never see the new
And I’ll be dead a thousand years when the light of present reaches here
The old, old light
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8. |
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This morning in the meadow, in the mild sunshine, sunflowers taller than me
A dream that floated up
Recollection
As if I was still that child
Yes, there was such an empty lot, after the rain and heat
Sunflowers all seemingly higher than the grown-ups
The dream, the nightmare:
I was planted among them, stalk of me
Slowly, slowly, with the other heads, turning to keep the sun
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9. |
The Dead Bell
02:26
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I do not stir
The frost makes a flower, the dew makes a star
The dead bell
Somebody’s done for
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10. |
Sister, Star
02:40
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Breathe on me
Breathe on me still
Sister, Star
North Star in the dark night
Bearings, Steadiness, Radiance
The faith of your constancy
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11. |
This Ae Night
02:27
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This Ae Night, this ae night, every night and all
Fire and fleet and candlelight, this ae night and all
This Ae Night, this ae night, every night and all
Light and sight and memory light, this ae night and all
...Oh my dead, beloved dead…
...My own death, my coming death…
...Every day and every hour…
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12. |
Madness
03:48
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Nights now, unbound
I reach out my harkening hands
Madness, welcome
I seek you gladly
I yield, I yield
No more am I frightened
I yield, I yield
I know your secrets
Night scrawl, unwound
Let us now know each other
Madness, bleed out
I’ll make you mine
I bend, I break
the edge of the ocean, wherein I wander
I bend, I break
The edge of the desert, wherein I’m driven
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13. |
Thank You, Sleep
03:13
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Cocooned here, sleep comes easy and deep
And when I dream, the dead live again
They come on in with a freedom memory cannot grant
And what I wake with, so beautiful
Thank you, sleep.
Thank you for the being with them again
In innocence and new
My dead, my beloved dead
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14. |
Father and Child
02:19
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A man’s body, and his child’s, surrendered in sleep.
Center of radiance
Dark luminous radiance
Immense world
The father knows
Dark rays the radiance
Island of love,
Dark luminous radiance
A man’s body, and his child’s, surrendered in sleep
The trusting of sleep
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15. |
Aging
02:32
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Now there is November in my body
and I’ve begun my journey into stone
The earthquakes and the fissures, the crevices and cracks
Covered in the siftings of the years
Look upon my face, the lines, the pits, the scars
The harrowings, the damages of days
Read my flesh and bone, my skin as if a map
The weathers, and the rivulets of veins
Aging, aging, slowly takes place
Find my grey and windy home
I am the twisted Cypress, the tree at timberline
Dust in my lungs, sea water in my veins
Burning coals in my heart
I am split open, the airs blow through
I wait for change to come again
I’ll shed my clothes
I’ll shed my hair and skin
I’ll shed my weariness and woes
What remains?
From the root, I am a human being
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16. |
Moon
05:16
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Full moon, new moon, half moon
Setting moon, rising moon, ghost moon
Thing moon, swollen moon, scimitar moon
Curved moon, crescent moon, clear moon
Blood moon, pure moon, wafer moon
White moon, stained moon, roman coin moon
Dusk moon, oval moon, smoke moon
Naked moon, blinding moon, quill moon
Wraith moon, smolder moon, orange cup of moon
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17. |
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Cool silver pours into black night
Pearl rivers run into jade seas
White candles burn to still blue flames
And sleep sings slow dark melodies
And quiet sleep, and hushed sleep
will sing you slow dark melodies
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18. |
The Death Reader
01:27
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Who will write these dead?
The refusing to go gentle
The glorious and conscious
The desiring not to know
Who will write this fight for life?
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19. |
Hiroshima
05:08
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The bombs will fall on all, the weathered old, the infant young
Those who give life, and those who take
Never again let this be
Earth conceal not the blood shed upon thee
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20. |
Insomnia Flower
04:02
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The night splits in two
The moan and tossing
The abrupt, gestured rising
Waking I sleep, sleeping I wake
The night is falling, and I am rising
Wall to wall down the narrow corridor
Gathering nightshade, insomnia flower
The night is pouring,
and I am swimming in my insomniac sea
Holy strange power, companioning me.
Where is my lullaby?
Someone to sing me, to rock me, to lull me.
Where is my lullaby?
Someone to sing me to sleep.
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Jesse Olsen Bay Montague, Massachusetts
Western Massachusetts based composer and performer Jesse Olsen Bay creates aural landscapes and narratives to explore the depths of the human experience.
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