For Chloe & Cushla & Shay (always Shay …)
Coyote?
Is that you out there?
(your ghostly keen?)
Or are you
Wolf?
Wolf?
What is it that we fear in the night, children
That might lurk here
To revive those primal infant fears?
Here
(of all places, all people)
Here
In the Rockies
Or at Slave River
Montana to the south
(oh, badlands, bad boys)
Saskatchewan
(mystic names)
Inuit
Cree
Nakota
Dakota
Dene
Anishinabe
Métis
(the odd scalping comes to mind, never the pipe of peace)
Ojibwa?
Oh, peace
(we seek the cancer cure ~ but seek a universal peace, not in my lifetime)
Peace ~
Mackerel sky
Five miles high
Lets the earth
Go three days dry
Which
Evades the question
(I am good at that)
Of what this fear is
This
Ache
Here
In the ink night
(stars, constellations)
This airborne anguish
That takes my mind from you
(and you ~ lets not pretend)
Is it
(I will say it again, mouth it, verbalise it a shape)
Coyote?
Wolf
Or worse –
Windigo
I cannot go there
At my age
There is nothing under my bed
(no baggage)
Nothing in my closet
(no, not even mildewed boy clothes)
There is no beast in the night
But out here
Under Albertan skies with you
It all seems
Different
(Oh, Canada ~ Terre de nos aïeux)
Somehow
Different
And I am overcome
So I decide for myself
(Dear Rational Being … )
You are
Coyote
(I know coyote)
We come from different sets of circumstances
Don’t we?
Don’t we?
Coyote?
Are you listening?
No longer bound by my reel-to-reel
Not locked in a studio
We are on the move
On the move
We are
In
Movie land
But
But
But are we?
Are we?
Is this
Is this
Is this my fiction?
You
Coyote
You
Will
(I hope)
Be out to pasture
Now
Euthanased
(in the nicest possible way, of course)
On
Your
Ranch
Euthanased
I like that
Can you still smell her on your fingers, Coyote?
You
Coyote
With your woman at home
Another down the hall
You wanted her anyway
Can you still smell her
On your fingers?
(bone finger, bone finger)
Can you still describe her musk, Coyote?
The white lines on the freeway
Still define us
Dot-to-dot
Convey
Us
(yes, us)
To
Our
Future
As they bear you
To your past
And
Hers
(she knows that, at sixty-one she knows that, she knows that)
Coyote?
(not sure of wolf ~ too many connotations ~ too hard pffft!)
OK
Got that sussed
(we’re now on the dot-to-dot to stardom)
This movie
(did I say we were makin’ a movie)
Brokeback Mountain for Girls
This movie
Ain’t for barroom cowboys
Riders of the mauve mechanical bull
This movie ain’t for cowboys at all
So
Sweet Baby James
Sweet Baby James
Sweet boy
Can
Go
Pull
Your
Own
Lens
In this movie Butch Cassidy will be truly butch
But chaps ain’t just for chaps
As you would say
You
Would have said
Quicker
Than
A
Flash
(oh yes, you’d flash too)
Flash Harriet
You could play her
The
Sharp
Tongued
Lover-chick
With her own horse
(how good is that?)
Ride’em cowgirl!
I can taste you already
It’s such a man’s world this stampede shit
Bulls
Levi’s
(girls in tight pants)
Fag between the lips
(yes, yes ~ I know)
Loose-hangin’
(not a ‘g’ in sight, cowgirl)
But not a bore
Never a bore
No way!
And
Sweat
(girls perspire, Harry sweats)
Buckets
Of
Girlsweat
You might make it on the range, Harry
(now you have a name, sing it, Harry)
Workin’ hard
Slavin’ over a hot horse
Breakin’ them steers
Ropin’ and tyin’
But
Me
I’m a city girl
Sweat in this movie
(may ride a little bareback)
Will
Be
In
A
Different
Saddle
(if you catch my drift)
Are you up for that, Harriet?
Are you still up for that?
