The Muse's Advisory typed & spellchecked by Tom Riordan
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- Dammit! No One Here Even Remembers What This Kind of Poem is Called!! - Muses Advisory, March 27 – Fred Noonan
- Götterdämmerung - Muses Advisory, March 28 – Hitler to Braun
- Auspices - Muses Advisory, March 29 – Urania
- A Holiday - Muses Advisory, March 30 – Miriam to Zeus Statue
- Disneyland Yes—Visit the Relatives No. - Muses Advisory, March 31 – Zeus Statue to Miriam
- The Stepsons Objection - Muses Advisory, April 1 – Yeshua to Miriam
- Dressing Down - Muses Advisory, April 2 - Miriam
- At the Delphi Inn - Muses Advisory, April 3 – Thalia
- An Incident that Reached the Ear of the Stratego - M
- A Long Thoughtful Chew - Muses Advisory, April 5 – The Donkey
- The Courageous Priest - Muses Advisory, April 6 – Terpsichore
| part American Krauts
both part grew up in Iowa and totally love steel. We know what's magic and what's real. Look at her across the way petting those feral cats sipping the spring as tenderly as if she were at home after twelve years away. When my band and I last played— Passaic, in Jersey—if I'd known what was going to happen I'd also have also kissed the ground that lovingly. The other boys, a virtual U.N.— Brit, Yank, Canadian— are doing well: found wine and one of them had cards inside his flysuit pocket. I should be happiest: I have my horn. But it seems otherwise. The more I play the more forlorn I get. Where is the goddam muse? I think I'm sick of music truth be told; plus, it was mainly the arrangements that I loved not blowing solo. I'm not too old to till new interests— cave paleologist, vintner? It all just makes me want to weep. I'm not a soft man, everybody knows but there's a part of me that's sick from lack of inspiration. That's why I vanished in thin air I think;
Dammit! No One Here Even Remembers What This Kind of Poem is Called!! - Muse's Advisory, March 27 – Fred Noonan: I died so many times. I take a lot of pride. I navigated sea and sky. When I was 4 my father died. I fled dry land. I died so many times. I played the bridesmaid several times before. I navigated sea and sky. Amelia courted me to fly. We couldn't find our isle. I died so many times. The sextant doesn't lie. We overflew our mark. I navigated sea and sky. She always meets my eye. She never hurts my pride. I died so many times. I navigated sea and sky. Götterdämmerung - Muse's Advisory, March 28 – Hitler to Braun: Tonight, we entertain. Call up my vilifiers' fetches: let Elli come to grapple me, Thokk who refused to weep, and Gunnlöd singing her intoxicating lines to ruddy soldiers in the halls of Hel; Gullveig demands war resurrect. Christ's mother? No. We serve no doctored wine; and fairytales belong in children's hands. Where crouched that Virgin when our breasts were bared to iron blade and spear and now lips part to kiss each other and mortality auf Wiedersehen? Liebe Eva, geh mit mir. The Bolsheviks march overhead! Aren't there gods enough to lay waste human life? Is it time again, already, for Pandora to give birth? Thor strikes the tallest tree: I'll garner notice there and catch the eye of souls with real authority. They'll grant me audience. This world is tiered. The level I was born to I have filled with blood and care not if it lifts me up or is the buxom flood in which I sink: escape, at last, the petty race I scorn, which takes me for a miscreant. I demand to meet the gods! Demand to hear their guten Tag and watch them kiss your hand and tell me to my face if I have measured up or not. I crave the judgment of my peers whoever they are, wherever they hide, whatever they account. Auspices - Muse's Advisory, March 29 – Urania: 1,380,000 footsteps left until the Muse On Duty tips her cup onto your ear's dry lip— more than halfway there and time you understood the never finished works we feed you as you wait were undermined by inspirations lacking legs. That seagull-clouded landfill in the distance steaming verse whose inspiration wasn't any good at all. Cynics cite the million-year-old chimp who idly pokes its hairy index at a keyboard to imply that it's all hit and miss— The Muse Unmasked! The perspiration is the inspiration. Placebos are good medicine. We can't prove causality but the statistics show inspired people do more, and produce a higher quality, than uninspired people in control groups equally intelligent and senior in their fields. Thomas Alva Edison conceived his bright idea inside a fortune cookie, “In the falcon's hood—” no, I can't even reveal it, it was just too inane! Maybe it's just the chatter on the line, some substance in the air of this terrain, or the accumulation of desire as you wait a year, or the humidity of the divine on fervent ears— but if our methods are arcane, don't call us quacks. At very least you have to pay your dues before your name is entered in the guild. Some think Soupault or Breton's automatic writing is sans inspiration; or Wordsworth's. Strict codes of confidentiality forbid confirming or denying, but a lot of poems are penned sans muse, and some of them admired. Still, you'd be a fool to discount countless authors' testimonials and claim our role is only ceremonial— an allegory. Homer, Shakespeare, Milton cite us. Though not every hint becomes a work of art; though no Queen of Verse has ever stooped to knight us; like Anne Killigrew, we're not in it for the glory. No Love of Gold shall share with thee my Heart, Or yet Ambition in my Brest have Part. Okay.
