Nathaniel Mackey

—“mu” forty-eighth part— “While we’re alive,” we kept repeating. Tongues, throats, roofs of our mouths bone dry, skeletons we’d someday be... Panicky masks we wore for effect more than effect, more real than we’d admit... No longer wanting to know what soul was, happy to see shadow, know touch... Happy to have sun at our backs, way led by shadow, happy to have bodies, block light... Afternoon sun lighting leaf, glint of glass, no matter what, about to be out of body it seemed... Soon to be shadowless we thought, said we thought, not to be offguard, caught out. Gray morning we meant to be done with, requiem so sweet we forgot what it lamented, teeth turning to sugar, we grinned • Day after day of the dead we were desperate. Dark what the night before we saw lit, bones we’d eventually be... At day’s end a new tally but there it was, barely begun, rock the clock tower let go of, iridescent headstone, moment’s rebuff... Soul, we saw, said we saw, invisible imprint. No one wanted to know what soul was... Day after day of the dead we were deaf, numb to what the night before we said moved us, fey light’s coded locale... I fell away, we momentarily gone, deaf but to brass’s obsequy, low brass’s croon begun. I fell away, not fast, floated, momentary mention an accord with the wind, day after day of the dead the same as day before day of the dead... “No surprise,” I fell away muttering, knew no one would hear, not even me • We wore capes under which we were in sweaters out at the elbow. Arms on the table, we chewed our spoons... Mouthing the blues, moaned an abstract truth, kept eating. The dead's morning-after buffet someone said it was. Feast of the unfed said someone else... What were we doing there the exegete kept asking, adamant, uninvited, morose... Elbows in the air like wings, we kept eating, rolled our eyes, kept shoveling it in... Day after day of the dead we were them. We ate inexhaustibly, ate what wasn't there, dead no longer dying of thirst, hung over, turned our noses up to what was ________________ It was me, we were it, insensate, sugared sweat what what we drank tasted like. Even so, the tips of our tongues tasted nothing, we sipped without wincing... We ate cakes, we ate fingernail soup, a new kind of gazpacho, no one willing to say what soul was... Knucklebone soufflé we ate, we ate gristle, eyes we took from flies flying backward a kind of caviar, none of us wanting to say what soul was

— “mu” one hundred eighteenth part — Heaved our bags and headed out again. Again the ground that was to’ve been there wasn’t. Bits of ripcord crowded the box my head had be- come, the sense we were a band was back, the sense we were a band or in a band...    The rotating gate time turned out to be creaked, we pulled away. Lord Invader’s Reform School Band it was we were in, the Pseudo-Dionysian Fife Corps, the Muvian Wind Xtet...    The sense we were a band or were in a band had come back, names’ wicked sense we called timbre, num- bers’ crooked sense our bequest. Clasp it tee- tered near to, abstraction, band was what to be there was...    Band was what it was to be there we shouted, band all we thought it would be. Band was a chant, that we chanted, what we chanted, chant said it all would be alright... A new band, our new name was the Abandoned Ones, no surprise. We dwelt in the well-being that awaited us, never not sure we’d get there, what way we were yet to know. I stood pat, a rickety sixty-six, tapped out a scarecrow jig in waltz time, big toe blunt inside my shoe...    Who was I to so rhapsodize I chided myself, who to so mark my- self, chill teeth suddenly forming reforming, who to let my heart out so...    To be at odds with my- self resounded, sound’s own City the wall I hit my head against, polis was to be and to be so hit... We heard clamor, clash, blue consonance, noise’s low sibling sense ________________ We pumped our arms as though they were pistons, elbows in and out. We nicked our name to Abandon. Abandon was our name now... Thus was our music no music. Music too we left behind. Everything beside the point that there was no point, everything thus the point... Thus was being there sibling sense gone treble, the balm to be a band the true amen- ity music was, the fact of having been there new to its Buddha-nature, the fact of having been there moot • To have been there wasn’t dasein. No Hei- degger told my horse. Trussed up to the side it sat, pressed and preponderant, sov- ereign, self-contained, were it music the music we sloughed... Slipped accompa- niment, surrogate cloud, rapt adjournment. Agitant. Surrogate cue... I kept clear of it, caught up at arm’s length, all but caught out I came to see... Thus was our music no music it seemed I said, mujic more than music I might’ve said, might as well have said, no matter I mumbled other- wise under my breath... The Freedmen’s Debate Society our name now was, the Ox Tongue Speaker Exchange. Fractal scratch. Nominative ser- ration. Cutaway run, cutaway arrest... Thus was our music no music I did say, say’s default on sing such as it was... We called it history even so, insisted it, the it crowding the corner of eve- ryone’s eye. None of us were not crept up on, none not required we sing it, say it. Thus was our say not so ________________ Beginning again for the muleteenth time, we counted off. It was our muleteenth breakdown, muleteenth new beginning... Brass rubbed off on our lips, reed rubbed off as well, string steel left on our fingertips, stick wood left on our thumbs