The Private Myth - Lorraine McCarthy

Man I - Meiosis.

Listen to my song
This is the wet world
Which nurtured
The dark beginnings.
Here the swollen heavens
Ease themselves.
This is the early breath
Blowing through the breasts.
Here lies a link secreting
A lactating message.
Here the shell kernel
Tells of protozoic origins.
When eyes sat on the breast,
Eyes appeared
To sense the senseless;
To see the lidless cell of time
Watching the old lost kingdoms.

Hearken to the dream.
His mouth slides open
And murmurs of the sea.
His ears are pinned high
To catch the hush.
They are curled up waves
Stilled in their infancy,
An echo from generations
Which swam in fluid
Verticals through air.
His nostrils fold in memory
Of polished skeletons
With sniffed up scents
Of lost remains.
His recollection of residual
Relics, formed from alkaline
Trails, stirs slowly.
His eye is tied to the smooth
Shell with its exuding
Pearly skin, where it identifies
In its first and final meeting
With the saline pressure.
A balanced coil of memories
Crowds up his past,
Forming a cover.
This is my lover.
I lean on his frame,
Neatly rolled and sprung
From the old kingdoms.
It is my shell,
Freshly scalped and clean
Waiting to observe the honed
Qualities of the universe.

Sister, daughter, come.

The twilight bones
Are your bones, my bones.
They contain the mysteries
Of solemn cathedrals,
The chirrup of first songs
And the sorrow of the last.
They carve out visions
To blind the lidless eyes
Seated primly on bosoms.
Visions made from spawned
Heaps of threads
Knotted in lacework,
Telling of new worlds.
They carry the spider's web
In calcified lines
To create my standing strength.
In each gleaming, hardened
Core, cracked open,
Lies a meshed frame
Of netting yarn
Waiting to cage
The enigma of the end.

Clap your hands, my son.

Here is your kingdom
With new wealth showering down.
Here you will live
Now that the sea has
Expelled you onto mud flats,
And pushed you from its womb.
Here the slow consummation,
The delicate infusion
Spreads from cell to cell,
Cleansing a brightening skin.
A fish bone bears the print
Of feet, in long bunched blades
That cut the tidal lures,
Leaving spined ribs
To plait a trail.

Listen to fission.

This is my body,
Torn from the jet age
With its fragile fuselage
Constructed from fossil
Staves, whispering mention
Of braided mating strength.
A woman sprang from here,
A cloned female sprouting from ribs
To form a double being.
We are together, yet we are not;
We have exploded as a bloom
Growing from one root,
To live as two entities
Each with his nature
Waiting to feed the other.

The circle is drawn.

This is my land.
The rose is blooming
And my garden falls in ecstasy
Onto the static limbs.
My crossed latticed legs
Carry my face in a twin embrace
As a life in flower.
Some indications of the source
Turning back in tight loops
To catch the eyes,
The sightless nipples
Which ride there now.
Look, you too shall observe
Sockets on my watching
Breasts, so solicitous of life.

This is my song.
I chant about my origins
And clap my hands,
For I am nurtured in fission.
This is the dim twilight
Where the two dreams cross.
This is the time between
Dying and birth,
The commencement and completion;
A long twined chain
Reaching to my young wetness.
This is the circle
Drawing the whole,
Moving forwards to touch you,
My son, my daughter.
I bond the whole to my halves
And feed a new generation
Of reflecting mirrormen.

Man II - Transcendental.

Behold.
I am the man of the future,
The promised man;
Blowing the voice of understanding
Into opening ears, awakening eyes.
Listen to my breath
Sowing seeds of wisdom,
Polished stones for perusal, with
Sharp pearled teeth cutting language
Waiting to form words
Which will settle in the dust
As nailed pencil marks.
My thoughts are trodden
Through each footprint,
Establishing the writing
Of my soul.

This is the house.
I am self-contained.
My throat resonates
With its communication,
Telling of foreign worlds
Where the transcendent mind
Moves on limbs arching as a door.
They are hinged, so that I may
Be dispersed and transposed.
They lead me to unknown heights
And transport me to the altar;
The high place of my head.
This knotted brain
Is tied to achievement,
Linked to winged success,
And connected to infinity.
Two lives bloom.
Now this primal journey
Then the next, while I lie
Looped in longevity
In the coils of my mind.
Unravel them and find
The heart of the psyche,
The centre.
The path is obscured.
The door lies on a symbol
Waiting to reveal the shut room,
The place of sufficiency,
The chamber of oneness.