we love the way you scent the gin and gild the grime with all that literary hocus-pocus. And one soupçon of advice: we think such magnum opus needs more discipline, a touch less rhyme. It's getting a bit dicey, almost Tom & Jerry. A Holiday? - Muse's Advisory, March 30 – Miriam to Zeus Statue: All I wanted was a bit of adventure— you, nobody saying what you could or couldn't do. We got ourselves so tangled up! Can't Artemis shoot arrows for herself? Can't my son—God, they say—stand on his own two feet without my help? I miss our quiet days on Mount Koressos. I guess that means I'm middle-aged. I want to lay strife down and take up watercolors, basketry. And you? Was our last war enough? I'm told of countless poets lined up on a vast field at your daughters' place in Attica. Homer used them. You like him. Sappho thanked them; Catullus loved them; Dante called them geniuses; Chaucer adored the way they rhymed; and Milton praised them to the skies. Do you imagine that they'd welcome us? They don't have kids for us to spoil but maybe it would be a plum for them if rumors swept the queue that someone sighted me or you: the literary set sets great store in motifs. We could maybe even stop at Delphi on the way. Zeus, could we? Do you know I've never been? I bet they'd love to get to know you now after millennia of Where's my dad? And they'll warm up to me eventually if Memory allows. She couldn't hold a grudge this long— could she? Don't say no, just promise that you'll think about it. Will you? Let's celebrate what we've survived. To kill you would have killed me too. I don't know what was going through my head and calling out my claws. What was that term you used— the crocodile brain? Maternal instinct run amok? Or maybe menopause? I'll ask Hephaistos if he'll fit a donkey cart for you. We'll fill it up with sour-cracked grain and agnus-castus berries for St. Paul— I'm hoping that the girls won't mind, or be embarrassed by, the cockatoo. That Fuck of his is not exactly classical but then again maybe it's time for poetry to change. Disneyland Yes—Visit the Relatives No. - Muse's Advisory, March 31 – Zeus Statue to Miriam: Easy for you to say: to you, nine lovely women you can get to know. But me? How do I face them now after 3000 years of not a word? Mickey Rourke in the The Wrestler,broke-down, looking for an old man's ease– even more pathetic without the long blonde hair? As a fly on the wall of their shrine, I would go in a snap. But waltz in now as if I brought some kind of blessing? I don't have that kind of spine. I love the donkey-cart idea, though. I would love to go see Delphi, show you one or two of my old haunts. Maybe St. Paul could even pick up a new oath! But will the ire petrified in these great limbs stay dormant? Am I caponized enough for lax retirement? I'll give Hephaistos specs for the construction of a nut-spoked ark, but guarantee a placid family trip I can't. A Leica on my neck, an “I Love Greek Gods” tee-shirt on my back, and tickets to my own theme park is too naive, too modernist. Then on to Helicon? I doubt it. My girls nine thrived without me all these years. Whatever scars their fatherlessness etched into their psyches are faits accomplis. The Stepson's Objection - Muse's Advisory, April 1 – Yeshua to Miriam: We haven’t talked a lot. I've been about My Father's business. You've been busy with it too, I hear. Ironic that our paths so rarely cross. Let's have a little tête-à-tête. Phaistos told me what you're cooking up. The answer's Absolutely not. How do you think it looks? I'm sleeping in a different bed each night, busting my butt to get the new Church set, while you're out trekking with the old god and his cockatoo in some old donkeycart? You must know you're a biggish part of Christianity yourself. There are more heresies concerned with you than I have people working day and night to stamp them out. Ma, you're a virgin, for Christ's sake! That gospel has already gone to press, and frankly it's the most beloved part. It was a one-time thing with Elohim— a spirit thing inspired my birth. If you and Zeus play house here in an isolated cave on Crete, I could care less. But pilgrimage to Greece? I'd be a laughingstock. Dressing Down - Muse's Advisory, April 2 - Miriam: Yeshua, son, I get your gist. A woman, mongoloid dove and marble statue in a donkeycart attract