My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer

HELEN: A REVISION (1960)

Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 235 HELEN: A REVISION (1960) This page intentionally left blank Nothing is known about Helen but her voice Strange glittering sparks Lighting no fires but what is reechoed Rechorded, set on the icy sea. All history is one, as all the North Pole is one Magnetic, music to play with, ice That has had to do with vision And each one of us, naked. Partners. Naked. Helen: A Revision : It is to be assumed that I do not exist while most people in the vision assume that I do exist. This is to be one of the extents of meaning between the players and this audience. I have to talk like this because I am the lord of both kinds of sky—and I don’t mean your sky and their sky because they are signs, I mean the bright sky and the burning sky. I have no intention of showing you my limits. The players in this poem are players. They have taken their parts not to deceive you (or me if it matters) but because they have been paid in love or coin to be players. I have known for a long time that there is not a fourth wall in a play. I am called Zeus and I know this.  (running out on the construction of the stage): The fourth wall is not as important as you think it is.  (disturbed but carrying it off like a good Master of Ceremonial): Thersites is involuntary. (He puts his arm around him.) I could not play a part if I were not a player. Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 237 237 : Reveal yourself to me and don’t pretend that there are people watching you. I am alone on the stage with you. Tell me the plot of the play.  (standing away): Don’t try to talk if you don’t have to. You must admit there is no audience. Everything is done for you. : Stop repeating yourself. You old motherfucker. Your skies are bad enough. (He looks to the ground.) A parody is better than a pun. : I do not understand your language. (They are silent together for a moment and then the curtain drops.) And if he dies on this road throw wild blackberries at his ghost And if he doesn’t, and he won’t, hope the cost Hope the cost. And the terror of the what meets the why at the edge Like a backwards image of each terror’s lodge Each terror’s lodge. And if he cries put his heart out with a lantern’s goat Where they pay all passages to pay the debt The lighted yet. The focus sing Is not their business. Their tracks lay By not altogether being there. Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 238 238 Here and there in swamps and villages. How doth the silly crocodile Amuse the Muse And in the skyey march of flesh That boundary line where no body is Preserve us, lord, from aches and harms And bring my death. Both air and water rattle there And mud and fire Preserve us, lord, from what would share a shroud and bring my death. A vagrant bird flies to the glossy limbs The battlefield has harms. The trees have half Their branches shot away. Preserve us, lord From hair and mud and flesh. A twisted smile, a flower I Could name a rose. A trick of rhetoric, the shadow standing firm Against the glass. A twisted smile, a flower I Could name a rose. Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 239 239 Which without feeling to the enormous source Of deep emotion We laugh until we are hoarse. Each poisons every well In which each shadow dwells. Unmixed emotion. You can shoe a horse With darkness on the plates For mates. Half-real, the iceberg Was kept from us. By not altogether being there They couldn’t care less what hit them (A big, red, joyous caterpillar twisting and spewing the wet leaves (From top to bottom the iceberg Totally indistinguishable. Nothing complete at the opera but singing Nothing moves in the grass but noise There in the edge there, there is some singing And in the grass there is noise. Grass is...