Look people.
I am the man and I am the woman
Of the future, ripened
Through controlled conditions.
I am the woman of the fantasy.
Her womb deliver fruits,
Her breast brings juices
To feed the confused.
My body is monoecious
Rocking in its strength.
The male flower nurtures the female,
The woman nourishes the man.
She lies stilled in repletion,
His organ is tucked in sleep
For they are rewarded
With saturation.
He is the hollowed reed,
She, the notched holes.
They are played
By the voice of progress,
The sound of compromise.

The wind blows the decoration,
The breath pursues the debris
And jerks the marionette.
The boned hands are pressed,
The jointed mind is exploited
While the hinged body is pushed
Toward its last stance,
Its ultimate expression
Its completed exhibition;
The transvested crucifixion.

Man III - The sense organs.

Here is my nose.
I offer my mouth.
It is stitched
It is stilled.
It frames no words
It utters no sound.
My ears are sealed
My eyes are displaced.
I am closed,
I am empty and desolate.

Only the whisper of parchment,
Only the sighing of dried leaves.
Here the ligaments lie shrunken
With bones bent under silent bodies.
Here the cavities are closed,
The orifices sewn,
The vessels stand void.

This is the chill season,
With days of unleavened bread,
Months of dearth and dryness
And yet more days of sterility.
It is a time of atonement
A season of repair,
When the senses perceive
The beginnings of production.
Lying within the structure
Of winter is the growth of spring.
Lying between the notion and the output,
Within the event and the effect,
Is the expansion of the moment
And the tumescence of present time.

My eyes lie enlarged into pavements,
The roads of my intuition
The avenues of my delight.
They sit on my hands
And loom on my feet.
Here is a raw florescence of feeling;
Unknown eyes for plant dilatations
In early plant intellects,
For my feet are shod in presentiments
My hands gloved in associations.

And they shall put out my eyes,
And they shall pierce my feet.

I am a rope
Knitted from plant fibre.
A running vessel of veins,
A cabled spine of vertebrae
Twisted upon itself.
I am a tree with its threaded
Canals of cambium
Feeding the watery
Rhythms of my brain,
The circled conduits of my mind.

This is my house.
Here the ancient roar of waves
Has settled in my ears
With their ammonite charms
In an embryonic frame.
I am a corded body
Bound in the frayed ends
Which have seamed my mouth
And tied my legs.
The buttocks will burst
Free with desire,
The wound legs will
Unfold in their freedom.
They will emerge
To extend their senses.
Yet I am a roped creeper
Twining with the tree.
I am a belled body
With a trumpet shape.
A body in bloom.
I sing as a clapper
Tolling its song.
This is my phallus
Rising to ring out
Opportunities in
Rich timeliness.
I am content,
I am a season in voice.

Listen to the sound of my heart.
It thuds with the rhythm of waves,
It bursts with the pulse of the blossom.
Touch the flower,
Press the power,
Feel the strength.
Bury your nose in the throat,
Drink the fragrance
Consume the perfume.
Look, I bloom.
My breasts hang as petals
Curving in smiles.
I am an opened bud
And lush to the regard.
Taste me, and I
Will partake of you.
My belled womb yawns
With its offering,
Its corded harvest,
Nurtured in the time of amendment,
The season of recall;
For shored between
The perception and completion,
Shored within the occurrence and its scheme
Comes the expansion of the senses,
And the breathing of the breaths.

Man IV - Microcosmic complexities.

Bravo they cry.
Hurrah is the shout.
Three cheers for the hypnotist.
The hush has gone,
The ache disappeared,
The hollows filled out;
In a slow distortion.

Rejoice my son.
Twirl around.
Live in the medium,
Pulse within the artery
As a part of the seen world.
Leap, I say leap,
And watch destiny descend.
One spinning bone.
A bottled frame
Supporting first movements;
The start of primitive feelings.
Spinning bones,
Thrown to create archaic
Patterns of vision.
Here the fortune-tellers persuade
Maché viewers to absorb the vistas.
Here the shadowed people
Move within their limits.

The sun is like the king
Is like the lion is like the eagle

Fly, chained eagle,
Swoop from the eyrie.
Join the sun, join the king.
Display the splendour
And lustre that is yours.
The rocking feathers carry my eye
Torn from its mucous socket
To wheel in a wondering trip
Through the heights,
The terrible highs
That lift the sight
And pierce the view.
Here the mud cracks,
The slime dries,
And the filth falls
From cleaned arms.

Instead of perfume there will be rottenness

Little brother, small eagle,
This is the running dance
The story of development
Where your origins are smothered,
Your savagery contained
Your aggression diverted.
This is sophistry.
This is sophistication.
This is the screening expression
Sealing the world within,
The wet world,
The light world.