Or do you need to be porn again
(laugh away, this is a chick flick with {horse} flesh)
It was your idea, after all
It was your idea
A bit of skin
(not too much)
For
The
Line
Dancers
The line dancers
Out
West
(West Auckland, that is)
Sensible shoes in the week
Cowhide on the weekend
Dolly
And
Lucinda
And
Emmy-Lou
Oh, yes, Tabitha, Carol and Sarah as well
(the lipstick spaghetti girls)
But this film
This film will be made in Alberta
Alberta
(can you see Alaska from there?)
Alberta
Canada
And
You
(yes, you)
You, oh most beautiful one, you will play Alberta
In this
Dixie Chick
Flick
(Girls With Balls, rawhide rough)
This
Epic
Rite of passage
Biopic
(I will be DOP)
Of course
I
Will
Be
Doppelganger
For you
Doppelganger
For
Harry
(tempting ~ tempting to call you Sally)
I will direct
(do I ever not?)
I will direct
The
Action
I
Will
Make
The
Pictures
Shape the landscape
And
I will collect the carrion to feed the eagles
Who will hover
I will chase the roadrunners
Who will rark up the horses
I will battle the parasites, the vampires and the studio bossettes
(sweet talk the roadies)
Protect you both from the groupies
(with my body if necessary ~ oh, art’s dire sacrifice)
But
Most
(most – most – most)
I
Will
Be
With
You
Under the stars
(well, yes, that too, my two special stars)
I did mention some bareback frolics, you will remember that
Though I am no June Holmes of a girl
Thank God
I fall a long way short of that
(a debatable foot!)
And
Always
Have
Despite the rumours you may read in the tabloids
And
You
Will
Play
Alberta
You will play her on a big canvas
A stage of fools
Sated
(cast of millions, no expense spared)
With
With
With
Coyote
(your suffering to the night sky withers thought, heralds calamity)
Now you invade this reverie, this trance
Now I am again in survival mode
Anxiety
Panic
Again
I cry in the silence of my heart
‘Leave me alone, Coyote!
My eyes open
(yours are serene in the firelight, gazing)
See the ill-omened sky hover above
See
The Trojan horse of night
Dragged in
By the fag-end of day
Burning the horizon with ash dregs left behind
Wall to wall red, gray and cream
Coffee in flared nostrils
Achin’
(can’t resist a laugh)
For
A
Different
After-dark
Aroma
That matchless, after-sleep, remnant only women have
That
Aftertaste to savour
(eh, Coyote, you drool at that)
Who could make that
Make that up
Make out to come to that
Even
The Millennium Man
Could
Not
Brew
That
Heady
Scent
In
John Hall’s herbal house
But I (happily) lose the point
(Hardly a surprise, eh girls?)
Girls!
Those
Brokeback
Nights
Encroach on the spirit, the imagination
Not to mention the menagerie
Not yet out of sight (or smell)
That
Zoo
Beyond the light
But
There is
No
Jake
No
Sad and cheerless
Heath
To break these boundaries with their straight-boy kisses
(straight boys? yeah)
Now there is
Just
Us
Just
Us
Three back-breakin’, broke, workin’ girls lost in a wilderness of sky
A bounding deep of earth and rock and scrub
A campfire of desire and aspiration
And
Yearning
Fear
Just
Us
Three dykie chicks
Making a movie
Goin’ down slow like that big ball in the sky
Eatin’ chow
Lookin’ like road kill
(we do, so does the food)
Burnt
Sun and stern flame
On
Skin
Both the living and the dead
Yours
And
Mine
And
The dead meat
And the make up girl
(that’s me, economy the watchword)
Made up the made up girls
You
And
You
With
No
Sun
Block
So the fry up is us
While the food lies idle
But we will sleep this night together
In this desert of darkness
Watched over by a stellar light
In our moon lodge of love and lunacy
Where we bleed forever
Within whose phases
We are born
Mature
Give birth
And
Die
Rest
Reflect
On
This
Cosmic
Sisterhood
With
The
Sky
Our
Brokeback Mountain
(for girls)
We made it
Die
Coyote
Die
Tuesday 22 December, 2009
dykiegirl 