[note.
These texts, originally published in Barzakh:
Poems 2000-2012 (2014), were commissioned after the 2010 BP Deepwater
Horizon explosion & oil spill by Donald Nally & the Crossing Choir
to be set to music by Gene Coleman, Chris Jonas & Gabriel Jackson.
The work premiered in Philadelphia in 2014, and
had its first European staging in Luxembourg
— The first two sections of the
work are partial writing-through’s of Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem A Throw of
the Dice, using both Daisy Alden’s & my own translations. That poem,
despite being usually called the first “abstract” poem of the modern
avant-garde, does tell a story: that of a shipwreck & the drowning of its
captain.
— A number of the spoken phrases
in the second section are taken from interviews with Sheri Revette by Antonia
Juhasz in the latter’s book Black Tide (Wiley, 2011), talking of her
husband, Dewey Revette, a driller killed in the Deepwater Horizon disaster on
April 20 2010. Sheri tells the story of their love and life together and
the moments after Sherri's discovery of her husband's death.]
1 —
RIGWRECK
A THROW
what
do we know, what can we know?
OF
THE DICE
of
science, of love?
only
the facts, that is to say
only
effects
NEVER
can
this happen
NEVER even if, can this happen
in
science, in love
EVEN
WHEN CAST
Indra’s net of love,
EVEN WHEN CAST
money’s net of stone
what do we know, what can we know?
What
has caused this gulf
between water & oil, you &
me
IN
ETERNAL CIRCUMSTANCES
(no
circumstances are eternal,
AT THE HEART OF
of
this rigwreck
What will we know?
We
know only effects / have to choose
the causes
A
SHIPWRECK at the heart that the
gulf widens
between
water & oil, you & me
fish
& water, me & you
that
the
Abyss
between
water & water, you & you
me
& me, oil & fish
widened then whitened
there is slack growing
raging
underwater in the heart
underheart
in the water
on
the brain
what we know is oil & water
don’t mix
what we know is fish & oil don’t mix
what
we know is you & I have to mix
what
we know is you & I have to live
under
an incline
clinamen
of a warming clime
an
angle not an angel tells us
me
& you want to live
even
if despair desperately soars
&
gets an angry rise
form the phantom pain of its own
planet’s
sore
broken
wing
a
second-hand angel singing Ecce Homo,
Ecce
Homo, though not so Sapiens,
conscious liar,
beforehand
relapsed, liar, liar, not released from wrongly steering
the
flight of this planetary love affair
no
use repressing the outbursts
of
this lethal love affair
cleaving
the bounds
of
this oily love affair
at
the root of greed
set
the rig afloat
a
ship finally a ship
the
impossible change
for
deep inside weighs the admission of impending disaster
the shadow hidden in the depth
by
this by this arrogance this arrogance
at
the root of greed this arrogance
at
the root of arrogance
this
love this love for more
a
more always spelled out in money
blows the rig up this morning
will blow the world up tomorrow
there
is no alternate sail
ship
earth in space / space ship earth
the
only raft for dumb sapiens
who has to learn to love
this imperfect raft
there is no alternate sail
dumb sapiens has to learn love
has
to learn to adjust
has
to learn to look to the spread
the spreading of disaster
has
to learn to jump
its
yawning depth
as great as any abyss
between
you & me
the
hull of a rig
the
hull of a ship
careening from side to side
turns
over & is for a moment cathedral
burning
church of the worship of money
brightly floating death flaunting
love
rigwreck
rigwreck
a catastrophe here now,
the
circumstances local & global
not
eternal only this now
cannot grasp the hawser
opens
a gulf
between
life & death
a millimeter uncrossable
a BP centipede monster
at the heart of this rigwreck
abolish abolish
abolished responsibility
Moloch, Moloch
Moloch
—
rules,
Moloch
rules
all rules broken when Moloch
rules.
2 — LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT
CHOIR:
THE MASTER is no master
the
master is a corp a corpse a
corporation
beyond
outworn calculations
where Moloch where Moloch arisen
is
a manoeuvre with age-
less scorn for you & me
scorn
for love / love forgotten
the
master is absent
now present here only Dewey
could
have gripped the helm once
upon a time & called his mates
now
locked into the assistant driller’s shack’s C chair
can his love hear him
SOLO (Dewey’s voice):
Thirty
years offshore
&
I can smell a rat
leaving
a rig, I can, I do right now —
I’m toolpusher, not master,
should
sleep but follow
inauspicious
orders
tomorrow’s another day, night’s growing darker
something’s wrong here, something’s off
shouldn’t follow inauspicious orders
It
is night / the only light
is
tomorrow is Sheri
Sheri my love a gulf between us
my
message reaches across a gulf
awaits
you listen listen
left it this morning at first light
O why am I not ashore I knew
the
bosses would lie would cut
corners
until from this conflagration...
CHOIR:
at
his feet mud overflows the rig floor
shoots
through the derrick
the
blowout preventer’s
does not act
the well’s blown out
Dewey
dead now in this conflagration
on the no way unanimous horizon
end
of the horizon
of
the deepwater horizon
a Gulf prepares itself
the
fist would grip it
will
swallow the tossed & burning rig
as one threatens destiny and the
winds, the elements all
eleven die
the
one Number which can be no other
eleven
die
their
Spirit hurled
into
tempestuous fire gas explosions
nothing
can seal the gap nothing can go proudly
eleven die
love left ashore a Gulf
between
their loves & their corpses
eleven die
eleven
die.
SOLO
(Female Voice/ Sheri):
Dewey
got pretty hot
Dewey
never—ever—ever
loses
his temper — never, ever, ever.
If
he really believed this could have happened,
he’d never, never let them do it.
Calls at 9 a.m. each morning
missed
his call that morning,
phone
didn’t
ring, he left
a
message I deleted as
I
knew he was coming home
knew
he was coming home.
CHOIR:
Don’t hesitate
cut
off from the secret they withhold
cadavers
that will not wash ashore
caught
rather than dressed
now
in shrouds of lethal
oil &
dispersant pearls
old madmen
play the game on behalf of the waves
one
surges over the chief toolpusher
a directly
shipwrecked
all-American
love story flows over:
of
the man no submissive graybeard
who just liked being home,
ancestrally
huntin’,
fishin’,
playin’ on
his tractor
not
to unclench his hand
She’ without a ship
a small place in Ohio
Kmart
in walking distance,
mall
twenty minutes by car.
They met when he drove up to the
local Kerr
gas
station where Sheri worked.
SOLO
(Female Voice /Sheri):
It
was love at first sight
We
had the old time Coca-Cola coolers.
He
reached in for one he was sittin’ there
we
were talkin’ that
was it…
He
had this smile. It would make you melt.
Love
at first sight.
CHOIR:
Contracted
before & above the worthless wellhead showed
She was 18 & he was 21 when they got married
an
all-American love story
the
legacy of his disappearance
yet
back then no gulf between them
to
some unknown the ulterior immemorial demon.
SOLO
(Female Voice):
It
was love at first sight.
When
we got married so young
everyone
was looking for a baby.
There
wasn’t
one.
We
were just in love.
CHOIR:
From dead & narrow lands
induced
/ seduced
by
an old man toward this supreme lethal
conjunction
with probability
this morning she expected him home
sister
called at 5 a.m. said turn on the t.v.
she
knew right away that he’d be dead.
Even
his boyish shadow
caressed & polished, drained & washed
not
to return wave-softened
unyielding
bones stripped off
lost
among the debris
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