Instead of a girdle, there will be a rope

Draw the sun into your wings,
Draw the warmth into your breast;
Feathered with understanding,
Clothed in comprehension.
This is the savage life,
This is the roped end.

Instead of wellset hair, there will be baldness

Sniff the breeze,
Smell the smoke.
The cities belch fumes.
They breed disaster
They invite devastation.
Clothed hands distribute despair
The shrouded heads veil the honesty,
Establishing death upon death.

Instead of a rich robe, a girding of sackcloth

Dance my son.
Clap your hands
Stamp your feet.
Your foot is your soul.
It prints your mark in the dust.
Your mask carries mindless sight
And inanimate hearing.
Give tongue in joyful pretence
Exult in mock security,
Celebrate under cover.
Within the container is enclosed space,
Within the head is a narrow vision,
Within the world is a controlled reality.

Instead of beauty shame.

Turn as you leap
For you have turned upon yourself.
Learn the language for your voice
Has been erased.
Rise up.
Where is the animal, the cry,
Where is the revolt?
My deaf ear is imprinted
Over the music within,
My hand sleeps under
The gloved skin,
My face is switched on
By society's grasp.
I am a lamp lit by the era,
I am a dancer spinning to the tune.
Clap the rhythm,
Cheer the moment.
We are the expression of these times,
We are the answer, arrived.

Man V - Incarnation and deification.

This is the dark moment
Of commencement,
When the rock carries
A revival in its force,
A stress in its stamina.
The rock consumes the waters
Which cover it.
The rock loosens,
The waters split.
They sweat with hot
Searing cries, in this
World of molten steam.
This is the complete union,
The anguished coition,
The identifying confluence
Where each one imprints
His face on the other.

Do you hear my voice?
Bless me Father, take my hands.
Take my tongue.
"God is in my head and in my understanding,
God is in my mouth and in my speaking"
Take me over in fact,
And live in me.
I will be your dwelling place
You shall be my temple,
And I shall be reborn
A new man.
A superior man.
In Thine image and likeness.

What went wrong?
Lord, forgive the errors.
Forgive us the devil,
An invention to keep us grovelling.
Lord, bite the snake.
Thine is the kingdom, the power.
The snake has consumed me.
I am the serpent travelling
On the ground,
Rearing up to strike.
I spit, I screech,
I am a coiled body
Waiting to eat my environment.

This is the serpent
Which fills a Medusa brain.
My head is bound in vipers.
I am devoured.
I am a snake clothed in skin,
Wrapped in white sloughing scales.
I am bandaged in swaddling,
I am Lazarus reborn.
Take care, I return an ogre
Having tried the chill winds
Of unknown deaths.
I am apart.
The wrappings are my new world,
An attentively parcelled
Parade of limitations.

Watch the scarecrow
Doing its shuffle
In the twilight fields.
He winces as the winds
Of the centuries
impinge on his substance.
They agitate the matter,
They impel the stuff.
His knees bend in deflection.
They toss the straw
They pull the emptiness,
He vibrates in repetition.
Mockman, with a patchwork heart
Made up of small occasions
And jointed memories
Which are stitched together.
Mockman, slit and seamed
To contain the harsh notions
The battered precepts of our era.
You are the gourd that rattles its pod.
You are a shaven head with its snapped eyes,
Its dead seeds and its whispering larynx.
This is the skull of the future,
This is the vision of the times.

I am the snake which possesses,
I am the man which is exploited.
These are the times.
I will eat my fellow-man
For I am superior.
I will pierce his hands
And stab his wrists.
Count the numbers on his skin.
He is a numeral.
One, two, three,
A Holy Trinity.
I will put my mark on you.

Bless me Father
Take my hands, take my tongue.
It is bound in traditions,
It is tied with grief.
It is my voicepiece
Become a dead part,
Atrophied in the thin nourishing
Cast with sorrow,
And running like stilled waters,
Abrogated like the ghosts leaving
Flattened cities with their burst bodies.
Take my spine, a linked support,
A chain which swings
Bearing its trussed captive.
Man of straw, man of straw.
My breasts are traps,
Empty vessels which capture
Infants in milky cages.
I feed the nurselings of the future.
They drink the poisons of the period.

While the cloud hangs, there is no rain.
When the penis falls it cannot wing.
When the vagina bleeds it cannot bloom.
The stamens protrude
The petals have fallen
And the bloom lies ravaged.
There is smoke, there is decease.


Lorraine McCarthy