The Last Swansong

A Confounded Letter about Legends.

 

She had fallen undignified to the water some time ago, now was the time for singing.
Slanting rain and thunder on the flood. Weft weave waves hitting a near corpse, possessed only of a primitive panting down a long serpentine neck. Lost now both of cause and mate, sculpture shaped particular only for this watching concern.
She was indeed watched from afar by thoughts that suffered briefly with nauseous concern and a heart that stuttered bouncing along its tortured, naive romantic death path. In tandem, it was imagined, with hers.
Wet the boy who watched and old the legend song he knew as he waited. Whispered, the dripped wishes for the pain to end.
The single, but unresolved, intention was to discover, once she could feel no more, the reasons for her death. The demise on a battleship gun grey day, of a usually mute but still dignified white galleon bird. It was the spoken dissection of a particular cause and then the intended collection of useless, poorly written, notes and blunt pencil drawings.
So, long neck exhausted across the water. Pinioned wing mantling the soft polluted weed. Greyer eye sinking into another time. Single breast feather floating, white on black. Caught by the wind of her dying choreographed. A samite Lady of Shallot floating towards multiple dooms and romance.
Making heavy weather of it; negative light feeding and cold driven storm sky. Turbulence above and below; the long white line lying across the shallow bouncing, Stygian dark waters.

Only Pen, no Cob. No lifetime partner to wish away this day. To infinitely sway the moment into pathos beyond. To bring a shaft of poetic resonance golden to this the memory.
Scudding and calling crossed Gulls and Crows. Tacking into the procedure of this death; vulture waiting as indeed does the other but for different, perhaps more kindly reasons.
Glacial Northern wind and horizontal rain so fine it misted. Sodden final corpse and dripping cold observer caught together in an ageless stamp of sombre, tragic, tactless, theatre.

And now later, dragging a heavy sagged and glassed eyed corpse from these cold prior claimants. Muds that stank and clutched, at feather, at sodden limb, hungry. Colours that diluted to grey as oil stank to death.
Dragged away miles from a wet and still rising flood to box like bedroom laboratory. A candle lit dressing table work bench covered in old newspaper. Cutting away uncaring organ tree with old rusty knife and bleak forensic causes surprisingly discovered. Drawings done of this murders most foul weapon; before burning it in hatred. A fluorescent float and tight ball of fishing line, near invisible in the feathered neck scarred and tarred with dark and bloody mud. Blocking stinking weeds still attached. The long white line now pink splayed and open with undignified cuts and jagged explorations. Finally keeping a long skull, bleached, white and kept for collectings sake

Reviews

[emmajoy]

Why do the following words jump out at me, is it coz the tragedy's shared by two echoing each other's pain? ' She was indeed watched from afar by thoughts that suffered briefly with nauseous concern and a heart that stuttered bouncing along its tortured, naive romantic death path. In tandem, it was imagined, with hers. '

The dying and death lingers on, weeping words only this writer can, and finally finish as material necessities in cases and boxes, just as thoughts lie in the saddest memory.

[...]

. life feels like this to me these days ... the past is retained for the sake of collecting ... the present is dead ... the future doesn't exist ... i know my words are feeble ... but i cannot begin to tell you how much i relate to the emotion expressed in these words and images ... yet, somehow, maybe not being silenced is a part of defeating what it feels like ... to somehow protest and say "i didn't miss a thing, i didn't miss a single detail, you can't have the pleasure of fooling me" ... to all that has happened ... to all that is missed ... to all that is destroyed before one's very own eyes ... makes the destruction a little less vacant for it has been witnessed and it has been exposed ... and it has been recorded for others ... i am happy you recorded these words and images ... just because i could read them and know that this feeling ... though in a different context ... is one that i have known and live through almost every day ... thank you, immensely, for this post ...

[roarke]

Swan song... I don't think you're just talking about a bird here. The thing I most admire about your work is how effortlessly it is to read and enjoy and be inspired by. You present the beauty in the complexity and then show it simply for what it is, yet never lose your narrative style. That's magic.

[Donald Meikle]

A sad sad swan song played on the uncaring existence of too busy materialistic waste. The picture is as beautiful as the tale isn't.

[Siddartha Beth Pierce]

Such a tragedy...seems she is a siren of sorts at first then ends up being the demised...very touching write.
Light,
Siddartha

[SM Davis]

Anger and fear lie beneath the surface of this write. Dignant perfection this is...the words puzzled together to paint the picture whole. I have so much to say, but I will wait. My head is bowed as the tear falls. That is all I can say now. 1000 daisies lay on the fateful table.

[Phibby Venable]

this is incredibly sad & completely perfect. Harshness, beauty, intensity,
assault of the innocent, well, everything to create perfection.

[Ladysue]

It has been a while since I read your work. Always intricate, detailed and so layered. This has wonderful images as always. I agree with W.k, there is so much here as I read this twice. Great concepts and the title chosen well. written with eloquence as always...

[W.k.kortas]

There is so much here: the swan as it is representative of beauty, the notion of love/mating/fidelity and the fate of relationships, the notion of the avian autopsy cf. the criticism of art (and "murders most foul" is a wonderful double entendre) and on and on. The concepts are subtle, elegant; the writing layered and multi-leveled. One of the best of the Confounded Letters.

[Emily B]

i floated along on icy waves of this latest confounded letter . . . breathtaking