attention, yes. But why should anybody link us to your Church? The roads these days are jammed with every kind of muttering apostle underneath the sun. We'll leave our Let Your Light Shine tee-shirts home. It's a vacation, not a pilgrimage. When Yusuf took us down to Egypt no one cried, The Holy Family's come to seek Ra's blessing! I've always done my part to help your Church, and so has Zeus. But that's not all of who we are. Are you aware how much it pains him to no longer walk the earth? Have you so much as once cried Éphphatha!, or drawn one incantation with your spittle in the dirt? The fine points of theology I leave to you, but don't scold me, young man! I don't care who you think you are, you weren't raised to tell your elders what to do. The bird and Zeus and I embark for Delphi when the sun comes up. Go show your Sacred Heart to Polish nuns, go shop in Paris for albumin hair-conditioner to make your golden halo more conspicuous. The vanity you get from Zeus, the restlessness from me, the righteousness sui generis. At the Delphi Inn - Muse's Advisory, April 3 – Thalia: “Fuck!” squawks St. Paul. “ He'll have a child and offer hair!” the hostler warns.“The gods always forgive what we can't control!” “The ferry hay was rancid. Is there something fresh to give the donkey?” Miriam asks. “ Garlands from the wild olive tree be-scarvedwith spider webs and money threaten Sparta!” “Please leave the marble god unwrapped, as is.” “ One road fork leads to freedom's house,and the second straight to slavery's shed!” “Good then, thank you. And goodnight. I'll take the bird inside with me.” . “An eagle's beak will point the way! A crow will show you all around! Wild goats will lead! Go where the fish command, the wild boar feeds! White ravens perch and cattle lie to sleep!” She goes inside and registers "María, Cnossos." “ Seek to find a place to lie!" the innwife says."Above all, know thyself! A Syrian's inspired, tells amusing tales, but the Phoenician's wise! He can assume the color of the dead! Beware the man with just one sandal! Embrace the top and reap the middle!” “Fuck!” squawks the bird. “He's just repeating
The god's not here! He went to build another inn where he was bitten as a young boy by a gull. They never say goodnight who sleep most sound!" “Is there perhaps a loaf of bread to eat?” “ Receive the yearling goat in place of Israel's son!Don't ever hurry love! Green youth is best invisible!” Out in the shed, the hostler picks the wrapping off the marble's head, sees Zeus's angry face awake, and flees into the night. A starving bitch slips in and chews the linen off the statue's base, then starts to lick its toes. The donkey takes another bite of apricot-sweet Phocian hay and backs away. The horses in the rear stalls start to neigh. An Incident that Reached the Ear of the Stratego - Muse's Advisory, April 4 – Urania: Miriam lay and rested. The once white-crested bird slept, one eye cocked on the one-sandaled man; Syrian and Phoenician slept; the innwife wept, her husband gone; and the hostler crept back to the haunted shed a moment before dawn. “Cockadoodle duh,”croaked a traumatized cock as the cook unlatched the coop for eggs, to find smashed shells, clear goo, gold yolk, scattered feathers and crushed bones. She shrieked; the donkey brayed; and everybody woke. The marble Zeus is gone, its tattered shroud discarded! The innwife and hostler lay hands on Miriam and shake her. “Fuck!” shrieks the bird. Guests scurry to the shed to get their mounts; but they're gone too. The innwife's wagon, gone. The cook spits onto Miriam's face, seizes the cockatoo, and locks it in an empty brooding cage. A rider gallops up and screams, “A giant in a chariot harries the hillside near the ruins, burying thunderbolts in all the sacred oaks!” “Go wake the priest!” the innwife cries. "Tell him we've got the gypsy witch who is responsible!” “ Fuck!” shrieks the cockatooout in the coop. “Somebody kill that bird!” the cook demands, and the hostler takes the cleaver off the butcher block and goes to do it. When he steps outside the door, the first ray of the sun breaks through the trees to strike his head and knock him to his knees. “Please call him back!” pleads Miriam. “Set free the bird! He's Zeus's friend and anyone who threatens him will meet a catastrophic end!” At Zeus's name, the inn staff