Into the House of the Labyrinth

I go, into the house that faces the sea.
I leave my shoes, there on the rocks
the waves break against. Nothing moves
in this tower, and so the sea moves
for everything. The wind and the foam
edges to a tattered world broken
by a pillar of stone and sky.
The door yawns open
and I rise.

Into the house of many rooms,
into the boneyard and scrap heap
of youth and living tombs.
Into our own heart, we surrender
to the foul air and learn to breath
with only our mouths. Let us go.

In the hollow rooms I hear them clash
the young man and the beast beneath
the yellow rocks, the stones stained red,
the harmony of meat breaking chain.
And in the pit where the bones grow,
enormous stamens to a thousand lilies,
the blood leaps out at you here.
Pure as snow, untouched by sand or dust,
flowing like water, rising out of the ground
like full-blown roses.

It's here where Ariadne sits and I sit too.
Watching the boy clash with manhood.
I want to say something but the air seems
not to know what it is I say, reflecting it back
faithfully, without understanding. But she looks
inside the air, inside its confused stomach,
picks it out, the words tumbling and upset,
what original meaning had once been digested.
And she looks at me and I look at her too.
And we share that same lone look all
must share, should they open to it. And she kindly,
sets it adrift, those thousand meanings floating
in the river of air, like candles on the water
lighting the path of the dead. And
we watch the stupid boy wrestling
with the soft-eyed, stone-limbed Minotaur,
watch as they go down
into the sand, into the blood
that stays its own form, not mingling, detached,
refusing to touch the fate of others. I

see them, I hold myself, up
in that circle of stone
on a hard rock stool, there,
I grow tired, and I watch
the light pass over them,
the suns and moons that will go wasted.
Without pause, I echo out a name.
Yet both heads turn to face me.