Vier letzte Lieder

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______No matter what happens now
______I won't be afraid
______Because I know today has been
______The most perfect day I've ever seen

____________radiohead





turnover 2, tommy oshima

a moribund fantasy/(a requiem for me)/(an epitaph for my grandfather)


I. Fruhling (Spring)

I've tried to avoid to house most of the day. I've wayfared, these long legs carry me to every crest but home. (my hand shakes, a disturbing memory breaks itself loose) (it's always about you). Three yellow cars pass (a flash of sunlight, but... here, clouds again).

You know when it's your day- the air tells you. The season tilts a little to the left (you see the shadows readjust as you pass) Lo death:

________You recognize me,
________you entice me gently,
________A shudder runs through my body
________your blissful presence

(love and death reconciled at last)


II. September

Now: half here, half everywhere (else). When I was a child, a patch of desert in the Congo, a massive oilship sitting, a giant machine sphinx, in the sand. We climbed rocks. I am there. Thirteen dark youths pass me. Identical black jeans, Cons, dark eyes concerned with the pleasure of miserable youth.

In the dying dream of the garden: no time now son, count your blessings, 95 times, use your fingers. I mumble, dry lips and all. I fall into the crack of a fantasy: my grandfather, I by his bedside:

____"how are you son?"
____"old."
____"how old?"
____"as old as you."
____"really?" [half smiles]
____"really."
____"well then, you'll join me soon?"
____"you haven't left yet."
____[chuckles] "only the body's left son. The rest is ready. There, hand me that prayer book on your way out."
____"... you want me to leave?"
____"old men tire fast."

________Slowly it closes its great
________now weary eyes.

I awake. A white dog smiles at me. I can't have blinked that long- it's immediately a snake- still white, I gasp, now- a dove. Three flaps its as far from me as a midnight I don't remember. Half here, half everywhere. In Africa, a dark river. We caught little clawed beasts to barbecue. I was scared, there was a wetness, elsewhere it was warm... there, under soo many trees, so cold. I did not touch the black water.

(I grow less here, more everywhere)


III. Beim Schlafengehen (Upon Going to Sleep)

The blackness is all now. I can open my eyes without opening them. The blackness has its own colors and lights. Two invisible hands (gravity), 25 years they've held my ankles from beneath the ground, release me.

________And my soul unguarded
________will float freely.

The cement sighs and is lighter now. My heads hits a streetlight, the pole shakes, a dozen stars fall out- some leaves, some fireflies. The white dove passes me again. She grows black. oh. (your black hair flies away) are you here? are you everywhere?

____"we could"
____"we could"
____"we shouldn't"
____"no."
____"but we want to"
____"yes."
____"but it's not right"
____"right."
____"but we could"
____"right."
____"but we won't"

I see a man... no (no!) me! A younger me. I didn't remember... why are there no creases on your brow?
I'm 15.
And you smile differently. _how?
(the thirteen dark youths pass, a grimace is not a laugh. They smile in misery- not having discovered pain yet). "We're to the gate. __This way" (a branch for his hand) (my heart is finally a tree. __stilled)

Somewhere ladies and gentlemen wear black and stand perplexed around a wooden box. I am the heart of the tree- carved into a hollow rectangular trunk.

My grandfather smiles at me. Looks right at home. I've never seen him so happy, he holds out his hands, we step an inch above tulips- they tickle my toes and I giggle with the voice of a baby. Somewhere a man with red hair sits on a grand piano and recites poetry:

________will float freely,
________in order to live in the magic circle of the night
________deep and a thousand-fold.

"Stetson!
You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!" Stetson smiles, puts a hand to my shoulder. I shiver and in my weightlessness a skin is lost. There is no wind to scatter it, it drops as a sail and I am swept away.

____In the back of the car,
____our dilated pupils
____open-mouths,
____kissed and laughed.

________"shall we go back inside?"
________"why?"
________"we're... kinda parked in a side alley."
________"are you scared?"
________"no."
________"do you wanna go back to the party?"
________"no."
________"are you having fun?"
________"__rest your head on my chest, I want you to hear something."
________"what is it?"
________"the color of my heart in Morse code."
____________[. .. .._ ... .]
________"that's not what it said."
________"what did it say?"
________[smile]


IV. Im Abendrot (At Sunset)

Only the colors that reflect in glass
substance is only crystal,
how can your skin be so white?
(he smiles, my grandfather, shirtless and strong, like the picture
from his youth, rifle and deer over his shoulder, in the mountains)

____"where are we?"
____"inside a prayer"
____"i didn't know we could go there"
____"we can go anywhere now"

A red rock floats past me. Has the surface of the moon. I put out a hand and it glides past, touching my fingertips. A trail of red dust is released, a strand of hair, one color of the rainbow, massive red lips, blow me a kiss, a sunset smeared in clouds, my IKEA cabinet in Haifa, a tshirt you wore once, finally disappears. The rock turns its head over its shoulder and looks at me, in knowing. The red re-emerges, the wet hair of a mermaid, she gestures for me to come into the water.

____"it has been a while"
____[smiles]

(i am not wet. I am water... I have aquatic organs. Fish float inside me, I disperse, an underwater lily sings cosi fan tutte into my noear. I giggle (bubbles). The mermaid opens her mouth

____"you are in me"
____(I am in everything)
____"that is the key"

In Africa, on dad's lap, watching the lighting. Hours of it. The whole sky charged, a magnet. My hair would stand straight... cars would be lifted off their wheels. I watched and hoped a supernova would suck us all back. Dad laughing, I was only a bundle of limbs then. I knew only happiness. Once, through the closed wooden shutters, I saw two soldiers with axes... destroyed this man's cart- he was selling bread. They broke it all. he cried. I cried silently. I was scared to watch, I thought they might see me, cross the street, walk into the building, climb to the second story, break down the door, and see my wet eyes hiding behind the closed shutters.

____"why do I remember everything?"
____"how old are you?"
____"right now... 3. maybe 4"
____"let it go"
____"I can't"

________In times of trial and joy
________we have gone hand in hand,
________now we can rest from our travels

I would like to be reborn as a tulip. Their buds remind me of bosoms, I do not know why (he smiles, disappears)

____I'm gonna fly right through the walls (don't be scared
________(i will, i will
____gonna float above your bed
________(i will, i will
____gonna kiss you on your head

(somewhere else, someone dreams of me. I am standing behind her, hands by my side, my chest to her back. She can sense me. She drops her hand, it falls into mine (I'm gravity, it can't go anywhere else). She takes a step back
___(somewhere very far away else, in a star there is an explosion, makes enough noise to deafen the ocean, the sound reverberates for a ___million years into black space no one can hear) Love disperses to unknown planets where a brown-eyed deer kisses another.
______(somewhere else my sister cries herself to sleep.
______the house is dark with lassitude
______I have burnt enough energy to have danced a star into existence,
______I have sank down a dark-veined well,

my grandfather senses my travels. "ssshh. relax son

________Come closer and leave them to their flutters,
________soon it will be time for sleep
________lest we lose ourselves
________in this solitude.

A wolf howls. A magician is sitting besides an unmanned popcorn stand. He throws his cards on the ground. I kick a spade as I pass. He throws me a heart I ignore. He smirks. A piano somewhere, e-flat minor. Palmless fingers play the scale over and over. It goes on: Worlds among worlds; Alone; lost to thoughts and memory and love

________How tired we are of our traveling
________can this perhaps be death?

*__*__*
Most of the quoted text is taken from the four poems R. Strauss used for his Four Last Songs. Also lyrics from the feather test by A, Weather and Eliot's Wasteland.