Eight stars make
A soft solfege
Above this motel
Where there are never
Stars.
I let a skinny man
Put his long thick dick in me for you
So we could break our hearts
The way you want me to. Somewhere a white
Wall stretches up behind the backs of a tribe
Whose obscurity protects its secret from the common
World and the connivances it ordains.
What time is it. What season is it.
I don’t know.
The moon blows green
Gas into my skull
I want to hide what I dream
In a big boot, and wear the boot
And starve as I lean upon the boot of my destitution
And drag
The truth as a gimp would drag the weight of her body.
That would give me a feeling of honesty.
—Ariana Reines, “The Four Seasons”
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[Trying to see the proportional relation]
.....Alain Badiou
Ended his class with a reading
Of “Ariane et Barbe-Bleue” which
Is an opera by Paul Dukas. You
And me had gone pretty far
By the time this day came, and
Something very fragile in me breaks
When somebody says my name, or
Even a variant of it. I was tired.
I think Badiou discusses “Ariane”
In Being and Event which
I have not read. In class he said
That the story of the opera is
About the relationship between law
And freedom, and that it shows
That the desire for freedom is not
So simple. Ariane experiences an Event
That causes her to demand freedom, Badiou
Said, but she is unable to convince anybody
Else, any other women to want freedom; she ends up alone.
She genuinely falls in love with the wicked
Bluebeard at the beginning. Bluebeard
Who previously got women by having a castle
To lock them in. This woman Ariane
Does not have to be taken
By force. When she enters
His castle he hands
Her seven keys, six
Of which he gives her permission
To use, and leaves. She hears the cries
Of his other, imprisoned wives,
Coming from behind a door. So she uses
The forbidden key, releasing them.
Meanwhile Bluebeard is assaulted
By the local peasants, who want
To free Ariane, fearing her fate will turn out like
That of the women who came before her.
But Ariane is already free
In herself, and proves this freedom
By bringing the wounded Bluebeard
Home, caring tenderly for him, and then
Declaring that she’s leaving him for good.
By the end Bluebeard’s shattered, sobbing,
Bleeding. Ariane
Invites the other wives to leave with her
In a wrenching aria, pleading
With them one by one to taste
With her the freedom awaiting
Them, The World. But they all prefer confinement
Even though they had longed
For freedom before Ariane opened
Their door. Once liberty arrived they were no
Longer capable of it, preferring to serve; even a gutted,
Hollowed-out power. Ariane exits
Alone. The end. Badiou narrated
This with emotion and
I cried. Maybe cos I was tired and
That thing about my name or because
I am not heroic or free.
I had missed half of Alain Badiou’s
Lectures messing around with you
On the couch by the fire; in the women’s
Toilets; up on the hill. If this were a suitable parable,
And it isn’t, I would try to tell myself
That those very early mornings in Brooklyn when I sat
Up in your bed feeling wrong and
Got dressed and walked away, I should
Have stayed away cos I don’t need you.
Maybe I don’t need you. But I want
You. Maybe I don’t love you. But
I am getting to know you. Maybe
What made me cry in class was how tired
I was and how sad and hard
It is, and how rare, to undertake an act
That’s truly free, and not just a response
To a confused surge of drives and fears.
~ Ariana Reines
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