I have a damaged bard's gene...

Project Tapestry
Copyright 2000 e. blakemore
(Tapestry threads)

I have a damaged bard's gene...

1.

I have a damaged bard's gene.

I discovered it when these pointless images

forced themselves into my sleep.

I tried to kill it

with drink, with drugs, with a thousand deaths

from a deficit culture.

A word as good as a gun

to put an end to sense, the rational trap.

I have been damaged

by freight trains fraught with meaning,

loaded with consumer electronics

somewhere:

the ground is a ship in Norway.

2.

I never learned the system of trees and animals

never the code that makes a poem a sooth.

A damaged language that hasn’t the time to digest

the culture it's devoured,

This is what I have to work with —

a system of mirrors

and a system of angers.

Trapped within, consumed by systems

that have no organic origin,

and experts who know that the origins

themselves have no meanings. To learn

to edit   to rewrite    to rework    to remake

to mar    to score    to detest    to defect.

Death has many trademarks —

too many people, who die, who kill, who fall

into categories, or into the literal pits.

(song from a version of china)

i have a damaged bard's gene. i have the bardic need without the ability to carry it through. i NEED to sing and play and write and carry life and lore on for generations. i have the need to speak. but lack the words. i have the need to sing, but lack the voice. i have the need to create. i NEED to spin yarns, i need to recite old chants and new canticles over a fire. i need to share stories. i need to tell tales. the real tales and yarns and myths and legends of lore. and the stories of everyday people as well. i need to tell stories, not for any purpose of money or ambition but for the need to connect. tales are the universal language, the act of myth binds us together as human. i have this desire almost never found again in this society, that is too "old" and "grown" and "busy" for legend. i have this thing that society killed eons ago. something i maybe should not have. but do anyways. i have the need to TELL. i have a damaged bard's gene.