Jason

prologue

i didn't mean to do it, i didn't mean for any of it
i didn't mean it



parados

enter the poor lovers, incidental
enter the angry chorus



first episode

a spider, a clawed spider, a red crab hangs in the thick sky,
i march along streets, i make no sign of having felt anything
i keep a tight jaw, i don't let flesh buckle so anymore

i connect the thin edge of flipflop to a cube of glass taken only a
day before from the smashing trinity
of a smashing time driving living! darling parking drunk and coupling
one champagne glass over the limit and a fingering of a zip
and a smashing of flesh
  of evening pheromones in coronal loops of oxytocin
and a smashing of a sick young man with a bat and a bad habit, perhaps,
to kick, a rush, a smashing
i send it hurtling



first stasimon

chorus:
stop, jason
let us asses the chronology
let us remind ourselves

you found her first
remember your responsibility
husband
you were bound by the book

the things she did for you
the things she did

you used her chemicals and her spells
her cubed brother scattered on the water
you ruined her heart

face it, Jason
she left
climbing the sky to sit with her grandfather
in this your wife was right
you drove her there
you know that

and now you are alone
husband
what will you do

abandoned in a land polluted
for this the gods will make no intervention
what will you do

we can sing you explanation all you want
we can try for time and be other than this furor but
with all your world as devastated in the slake of vengeance
what will you do
when it was you
who drove her


second episode

bunch, unspring and then
there is a connection
houston, we have
we have a problem, there is a connection,
steel kiss into glass for a smack, an instant web of gaps
in the geometric flat
fly strands and crystal blocks, there is a shocked gasp open
between reddening lips, stop, between wheels the steel bat falls and rolls back

a flash of muscle, a rip of tendon taut and hauling bone like never
hauled bone before, an end of things,
an end of things, a bat connecting with a pane of glass, a car alarm, a haul of bone,
the sky feels like a noose



second stasimon

chorus:
we check for fingerprints
and locate you in our database

we wade through papers in your room
we scan the nadsat frieze, the ancient greek

we take note of ultraviolent images
and look for drugs again

when speaking with your father
we understand you found it hard to be man

while listing certain certified facilities
we have an officer support your mother



third episode

finally
it is light
i slap cold feet

from shower to foam slip to street i
flick liquid from upper lip grind jaws
recently made strong from calcium and

a daily bowl of unreliably narrated carbohydrate, cream shrinking milkily
and drowning
indiscriminate each puff of faux-oat and crystal box of sugar, in the road ahead i see a thrilling net of yellow tape,
for a moment then i gloat

a black spider ropes about fly fishing, catching up
corona, like the light got stuck, unlucky 

a couple, an angry couple, a pair of lovers incidental
made bereft of locomotive
mouth irately in a language mainly spun up from
expletives to the thin blue line i hurry by i am unnoticed i watch the spider
hunting sun, i hope i am not followed

i think i might have been mistaken
i think i didn’t move correctly
i think i didn’t mean to do it




third stasimon

chorus:
jason
we saw you  do it

we saw you think it when you looked at other men and women 

we saw you flow a comb through her barbaric hair like you meant it, hold your
breath to her like you meant it, hold her like you meant it

we saw you take up the bat, the pipe, the marlborough light, the spliff

we saw you in your building and your burning

we saw you do it jason
we saw you break it

but we are kindly in our names; sweet tisiphone, unwavering allecto and the
unforgetteable megaera

and in your breaking up of her
for you we are forever



fourth episode

i run fingers along a concrete wall
i shiver at moss
slung into bushes dangle earrings pregnant with tiny cubes of zirconium
night-ripped at a streetlamp for foreplay before bed, i nod, i hope my
fingerprints will be ground away, i am sure i see a sun in the
thick oil of blue, a sun gone all arachnid, predator star, licking teeth deep
behind a hot mask,
i hope my fingertips are rubbed raw

i read about gaea theory, i read about medea - dark mother out
to kill her kids
what a premise – no sweet dame
to nuture and preserve our skin’s edge of planet, the fertile epidermis,
but instead
this chthonic face of rage witching up a choicy death for us:
in the fifties i guess it was the nuclear knife, the fissure of atom,
two bright stabs for two cities for two children
now we gift ourselves with
the slow burn of a golden dress that
looks like a sunset, looks like a beautiful sunset
heat and heat and heat
i didn't mean it, i'm scared, the women
in my soul, i'm scared,  the spider, i pick up a tube of steel, i feel weight, i swing
i didn't mean it, i make a connection



fourth stasimone

chorus:

don’t blame it on the earth, Jason
don’t blame it on your parents - they are incidental

their weakness is not your weakness

you are the only culprit
we will not relent




exodos

There’s but three furies found in spacious hell,
But in a young man's breast three thousand dwell.
The White Devil Act IV, scene III
- John Webster

hot up in the face of the flaring night
for now the crab star gone and done
i stand with bat in hand
and
strike a blow



now
i claim it
it is my rebellion.