stops right where they are, their mouths a-gape. Hadn't the last Pythia predicted his return and warned the Christian bishop on the pains of hell to leave the shrine itself intact– and hadn't he obeyed? The Phoenician walks into the inn and sets the cockatoo back on its bedpost perch. The Syrian leads the donkey out onto the road, unhurt. The horseman gallops back with a beardless curate cantering behind, so filled with fear, his eyes are red and lips are white. They see one sandal beneath a shrub. Ten feet above, one good foot and one bad sway from a high mimosa branch. The priest dismounts, makes a sign of the cross. The rider gallops back to town in terror of his life. Amidst the shock and tears, the sun's face finally tops the trees. A Long Thoughtful Chew - Muse's Advisory, April 5 – The Donkey: They call me Miriam's donkey, but I was never her donkey. I brought supplies to Phaistos in his cave and in exchange he made humane headcollars that I brought to the valley. When he asked me if I wanted to pull Zeus's cart to Delphi, I thought, Why not? How many travel shots do donkeys get? Don't talk to me about the bird: Fuck! Fuck! He gives all animals a bad name. I hauled his feed, and he contributes what? Zero. But the woman isn't bad at all. Most women believe donkeys should work all day like they do, but this Miriam is pretty gentle— once, rode a donkey all the way from the Jordan to the Nile. The trip by sea was terrible. I can say I did it now, but won't recommend it. First: seasick. The hay onboard was pretty foul. Then: the stall they rigged for me rubbed bald spots on the sides of my belly. Greece itself is a lot like home, only more crammed with roads, people and carts— and some very fancy chariots, if you can stomach the arrogance of horses. Before Zeus went on his rampage on Mount Parnassus, he took the horses from their stalls to hitch them to an old wagon. One snorted about how she was a Phoenician and so couldn't be paired with an Arabian—or, God forbid, the lame man's mule!— so would Zeus please match her with the innwife's own hipparion? It hurt me that Zeus didn't look at me but harnessed the others and hurried up the still-dark road. How much faster is an mule than a reliable donkey who's proven himself already over a long trip? Maybe that's why we're not tapped for gods: we don't think the way gods think. Still, which tribe has ever given us a chance? Most likely he left me behind to continue to pull the cart for Miriam. But why, when it has no freight, with him up on the mountainside splintering centuries-old trees? If he worried about her getaway, he should have left the Arabian. I don't know. I don't overthink this kind of thing, but I was hurt, and it surely wasn't the first time. The Courageous Priest - Muse's Advisory, April 6 – Terpsichore: The accounting consisted of 1 cock 7 chickens 5 eggs 1 mule 3 ponies 1 wagon 1 night's roof. In payment the innwife took 1 cart 1 Cretan donkey 1 torn shroud 1 purse with 4 solidi and sent Miriam packing with the cockatoo. Soldiers were dispatched to the fiery mountainside to see what they could do about rampaging Zeus but nobody expected much. Old tales died slow and everyone knew you stayed behind closed doors with fingers crossed and prayed he wouldn't come for you. The priest did a curious thing. A beldam just beyond the village edge was rumored 7th heiress to the Pythia: he packed a basketful of fragrant bread and clearest, rosy breakfast wine and went to visit her. Magissa waited in her yard, a shawl about her shoulders to the cold. He smiled, introduced himself, gave her his gifts and asked, What should I do? She said, Return the ass to her.He said, I will. She said, Return the cart and coins. And he said, I will. She said, Give Zeus his choice of the three horses and the mule. He said, I will. She said, Escort me to the shrine and let me answer what he came to ask. He said, I will. There was no time to waste. The lightning-cracks were blasting every oaktree on the mountain into ash. Black smoke rolled up like a volcano in eruption but the priest arranged the hag before him on his horse and rode right toward it. He had gumption. Don't worry about me! she cried into his ear. No Pythia can die unless she's named an heir– which I have not! So fly, papás! Fly, fly! 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